Quote:
Originally Posted by halfdeadhippo
Pythagoras. He's the dude who figured out the numerical ratios and stuff that're behind scales.
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NO......
Yes there are a lot of parallels between Pythagoras work with ratios (most notably the golden ratio) and music. But musical scales weren't based on mathematical formulas until way after his death.
The western major scale actually comes from something called the overtone series. Witch is basically all the notes you hear when you pluck a string. (Hit a lower key on a piano sometime, if you listen very carefully you will notice that there is the main note and a bunch of higher notes sounding at the same time.) There are seven notes that are prominent in the overtone series. That is where the notes for the major scale came from.
Actually J.S. Bach is one of the reasons we use the system of pitches that is most common in modern music.
They used to tune instruments so that they would be perfectly in tune in one key (AKA they would only use 7 notes in all the songs). So if a composer wanted to write a song in a key they would tune so you had a perfect sounding major scale. And then if they wanted to be in another key they would re-tune all the instruments.
But then composers started messing around with the idea of using different keys in the same song. The problem was that if you tuned your instruments so they would be in tune for C major and you tried to play any other scale it would sound horribly out of tune.
This is because the notes from the different overtone series wouldn't line up at all. To cut a long story short (I know I'm starting to ramble) they came up with 12 note equal temperament tuning. Basically they made the distance between every note exactly the same. This did make it so when you played a major scale it would be a little out of tune (when compared to tuning to the overtone series). But it also made so you could play a major scale starting on any note and it would sound ok.
J.S. Bach wrote a lot of music with equal temperament tuning and showed people how much possibilities one could gain by using a 12-tone system. It is very commonly stated that Bach was the major turning point from "pure" tuning to equal tempered tuning. He also got people used to the idea of trying "new" scales besides ones that would come out the major scale.
So to answer the question of the post I would say Bach, because with out him we might be stuck listening to a lot more music that always sticks in one key per song and never uses accidentals.