Activity 21: Melodic Permutations
Note
This activity is based around the traditional Western 8-note equal temperament scale, although students do not need to know anything about music theory to perform this activity. All the necessary information about the musical aspect is provided here.
Musical set theory is a form of categorization for musical harmonies and melodies according to the intervallic relations of their notes. In musical terminology, an interval can be defined as the distance between two notes in terms of their relative positions when written in musical notation:
Figure 8.19: Musical notations
The following figure demonstrates the distance between different musical notes when represented as musical notations:
Figure 8.20: Musical intervals
You are a music theorist who is curious about how many times a permutation of a particular note set appears within the melodies of various composers. Given the notes of a complete melody and a set of notes...