![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
logicbuttonSpammity spam spam.
I'm taking this Musikwissenschaft (literally, music science) class at the Uni. Now, having played instruments continuously since the age of three-ish and having a mother who has sung professionally and played piano all her life, my knowledge of basic music theory is fairly solid. So, you know, I figured that would translate pretty easily into German.
Except for the fact that the Germans apparently figured that, since the note we call B is actually a half-tone, it would make logical sense to call it H. H for Halbton. So what we call the C-major scale is as follows: C D E F G A H C. I was so confused in class today. Especially since I could barely copy the damn lines correctly into my notebook. Oh, and you know how we have sharps and flats in English? Well, the Germans denote accidentals by adding the suffixes -is (sharps) or -es (flats) to the names of the notes, or I think that's how it works, anyway. Am still trying to find a website that will just give me the information straight. At the moment, I'm basing my knowledge on what I kindasorta picked up from class today. ("Zes? What the hell is Zes?")
So, in conclusion, if I can find a damn music encyclopedia that doesn't suck, this will be a wonderfully educational class.
ETA: I found a site. I was right about everything, happily enough, and have also learned that the name for b-flat is not "hes" as one might logically deduce, but in fact "b". Or, as I will be calling it from now on, facepalm. Incidentally, b-double-flat is "heses", and for reasons that I don't really feel like investigating fully, I'm having flashbacks to my earlier years of learning German. Like the occasional aspect of German grammar, "heses" makes perfect sense, but in a really unfair way.
I'm taking this Musikwissenschaft (literally, music science) class at the Uni. Now, having played instruments continuously since the age of three-ish and having a mother who has sung professionally and played piano all her life, my knowledge of basic music theory is fairly solid. So, you know, I figured that would translate pretty easily into German.
Except for the fact that the Germans apparently figured that, since the note we call B is actually a half-tone, it would make logical sense to call it H. H for Halbton. So what we call the C-major scale is as follows: C D E F G A H C. I was so confused in class today. Especially since I could barely copy the damn lines correctly into my notebook. Oh, and you know how we have sharps and flats in English? Well, the Germans denote accidentals by adding the suffixes -is (sharps) or -es (flats) to the names of the notes, or I think that's how it works, anyway. Am still trying to find a website that will just give me the information straight. At the moment, I'm basing my knowledge on what I kindasorta picked up from class today. ("Zes? What the hell is Zes?")
So, in conclusion, if I can find a damn music encyclopedia that doesn't suck, this will be a wonderfully educational class.
ETA: I found a site. I was right about everything, happily enough, and have also learned that the name for b-flat is not "hes" as one might logically deduce, but in fact "b". Or, as I will be calling it from now on, facepalm. Incidentally, b-double-flat is "heses", and for reasons that I don't really feel like investigating fully, I'm having flashbacks to my earlier years of learning German. Like the occasional aspect of German grammar, "heses" makes perfect sense, but in a really unfair way.
