Not if you're moving from one kind of scale to another, as you've said you can.
6 7 8 are functionally different to 1 2 etc in an eight-step key.
In fact they're different across different 8 step keys. 6 7 8 in Phrygian are structurally different compared to 6 7 8 in Minor, even though they're the same pitches.
Chords and melodies that use them do not have the same shapes - not because of accidentals, but because they're fundamentally not the same thing and they move through the scale space in different ways.
And in harmonic minor 6 7 8 ascending and descending are different - not just made different with accidentals, but contextually different.
Meanwhile pentatonic melodies can have a pentatonic harmony, or they can have harmonies in other scales and modes. How do you know what "4" is supposed to mean if you're not aware of this?
Of course you can trivially map Thing to Other Thing in Python, but if you don't understand these relationships you're destroying the musical meaning. This is fine for vaguely ambient noodling, but not for building a genuine theory-aware sequencer.
In music theory you don't just play with numbers, you play with style conventions, context, and meaning - and solving that is a much harder problem than you've managed here.
TheOtherHobbes|5 years ago
6 7 8 are functionally different to 1 2 etc in an eight-step key.
In fact they're different across different 8 step keys. 6 7 8 in Phrygian are structurally different compared to 6 7 8 in Minor, even though they're the same pitches.
Chords and melodies that use them do not have the same shapes - not because of accidentals, but because they're fundamentally not the same thing and they move through the scale space in different ways.
And in harmonic minor 6 7 8 ascending and descending are different - not just made different with accidentals, but contextually different.
Meanwhile pentatonic melodies can have a pentatonic harmony, or they can have harmonies in other scales and modes. How do you know what "4" is supposed to mean if you're not aware of this?
Of course you can trivially map Thing to Other Thing in Python, but if you don't understand these relationships you're destroying the musical meaning. This is fine for vaguely ambient noodling, but not for building a genuine theory-aware sequencer.
In music theory you don't just play with numbers, you play with style conventions, context, and meaning - and solving that is a much harder problem than you've managed here.
mpdehaan2|5 years ago
Clarification: you can also type "1 O+1".