Tonalities

Catalogue of tonalities

The Tonalibus tagline highlights its core: Anchored Harmony and Tonalities. The catalogue of anchored tonalities is the practical side of this. The theoretical part you find in the concepts of harmony, presented mainly in the five-part course series Harmonic and Tonality Fundamentals. Initially the Tonalibus catalogue included around forty tonalities. Since then, the catalogue has expanded to over ninety distinct anchored tonalities with seven, six, five, or in one case (and a progression) merely four pitches per octave.

Harmonically anchored tonalities generally include in their scale both the quint as well as the quart, also known as the perfect fifth and perfect fourth. The quint represents the progressive and the quart the regressive anchor. Further though, there is also a considerable number of tonalities that qualify as harmonically anchored, which include only one or the other of these two pitches, mostly the quint.

Heptatonalities designate seven-tone scales, hexatonalities six-tone scales, and pentatonalities five-tone scales. One exceptional tonality shown with the pentatonalities is a tetratonality with but four pitches to its octave. Beyond the names of the regular diatonic scales, Tonalibus took the liberty to follow its own naming convention. In addition though, also other tonality names in use are shown.

This catalogue presents the following groups of anchored tonalities. Below you find a few visuals presenting an overview of the tonalities included in the catalogue and some of their underlying scale patterns. Further, there is a high level summary of the elements, audio clips, and visuals in the catalogue for each given tonality. Beyond this, Tonalibus presents some tonality progressions, inversions, and derivatives, which are not fully detailed in the catalogue, for example for Core tonalities and the tetratonality progression.

Tonalities in the catalogue and basic scale patterns

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2021-08 – 47y

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2021-11 – 48x

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2023-12 – 49x

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2023-12 – 56x

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 58

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 59

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 64

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 65x

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2023-12 – 67x

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2023-12 – 75

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2023-02 – 79x

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2023-11 – 81

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 88

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 89

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 90

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 91

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 92

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 93y

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 94

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 95

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 96y

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 97

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 98x

Tonalibus 1e-3 tonalities – 2024-01 – 99y

Elements and details in the catalogue

Scale and sound samples

There are several brief audio clips for each tonality in the catalogue. This includes a plain scale, an embellished scale, and one or more sound brief samples. Preferably there is a rhythmic as well as a calm sound sample. Such sound samples are available also as loop on a separate page and tab. Thus, you may use them as sound mantra for contemplation or meditation, for upliftment, focusing, or simply for relaxation and regeneration as soothing background sound when desired.

Harmonic visuals

First the catalogue displays a set of harmonic visuals for each tonality. These display the tonality’s pitch distribution within the octave in two small linear graphs. The pitch step pattern highlights the step sizes relative to the twelve half-tone steps in the octave. The second one presents the position of a tonality’s pitches as interval from the fundamental. For each tonality, the catalogue provides multiple circular representations. These are extensive views of the harmonic properties of a tonality. One of them highlights the individual pitches’ coloring within the octave. Another view displays the interval color distribution, and the harmonic axes if there are any. Then there is one that features the pitches’ relations to primary harmonic anchors. And, if a tonality contains secondary harmonic anchors, each of these is shown on an additional view.

Characteristics

Finally, for each tonality, there is a listing of individual characteristics. This includes a group matrix, name explanation, step pattern, scale intervals, tetrachords, axes, primary and secondary anchors, distinguishing features, etc. To capture harmonic characteristics in words (and different languages) can be quite challenging at times, not to be misunderstood.