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Dissonant tones sound fine to people not raised on Western music

arstechnica.com

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Re: Dissonant tones sound fine to people not raised on Western music

#21

Post by JoeAltmaier »

stephengillie wrote: post #20
SuperPaintMan wrote: post #15

This pops up in abstracted painting as well, colours (more specfically the feelings/emotions we ascribe to a particular combunations) are entirely created due our cultural context. The greatest example of this is the colour of death, Black for western contries, White for eastern. Western fine art is more formulaic in it's creation, due to training using colour wheels (complementary across, traidic and other geometric…

Having grown up near Seattle, how does the color black represent death? To me, it has always represented either nothingness, like the void of Space, or opting out of an aesthetic choice - I don't know what color car I want to drive, so I'll just get a black one.

Try this: what color is death to you?

Re: Dissonant tones sound fine to people not raised on Western music

#22

Post by Sylos »

I would be interested in their reaction to two notes being played which are just slightly out of tune.

Because it definitely seems like something which can be trained - professional musicians often have a pain-like reaction to it, while your Average Joe just notices that it sounds bad.

But at the same time, your Average Joe still notices that it sounds bad, and yeah, just like with dissonances, it's hard to imagine someone who doesn't.

Personally I do think that they would dislike it, because I have this theory, which is somewhat similar to / a generalization of the Uncanny Valley theory [0]. That theory is that we fundamentally dislike anything which is not similar enough to something else to be perceived as the same thing, but neither different enough from it to be clearly distinguishable as something different.

So, no matter if that's two tones which are slightly out of tune, a painting with bright blue right next to baby blue, a shadow in the dark, or rice with noodles.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

Re: Dissonant tones sound fine to people not raised on Western music

#24

Post by gardano »

Sylos wrote: post #22

I would be interested in their reaction to two notes being played which are just slightly out of tune. Because it definitely seems like something which can be trained - professional musicians often have a pain-like reaction to it, while your Average Joe just notices that it sounds bad. But at the same time, your Average Joe still notices that it sounds bad, and yeah, just like with dissonances, it's hard to imagine s…

Take a gander at an actual 17th century composer playing with that idea in a most audacious way [0]. The section of the piece I'm referring to begins around 3:26.

The idea seems to be, keys that are foreign to the piece should sound dissonant.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbrrMtWICs4

Re: Dissonant tones sound fine to people not raised on Western music

#25

Post by hellofunk »

The irony is that the Western concept of something that is "in tune" is actually dissonant to the same Western cultures of the past. Well-tempered tuning has only been around since Bach's time. Our music today would not sound right to those during or before his time, in general.

Re: Dissonant tones sound fine to people not raised on Western music

#27

Post by EliRivers »

stephengillie wrote: post #20
SuperPaintMan wrote: post #15

This pops up in abstracted painting as well, colours (more specfically the feelings/emotions we ascribe to a particular combunations) are entirely created due our cultural context. The greatest example of this is the colour of death, Black for western contries, White for eastern. Western fine art is more formulaic in it's creation, due to training using colour wheels (complementary across, traidic and other geometric…

Having grown up near Seattle, how does the color black represent death? To me, it has always represented either nothingness, like the void of Space, or opting out of an aesthetic choice - I don't know what color car I want to drive, so I'll just get a black one.

Man who runs a funeral business books his hearse in to have the paintwork redone. What colour is it?

Woman gets dressed to go to a funeral. What colour dress does she pick out?

In large parts of the west, these questions have one answer.

Re: Dissonant tones sound fine to people not raised on Western music

#30

Post by OscarCunningham »

SuperPaintMan wrote: post #15

This pops up in abstracted painting as well, colours (more specfically the feelings/emotions we ascribe to a particular combunations) are entirely created due our cultural context. The greatest example of this is the colour of death, Black for western contries, White for eastern. Western fine art is more formulaic in it's creation, due to training using colour wheels (complementary across, traidic and other geometric…

A difference of x Hz produces a beat at 30x BPM. So notes at 440Hz and 443Hz (a difference of 11.8 cents) would produce a 90BPM tempo. But at higher frequencies the same increase in Hz corresponds to a smaller number of cents: 4400Hz to 4403Hz would be 1.18 cents.
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