Now you've got me thinking about how I know the fact that a major scale is wwhwwwh and a minor scale is whwwhww to figure out the number of steps between various intervals. Which has got me thinking about all the variants of minors and how that all plays out... do the various minors really exist to fill all the possible ways of playing 8 increasing notes and ending in an interval? Or rather, to cover the missing intervals like minor second?

I think (Jason can correct me) that all the ones with Greek names can be generated by taking the regular major and starting from a different place.

AH yes, there is a word for that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatonic_scale

Of course, I like the scale wwhwhhwh.
Find your old french horn and play it, it sounds really cool.


Relatedly
http://jcreed.livejournal.com/936576.html?thread=2854528#t2854528
is (I have now discovered) the wrong way to generate such scales.

Yes, but it has a hidden number 13, and an embedded blue scale, thus making it evil.

Oddly enough, I think you hear this scale quite often in 50s commercial jingles...

spot on - I am still waiting for enough free time to sit and carefully listen to all that stuff you posted before. Experimenting with crazy scales is keen.

Oh yeah right I do sort of remember all this shit it's just been a while.

IN case your wondering, no matter what musical instrument I took lessons in, I always completely sucked at performing on it, but found the theory really easy (much like my capabilities in nearly any subject, from computer science to electrical engineering to...) This does not mean I know as much theory as someone with similar capabilities who took many more years of piano/french horn / whatever, but it does mean I'm far more likely to remember how all the patterns of the standard western scales inter-relate then I am to remember how to get a decent high-register tone out of a slightly old reed and a plastic mouthpiece. (Fuck, if I still had the thing, I'd stick a microphone down it, and use audacity to improve my tone quality. I think my sister, however, now owns the clarinet)

where do you hang out that people talk about music theory so much?

uh, this was when I dropped by the kgb scavenger hunt. I don't know how it happens; they seem to come to me somehow :)