The Change Events/transpose Funtion In Reason, what is a semitone Options

[mellotron]

i just started using reason about 2 months ago... is there is anyone who uses reason and can tell me what a semitone is. when you go to the change events window and use the transpose function, how much is that changing the events you have selected? is it by a whole step or half step?

[Levon River]

mellotron: We've started wandering into the poppy-fields of music theory now, and I just wanted to make sure your question actually got fully answered in the context in which you asked it. Ghess's first and original reply to you was correct, and is probably all you need to know for the purposes you were asking about.

If you want to learn more about music theory, there are many basic books and even free on-line dissertations on the subject. When you want to bite off a little more of the subject, my bibles are the Harvard Dictionary of Music and Walter Piston's "Harmony."

What ghess is talking about, enharmonics, are the different names for notes. You run into those when you start writing or arranging or analyzing music in different keys, where a certain note has to be named a certain way to reflect the correct interval (distance between notes) in order to keep the scale orthodox. That's when the key you look at and think about as "C" on the keyboard might need to be called and thought of as "B#." It sounds just the same when you strike it, though. At least on a keyboard....

And what *I* was talking about when I said "only to a keyboardist" is the fact that a violin player--not encumbered by frets, keyboard keys, or "tempered tuning"--will often play a "C" in, e.g., a C-major key, slightly differently than he would play a "B#" in , e.g., the key of C#--even though on a piano or other keyboard, they would be the same keyboard key, and would produce precisely the same sound.

Hope that makes some sense.