Mad_Wed said
WoW! Cool!

Thanks for explanation, RosinedUp!

But as i told a piece can start and end on dominant or even subdominant (? do You use those terms ?). So how did You know that A is the tonic? Could a piece be at rest when it would reach dominant? 

I don't usually use the terms like 'subdominant' and 'dominant', but it seems that they are just synonyms for the numbers of the scale degrees, in this case 'fourth' and 'fifth'.

I guess it is not always very clear which pitch is the tonic. I look for the pitches that have long notes, the first note (ignoring pickup notes), and the last note, and for the pitch that seems to give resolution, rest, peace, calm, certainty, closure, etc.   Some music (or is it noise?) is not going to have any of that.  So I guess it is subjective.

The main ideas are that: 1) the key signature determines which notes are in the scale, 2) the tonic is the starting and ending note of the scale, and 3) the interval---from the major name of the key signature up to the tonic---determines the mode, as in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.....cale#Modes

So the dominant scale degree (the fifth) is by definition different from the tonic (unison).

See also the clock model in my post of October 4, 2012 regarding the Dorian scale:

https://fiddlerman.com/forum/l.....ian-scale/

Fiddlerman said
Good job RosinedUp

Thanks, Maestro.