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They compared people's subjective judgements of consonances tuned to perfect ratios to ones slightly off from those ratios and found they preferred the latter.
by omnicognate 3y ago
They compared people's subjective judgements of consonances tuned to perfect ratios to ones slightly off from those ratios and found they preferred the latter.
A) Most people wouldn't be able to tune an instrument like what you describe accurately enough to contradict the result. Practically all the intervals would be slightly off, and
B) The result really does contradict Pythagoras, who postulated that musical beauty arose from the mathematical perfection of those ratios. Contradicting Pythagoras in this is, of course, hardly new. More interesting is the idea that there may be entirely new forms of naturally appealing harmony out there to explore.
- anigbrowl 3y agoI disagree with B. People like slightly detuned oscillators because it makes the sound thicker and bigger. But they like slight detuning around the mathematically perfect ratio. The imperfection emphasizes the ratio in the brain's auditory processing. This is why many subtractive synthesizers have a detune parameter, to slightly offset oscillators that are nominally tuned to the same frequency. Chorus, phasers, and flangers are similarly used to add texture and color to sounds by using slight frequency or phase delays to create interference signals that make the sound 'move' and make it sound larger and more distinct.
- dr_dshiv 3y agoIt’s like the “humanize” button on drum machines that will make the rhythms slightly off. We still like the small integer relations of the drum beats but when they are a bit off, they sound warmer and more human.
- zigzag312 3y agoI agree. We don't have only one preference. When slightly detuned, it's so close to the perfect ratio that it still satisfies our preference for perfect ratios, and it also fills more of the frequency spectrum (which is another thing we like).