I never understood why the system is figured to be based on eight tones instead of seven. Isn’t the eighth tone merely the first one all over again?
I’m not a music expert by any means, but it has to do with frequency and pitch. The human ear can hear a certain frequency range, but pitch sounds the same. For instance, if you strum the E string on a guitar and then strum the A string at the E fret the pitch is the same, but the frequency is different.
I think frequency of sound is measured in 8ths or the power of two. Maybe someone can explain it better.
Well, it probably has to do with the fact that in the East, our “eight tones” (which vary from country to country or even village to village) are actually families of melodies rather than scales, and St. Gregory the Dialogist (St. Gregory the Great for you Westerners) copied the system for the West and made his own set of eight tones which fit Latin words better than the Byzantine system, along with the liturgical rotation in eight week cycles.