Introduction
This is a template for creating a web-site out of what I have written as a text book for the first semester music theory course at Earlham College.
At this moment, I want to simply extract out a paragraph that has a music graphic and a flash player that plays the graphic to see how that functions. For example, this is how I would be dealing with an issue regarding Pythagorean tuning and the Dorian mode.
The Pythagorean scale and the Dorian mode
...thus, we have seen that Pythagoras discovered a basic fact of harmonic resonance: the beauty of harmony based on the integer relationships using the lowest possible primes, in this case a 3-limit system. In such a system, all scale tones are derived from a central tone, with symmetrically placed perfect fifths (with the ratio of 3:2) above and below the central tone.
As already discussed, D will form our central tone for all modal thinking. Here are the Pythagorean fifths above and below D on the bass clef, using modern notation:
We can then create, using octave reduction and using our center pitch D as the root note of the scale, a scale that in contemporary music we call the Dorian mode.
The Dorian mode sounds like this (eventually I will play this electronically, using Pythagorean intonation, but for testing purposes, here it is on the piano)