The central insight (consonance involves both physical properties of sound and active perceptual pattern recognition) is interesting, but as a musician I see the following issue: the harmonic series can motivate certain local sonorities, but it cannot generate the operative grammar of common-practice Western harmony; the paper recognizes the tuning problem, yet treats it as a regrettable engineering compromise, when it is actually constitutive of the harmonic system it claims to explain.
Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)
61–70 of 122 posts
Re: Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)
#62I read through a lot of this article and it does a good job explaining the ratios and math behind harmonics and how that makes chords, but ideas like lower ratios are more pleasant and minor chords feel like something is missing (from the article "I do not hear the Harmonic Series itself -- something is missing") is just wrong - if it was right, then the happiest music would be entirely octaves. Though it's built on…
Right on. In my experience across different art fields, I’d say the only generalizable facet of ‘good’ art/music/etc is the “it sits just outside of what we expect”. These days I liken it more to the idea of ‘surprise’ in information entropy which denotes an informative signal then to revealing any sort of objective truth.
While I agree that "good" art "sits just outside of what we expect", I must play devil's advocate here and say that the uncanny valley of CGI/AI/... also "sits just outside of what we expect".
So there must be more to it.
Re: Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)
#63I read through a lot of this article and it does a good job explaining the ratios and math behind harmonics and how that makes chords, but ideas like lower ratios are more pleasant and minor chords feel like something is missing (from the article "I do not hear the Harmonic Series itself -- something is missing") is just wrong - if it was right, then the happiest music would be entirely octaves. Though it's built on…
I think you could make a scientific theory of harmony (and perhaps music or even sound more generally) through the physiological lens of human perception. Straying a bit from music, but some sounds are fairly universally unpleasant, so there may be some objective basis for some sounds, and harmonies, being more “pleasurable” than others.
Re: Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
A professor taught us genre is defined by how you resolve dissonance... And dissonance has cultural and physiological components... And other traditions focus on rhythm over harmony... That said this looks like a good introduction.
That's a great line from the professor. Really great. Also, other traditions focus on melody over harmony (e.g. Carnatic and Hindustani), although they have to consider harmony as a by-product of polyphonic music (i.e. more than 1 instrument).
> Also, other traditions focus on melody over harmony
Like Western electronic music written after 1960, for example. :)
(And electronic music is, like, basically all we have today.)
Re: Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)
#65A good overview on the topic. My general issue with things like these is the simple fact, that as a lifelong musician I find the "less worse" harmonic combinations (to quote the abstract) often very boring. Aside from great composers like Bach et al I find the harmonic relationship of the notes played one of the least interesting aspects of the music, and expression, timbre, rhythm, phrasing much more important and n…
Do you have any examples of "a single note for minutes and get it to sound amazing"? I'm finding this difficult to imagine. A lead voice doing this while some accompaniment is changing chords underneath makes sense to me, but then you're back to harmonic relationships.
Chariots of Fire is pretty dope.
Re: Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Half joking, but Berlin techno :) You can have a whole set developing motifs, then multiple minutes of a single note being played in the middle, and somehow that sounds awesome (if you’re into it)
A long hold of one note doesn't mean there isn't harmonic progression. It just means the progression is slow in that part of the song. It's often done to create a massive contrast that occurs when the progression finally...progresses. In electronic music, this often comes as the drop or some similar kind of break.
No, in electronic music harmonic progressions are done by manipulating timbre.
Try it yourself - play one note on repeat and start twirling the cutoff knob.
Re: Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)
#67I read through a lot of this article and it does a good job explaining the ratios and math behind harmonics and how that makes chords, but ideas like lower ratios are more pleasant and minor chords feel like something is missing (from the article "I do not hear the Harmonic Series itself -- something is missing") is just wrong - if it was right, then the happiest music would be entirely octaves. Though it's built on…
I find the major/minor thing so fascinating. I remember it having the "happy"/"sad" vibes from my earliest memories and have a really hard time with the idea that it could be cultural. But if it's not cultural, then why? Also is the fact that major 9ths have a beach/island vibe cultural due to Brazilian jazz? :-)
Is "Take Five" sad-sounding even though it's written in a minor key? Maybe it sounds somewhat "cooler", not as bright as a major key piece of the same tempo and energy would be, but it doesn't sound sad.
Re: Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)
#68I read through a lot of this article and it does a good job explaining the ratios and math behind harmonics and how that makes chords, but ideas like lower ratios are more pleasant and minor chords feel like something is missing (from the article "I do not hear the Harmonic Series itself -- something is missing") is just wrong - if it was right, then the happiest music would be entirely octaves. Though it's built on…
I don't buy that minor being "sad" is all nurture and no nature. No matter what tempo or rhythm you put on it or what instruments you use to play it, it may not sound sad, it may sound dramatic and powerful instead, but it never sounds upbeat and happy the way major does (or at least can).
Re: Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a great line from the professor. Really great. Also, other traditions focus on melody over harmony (e.g. Carnatic and Hindustani), although they have to consider harmony as a by-product of polyphonic music (i.e. more than 1 instrument).
> Also, other traditions focus on melody over harmony Like Western electronic music written after 1960, for example. :) (And electronic music is, like, basically all we have today.)
This is really not true.
Firstly, "western electronic music" covers an enormous range, from still, wall-of-sound ambient to four-on-the-floor EDM to music that sounds like any other but is generated using electronic/digital instruments.
Secondly, I could give you tons of examples of western electronic music that is almost entirely about harmony and not melody. The first one that springs to mind is any of Steve Roach's "immersion" series, or even more so "Mystic Chords and Sacred Spaces". But basically anything that might get played on SomaFM's "Drone Zone" channel is in the same category.
So, I suspect you have a much more specific idea of what you actually meant by "western electronic music", and you should likely lay it out more precisely.
Re: Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right on. In my experience across different art fields, I’d say the only generalizable facet of ‘good’ art/music/etc is the “it sits just outside of what we expect”. These days I liken it more to the idea of ‘surprise’ in information entropy which denotes an informative signal then to revealing any sort of objective truth.
While I agree that "good" art "sits just outside of what we expect", I must play devil's advocate here and say that the uncanny valley of CGI/AI/... also "sits just outside of what we expect". So there must be more to it.
Eh, turning that uncanny valley to 11 can be an artform in itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGIvO4eh190