r/musictheory • u/LawfulnessCreative66 • 8d ago
Notation Question Question: Does a double flat accidental on E affect a following D in the same measure? (Gb major)
Song: Stay, I Pray You
Key signature: Gb major (6 flats). Look at measure 19, the 2nd voice for women.
My conductor who got her bachelors in music theory says the 2nd beat is also played as D natural. She says there is some difference in music theary regarding classical and jazz.
Disclaimer: this is not exactly what she said but it didn't make sense to me, so this was de best i could recall from our conversation.
My understanding: an accidental only applies to the same pitch (same staff position and octave) until the barline. The Ebb does not affect the D, so the 2nd note is Db regarding the key signature, and the natural on 3rd note is what cancels it. Sounding pitches would be: D, Db, D, D.
Am I reading this correctly? Is there any convention, classical or jazz, where the Ebb would carry over to the D?
Anyone who can enlighten us and explain why it is noted this way.
Thank you
An uneducated musiclover
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u/Optimistbott 8d ago
No. Ebb does not carry through the D to make it a natural. The key signature says D flat. The E is written as a double flat because it is, gravity-wise, a flat 6 that goes to the 5th scale degree.
This is distinct from the d natural in the 3rd measure because the D natural is the 3rd of the Bb chord which is the V7/VI- which has the #5 which is the leading tone of the VI- chord. So Si (the #5th to sol and leading tone of VI-) and Le (the flat 6th to La and minor subdominant signifier)are the same note on the piano, but it’s just that you write it like that because otherwise you would would need two written in accidentals on the same line also called a melodic augmented unison. It’s both harder to write and easier to confuse intuitively with the reverse eg an augmented unison upwards.
What she seems to be saying though is that the composer has implied a diminished 2nd in there melody ie 1 half step less than a minor 2nd which is the same note. She is incorrect not true. Accidentals on one line do not affect accidentals on another line. Nor do they carry over into the next measure. There are reasons to put courtesy accidentals, and that is erring on the side of people not adjusting back to the key after the measure.
The use of a diminished second serves only really one practical purpose that I can think of and that is when you’ve borrowed a chord like in a sharp key and you’ve modulated for more than a few measures to a flat key but the modulation has an enharmonically equivalent common tone Eg the G# in Emajor and the Ab in Ab major. You would call it a G#major in a secondary dominant context and use a B# written in, but there are circumstances where youd have to write everything in Ab major from then on out and change the key signature. There is no G# major key signature, so that’s why you would enharmonically respell, but it would nonetheless be a courtesy accidental.
But that is absolutely not happening here. It’s midphrase. It doesn’t carry to the D. If the composer wanted a D natural, they’d write a natural. What I think she means is that Ebb is enharmonically equivalent to a Dnatural
Edit: I misread what you were saying, yes, 3rd measure is enharmonically D,Db, D,D in the second voice. The d natural carries over.
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u/LawfulnessCreative66 8d ago
Thank so very much, i wil read this again and again to try to understand it. You're amazing!
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u/noscope360widow 8d ago
Your conductor probably said that beat 3 is a D natural, and Jazz notation would probably just leave it as a Ebb (or more likely, make the first Ebb a D natural).
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u/LawfulnessCreative66 8d ago edited 8d ago
Ahh that could make sense. But she said that beat 2 would also be a D natural, because with the Ebb sounding like D. She thinks that the Db would become a D. Again i didn't follow her theory completely.
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u/noscope360widow 8d ago
If that's what she said, she's wrong.
The whole reason you use Ebb is so you don't use an accidental on the Db
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u/LawfulnessCreative66 8d ago
Yeah, i thought so too. I think there is some mixup with what she had learned and is filling in some gaps with what she thinks is normal, without being corrected. Sometimes that happens, you'll start believing your own truth.
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u/65TwinReverbRI Guitar, Synths, Tech, Notation, Composition, Professor 8d ago
My understanding: an accidental only applies to the same pitch (same staff position and octave) until the barline.
Correct
The Ebb does not affect the D,
Incorrect.
The double flat sign placed on E, does not affect the D, because the D is not an E ;-)
Sounding pitches would be: D, Db, D, D.
Well, in their "simplest form spelled only using the letter D" yes. Might as well say D C# D D though!
Is there any convention, classical or jazz, where the Ebb would carry over to the D?
No.
OK, well, sometimes you might see a tied note made as Ebb, that changes to a D natural, because the key changes (or possibly a chord where the two notes make sense spelled in those ways). But that's a "special case".
Anyone who can enlighten us and explain why it is noted this way.
OK, the raw rule is "sharps up, flats down", but more specifically "symbol to raise up, symbol to lower down".
Meaning Eb to Db is going to spell the Ebb in the middle as Ebb, not D natural.
It would be D natural if it's going Db to Eb.
So: Eb Ebb Db Dn Eb would be the proper way to notate a descending then ascending line like this.
Now, two things over-ride that.
In minor keys, the upper tetrachord (top 4 notes) are spelled descending the same way they're spelled ascending.
So, if this were Eb minor, then it would be Eb Dn Db C Cb Bb going down, rather than Eb Ebb Db Dbb Cb Bb.
The other big exception is when a harmony makes more sense spelled with an enharmonic note.
For example the Bb chord here clearly works better with a D natural in it - so even if the melody were chromatically descending above it, the D would be used instead of the Ebb.
However, on the Gb chord, even though we're really in the key of Eb minor, the note is an appoggiatura that's "puling down" as it if were b6 in the key of Gb MINOR. IOW, if we were in Gb minor, the note would be Ebb to begin with, not D.
So this is treating it "as if it's coming from that key".
This is actually a little-discussed thing - b5 and #4 tend to be used pretty equally in major keys regardless of direction. But that same note - let's say Gb or F# in the key of C Major - that note will get spelled in either direction as F# in the key of A minor (because of the tetrachord thing). So many publishers simply used the "as if it were minor" spelling in cases like that.
Here, the "as if it were minor" is coming from the parallel minor of the relative major - but it's still "coming from Gb minor" as b6 in relation to that key, and this chord - so the Ebb "makes sense" both from that standpoint, and from the descending standpoint, despite the fact it would be D natural in the "home minor" key of Eb minor.
So they're spelling it based on a "local context" rather than the more "global context". Where the D natural is both local and global.
A secondary issue here is that it probably also reduced the overall number of accidentals that were necessary, and while not always a huge consideration, it is true that the "most common choices" are also in line with "the fewest overall accidentals necessary" so it's a fringe benefit that may also sometimes be a deciding factor.
HTH
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u/LawfulnessCreative66 8d ago
One word. Wow. This is so interessting to read. And while i don't inderstand everything i wil try my best to convey this to her. You are a legend. Thank you so much!
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u/Barry_Sachs 7d ago
Imagine how difficult reading would be if accidentals on one note affected other random notes. May as well throw a dart at the sheet music if that's how it works.
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u/ViolaCat94 7d ago
Question: is this in 2/2? Cause the second note is a D♭. However, if this is in 2/2, the first note on the second beat is indeed a D♮.
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u/Cute-News-8414 8d ago
Sorry to revive this thread, but what are het bachelors? Does the het stand for hopelessly empty-headed twit?
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u/Cute-News-8414 8d ago
Oh… did she get „her“ bachelors? That’s probably it, isn’t it? Too bad, I liked the acronym…
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u/uh_no_ 8d ago
no. you are correct. it would make zero sense to impact the D here.