| The Oldest Magic Twelve: The Magic Scale Lew Paxton Price The wisewoman was blowing on the top of the pipe. It was like the pipe in a panpipe set but longer, and she had discovered that she could make many sounds with only one pipe if she placed holes in it that could be closed by placing her fingers over them. Her daughter watched the woman experiment with finger patterns over the holes. See how the hole makes the pipe grow shorter?" she asked the girl. She blew on the end and moved her finger up and down over the hole. A warbling sound was coming from the pipe. The girl nodded. But the length it shortens the pipe is different for holes of different sizes," the woman continued, and we must see how the different sizes affect the length." Thus she spent the time between appointments, herb gathering trips, healing treatments, public ceremonies and the many other demands of the wisewoman's life. There was the endless cutting of reeds, the removing of the nodes, the burning and drilling of holes. There was careful analyzing and theorizing as she gathered and assimilated information. She considered theory after theory and either rejected or accepted each. It was to be a painstaking, lifetime task for the wisewoman to develop a new musical instrument. She knew this and also knew that she had started too late in life to complete the task. So she worked with the girl as her mother had worked with her. She knew that, in time, her daughter would become the wisewoman. Her daughter would provide the service that she now provided the community, and would reason in ways in which only wisewomen reasoned. Someday the girl would complete the work that the woman had begun, and a new woman would complete the work she had begun as a girl. A child yet unborn would continue the tradition as it had been continued for many generations. As time passed, the wisewoman and the girl learned that the open-ended flute required almost twice the length of older closed pipe to produce the same tone. Six finger holes and a thumb hole produced the notes of the scale correctly from many starting points. And by overblowing on certain flutes, the correct second octave could be played. Some of their flutes were simply played almost as a panpipe by blowing across and down into them. Later flutes were played by plugging one end and placing another hole in the top; across and into which one could blow. One day the girl made a flute of an almost perfectly formed reed. It was true and even inside and out, and the girl was a fine crafter, so she placed and sized the holes well. When it was time to place the thumbhole, the sound of the flute, playing perfectly in both octaves, proved that no thumbhole was necessary. This flute was tuned to the scale we call the natural major. In this particular scale, the second half-interval of the diatonic scale as we know it falls between the all-holes-open position for the lower octave and the all-holes-closed position for the higher octave. This means that a thumbhole is superfluous except as a device to correct for errors in the flute bore or in hole placements. Thus a flute without errors which is tuned to the natural major scale is a flute that needs no thumbhole. This magickal phenomenon reinforced the wisewoman's old feeling on which note should be the beginning of the musical scale. The lowest note of this magical flute should be the one to be first in the scale. The number of unit lengths for the longest panpipe in the diatonic scale as we know it worked out to be 360 (see article five of this series in vol. 2, no. 1). The number 180 would have sufficed but would not have conformed to the desire of the ancient peoples to use the product of a series of consecutive numbers (3 x 4 x 5 x 6 = 360). Ancients expressed the scale as a circle because, as a circle, the scale continues without end, round and round. It climbs infinitely in pitch when moving one way around and descends infinitely in pitch when moving the other way around. As convention determined that the wanderers" (planets) among the stars move counterclockwise; so, too, convention assigned the counter clockwise direction to the upward, or optimistic, direction of the circular musical scale. And the circle was divided into 360 degrees—partly because 360 is a number convenient for dividing into equal parts (360 can be divided evenly by many numbers), and partly because 360 is the key to the unit length of the diatonic scale. The panpipes of the diatonic natural major scale could be seen to consist of two sets of four pipes each. The lower four pipes were separated by three musical intervals that were apparent to the eye because the pipes varied quite obviously in length. The lowest (longest) and second lowest pipe differed in length a proportionate amount to the difference in length between the second and third lowest pipes. But the difference in length between the third and fourth lowest pipes was only half the other differences. So the three intervals between the four pipes could be said to consist first of a whole interval (length difference), and second another whole interval, and third a mere half interval. The upper four pipes exhibited the same phenomenon or pattern of whole, whole, and half intervals between. There was a whole interval between the highest pipe of the lower four and the lowest pipe of the higher four. Today, in this scale that we still use, we call the notes of both sets of four pipes a tetrachord," meaning four notes." And our diatonic scale is said to consist of two tetrachords, one above and one below, separated by a whole interval. Either the astrologers of the northern megalithic people or the Druids of later times were probably the ones to assign a beginning to the zodiac (meaning zone of the sun or the great light) which corresponded to the beginning of the diatonic natural major scale. These people knew that: the altered states caused by music were similar to the altered states caused by the planetary configurations and placements; the variation due to the astrological mechanism was seasonal, and the fixed stars could be used as references; and a common beginning should exist for both the zodiac and the natural major scale. The northern peoples had, of necessity, to faithfully practice the cycle of planting and harvesting at the correct times each year. The survival and health of the people depended upon knowing when to plow, plant, irrigate and harvest. The year's beginning was when life must be returned to the soil after the blanket of snow had begun to melt. The weather was colder then as the ice from the last ice age had only recently begun to recede. The vernal equinox (midway between the time of the sun's death" and its greatest height) was accepted as the logical time for each new year to begin, as it is the beginning of Spring, the time of plowing and planting. The northern astrologers apparently assigned the beginning note of the natural major scale to the first sign (month) of the new year, the sign following the vernal equinox. Very likely, the precise note for this beginning sign was chosen by deliberate intent and has carried down to this day as the middle" note and standard of our scale. It is middle C, the note children learn first when they begin to play the piano. And it has some strange coincidences" about it that cause one to wonder just how and why it was chosen as the beginning note of the natural major scale, and as the note of Aries—the ram with the golden fleece. 1989 by Lew Paxton Price | 
