So many reasons!!drivebycommenter wrote: For me, personally, the conventions in music theory are even more retarded than the qwerty layout. The twelve-tone equal temperament's good, but why the fuck do we still have to separate it into white and black keys, sharps and flats. Just fuck it away and go with octave/tone numbering. 0/158 or a 0/1-major, for all I care. Just make it a bit more consistent.
But I know it's about as likely as everyone on the planet spontaneously switching to a more sane kbd layout - there's too much inertia and investment. Bloody hell...
First of all, you're confusing the scale in general with the piano (roll / keyboard). Scales don't have black keys and white keys, if you're playing the flute, you have wholes, if you're playing the violin, you have strings. The reason the piano roll is so much used in electronic music is because the first hardware synths were controlled with piano rolls.
Furthermore, it's layout makes it really easy to identify the notes, so you know where you are. If you only had white keys, it would be hard to know where middle C is. Apart from that, it's the time that perfected it and pianists and keyboardists know it so well; it's way easier to play chords and songs because the layout somewhow compacts the notes (the interleaved ones) so you don't have to stretch your fingers so much - in other words, you have a span of 7 keys to play 2 notes an octave apart (the white keys), which is easy and most people can span their fingers like that.
Now... about the shaprs and the flats - this one has to do with the score. You have 5 lines, and on those lines you can put C Major / A Minor scale (i.e. the white keys, but remember that the score came before the piano keyboard, so it's kinda the other way around). I don't know all of its history, but I think it has to do with early church music and musical modes (when they only used A B C D E F G, no sharps or flats). When sharps and flats were discovered, effectively creating the standard western tuning, the score was adpated to what was already known.
So many musicians and composers use it + it passed the test of time.
HOWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEVEEEEEEER!!
In most DAWs you can set up your note names / key names. If you want to invent a new naming system, you can do it.
The tuning system used in western music isn't the only system, it's just the most common to western musicians. You can google about this and see how many alternatives you have.