The author did attempt to address this, by complaining that you "aren't really paying attention": * He notes that octaves are common across cultures (per Levit

The author did attempt to address this, by complaining that you "aren't really paying attention": * He notes that octaves are common across cultures (per Levitin, "This is Your Brain On Music") * He asserts that 12 tones represent a practical limit to harmony; more than 12 tones is more complex than the brain can handle in its "note-expectation engine". * He thinks other cultures could be working within his theory, but simply not taking advantage of _all_ of the universal harmonic features that Western music offers. He cites pentatonic scales as an example. * He is baffled by the Nasca Indians of Peru, who apparently form their pitches by linear steps in frequency rather than logarithmic (I won't even attempt to use the word "harmony" in this sense), but he asserts that 1) their tuning system was probably derived because it was mechanically easier to produce a set of pipes to that tuning system, 2) they're a weird case because they were isolated. * To finish that reasoning off, he suggests there's a "musical sophistication" of a culture which develops from linear scales (easy to carve) on the simple end to equal temperament on the sophisticated side (because arbitrary key changes without wolf intervals is the ne plus ultra, right?). So, yeah: I'd say there's some serious cultural narcissism going on. It would be OK if he confined his analysis to Western harmony and simply tried to explain what was going on there, but by trying to derive universal musical principles from barbershop quartets, his project was pretty much doomed from the get-go. :-)