scale step, scale and chords as classes

(A way to look at music theory for people who are familiar with object-oriented programming or pattern language.)

A scale step, a scale and a chord can each be seen as an instance of a class.

the class ScaleStep

• the class ScaleStep has one attribute: frequency

the class Scale

• the class Scale takes one argument: a frequency
• the class has seven attributes: one for each step in the scale
  • each attribute is an instance of class ScaleStep
  • each attribute is defined in relation to the base frequency

the class ChordScale

• the class ChordScale takes one argument: a frequency
• the class' first attribute ('this_scale') is an instance of class Scale, which is instantiated with this frequency
• the class has six more attributes: one for each chord in the scale
  • each attribute is defined as a set of three particular attributes of 'this_scale'
  • for example: the attribute 'three_chord' is composed of
    • this_scale.step_three
    • this_scale.step_five
    • this_step.step_seven