I'm not much of a musician, but all the explanations about why the major scale is the way is, or octave equivalence, etc. always sound suspiciously similar to

I'm not much of a musician, but all the explanations about why the major scale is the way is, or octave equivalence, etc. always sound suspiciously similar to the good old "nature abhors a vacuum" [1] to me. I feel like it has much more to do with convention than music theorists like to confess. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horror_vacui_(physics)