4 ms·

As mentioned in one of the comments, D-E-F is a triad, not a tritone. A tritone is an interval of three whole tones (i.e. an augmented fourth). For instance, C

• meggar 10y ago
  D-E-F isn't that dissonant either, especially if you add an A or Bb
  • recursive 10y ago
    Well, E-F is one semi-tone. That's among the dissonant-est intervals I can think of.
    • meggar 10y ago
      yup, E-F is more dissonant than D-E-F
    • sbuttgereit 10y ago
      Yup. I think the parent to your comment is confusing frequently heard (and thus "accepted") with dissonance. It's not uncommon to hear those notes, even in that order, if the prevalent harmony is a Dm7(9) or Bbmaj7(#11) which aren't rare chord forms, even in popular music. That doesn't make them less dissonant, but merely common-place.
      • bweitzman 10y ago
        I think you could make the argument that more common place actually means less dissonant. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_cluster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_cluster
        • sbuttgereit 10y ago
          I don't agree. Unless you're using "dissonance" in the sense of plain English, there are more precise definitions of the term which have meaning in music. Since the comments in this thread are referring to musical elements such as specific notes, interval relationships, and the contribution of a harmonic context (albeit single chord) I default to the more technical definitions of the term. When I am composing or improvising, I'm thinking of one of two ways (or both) when considering "dissonance": 1) the actual physiological basis of dissonance which has to do with the perception of how the waves of different sounds interfere and are ultimately perceived... an example is when you have two tone sources at the same frequency and one moves gradually to a higher or lower frequency; as they are close, but "out of tune" with each other you can hear a "beating" sound come into place that quickens with increasing distance of frequencies. This changing of interfering waves continues through the point of a single out of tune note becoming an interval between two different notes. Hard dissonances like minor seconds are considered hard because of these frequency relationships. That's probably as good as a definition as I can get there without brushing up on the subject. 2) dissonance as part of a harmonic progression where harmonic structures of relatively greater dissonance resolve to harmonic structures of lesser dissonance. This is in part how we get "V7" chords most favorably resolving to "I" chords, though optionally resolving to "VI", for example. Now the dominant chords are perfectly acceptable and anyone listening to blues, for example, won't hear the dissonant tritone as "objectionable" even when they're never resolved. As for your link, I've written much music using tone clusters (couldn't tell why you referenced it actually) and the kind of tone cluster I'd use depends on the kind of relative dissonance I want and for what purpose. I might start using diatonic sequences of notes (the "white keys" for example) to get a moderately dissonant start, build tension by moving to increasing chromatic (white and black keys, more dissonant) clusters, and then finally release that by going back to diatonic, but perhaps open clusters... if not some triadic constructs. Managing relative dissonance is done using common practice harmony, too, just not with clusters. I think there's an argument that that's what the practice of harmony is really about.
          • bweitzman 10y ago
            From what I've heard about tone clusters, they sort of came about as continuations of the natural progression of more and more intervals to sound pleasant (or at least acceptable) as time has gone by. Tone clusters are like predictions of what will sound acceptable in the future. The more we use certain intervals, the more we like hearing them. I suppose you can view that through two lenses: the intervals sound less dissonant, or our cutoff where we say that a dissonant interval is unacceptable has changed. Though tbh those seem like the same to me.
    • elihu 10y ago
      It's extremely dissonant if the two notes are only a semitone apart, but if you substitute an E an octave up, you get an interval (11 semitones in equal temperament or a 15/8 interval in just intonation) that appears in a major7 chord.
• ttctciyf 10y ago
  "Triad" would be an unusal term, though, for D-E-F, wouldn't it? Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triad_(music) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triad_(music) it appears, outside of "some twentieth-century theorists," the notes of a triad should not be successive within a diatonic scale ("Triads [...] are built by superimposing every other note of a diatonic scale") so that E couldn't be part of a triad which has D and F. That wikipedia page suggests "trichord" would be the right term for a generic set of three notes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichord https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichord)
  • meggar 10y ago
    D-E-F by itself would probably be considered a D minor triad with a 9, and the missing 5th is implied (the 5th would exist as an overtone for most instruments too). that's kind of a stretch though.
• Ericson2314 10y ago
  The Diabolos in Musica is the tritone: their original statement and correction are both wrong. They probably meant B-D-F or something, which contains the tritone. Disappointed in this. Nautilus's biology stuff is quite good, but this is trite. [Then again I know far more about music than biology.]
• phlakaton 10y ago
  Indeed, but not only is it not a tritone, it is (to my knowledge) not "diabolus in musica" either (that's also the tritone). The author noted the original error, but then corrected it incorrectly. :-(
  • Ericson2314 10y ago
    Ya beat me to it. :)