There is no "objective" foundation to music.

Mapping twelve letters onto a piano keyboard would then look something like this:

     B D  G I K
    A C EF H J LA

Which means an A major scale in this notation would be ACEFHJLA, which is actually less intuitive than understanding the circle of fifths etc. and arriving at ABC#DEF#G#A (to use this universe's notation)

▲ Groxx 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

To +1 the "no objective foundation": browse music theory research a bit! There's a ton of caveats and poor-sounding fits and whatnot for literally every approach, and there's endless discussion of it. E.g. have a MinutePhysics take on how the common 12 note western scale falls apart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Hqm0dYKUx4

And that's before even getting into completely alternate approaches, or how strongly harmonics affect perception: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAgXpCK_4gA or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ8qZCGg4Bk

(maybe to clarify: there are objective aspects, in that sound is measurable. but there is nothing like a "grand unified theory" that covers all music, nor are roughly any of the popular ones internally consistent - it's far, far too varied for that, and physics often doesn't allow the desired consistency, causing more variety)

▲ newpavlov 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>There is no "objective" foundation to music.

Well, there is a number of "objective" factors which play a significant role. For example, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCsl6ZcY9ag

▲ functionmouse 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In your traditional system, if you want to play something a step up, you have to actually think about it; which notes will now become sharps, which won't, etc.

In my system (A though L, or more simply, 1 through 12), you simply add 2 to each note. It's easier to work about and isn't as rigidly defined by the culture it came from.

	▲	klaff an hour ago \| parent [-]
		You just described https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole-tone_scale. Nothing stopping anyone from writing and playing music in such a scale, but it won't help you with nearly all the music you are likely to be familiar with.