Re: Even More out of tune

[Douglas Baldwin <coyotelk@optonline.net>]

It's a floor wax! It's a dessert topping!
    Yo, my fellow scholar dudes and dudettes;
    Diatonic comes from "dia" (across) and "tonic" (tone or note) and 
refers
to all the note combinations in a given group of notes. One may state with
assurance that an F9 chord is not diatonic to E harmonic minor; or that
D#dim7 IS diatonic to E harmonic minor. If you were Dicky Betts, soloing in
your classic Dicky Betts hexatonic major scale, the major seventh would be
non-diatonic. The equation of "diatonic" with "major" (and all of its 
modes)
has come about because so many people use the term to refer ONLY to the
major tonality. If this exclusive use continues, I will bow to popular
pressure, but until then you're gonna have to pry the broader use of
"diatonic" from my stiff, dead fingers.
Douglas Baldwin, coyote-at-large
coyotelk@optonline.net