3 ms·
My co-worker's office phone is a real tritone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone). Considering that her desk is right
by cardamomo 13y ago
My co-worker's office phone is a real tritone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritone). Considering that her desk is right next to mine, I find it incredibly jarring to hear that interval blaring in my ear whenever she gets a call.
...but in the end, I think you're right. I've been trained by Western music to think of the tritone as anxious or dissonant.
- widdershins 13y agoYour anxiety at the tritone is not just a culturally learned response - as the Wikipedia article you linked explains, the harmonic ratios in a tritone really are mathematically 'dissonant' when compared to, say, a perfect fifth or major third.
- cardamomo 13y agoA mathematical explanation of consonance and dissonance in music is appealing for its simplicity, but it is somewhat of a reductionist approach to understanding listeners' experience of music. There are many elements of the European musical tradition that, though they sound consonant to our ears, cannot be explained on mathematical grounds. The minor mode and the minor triad are notable examples. A more subtle and insidious case is that of equal temperament. Background reading: "Musical Consonance and Dissonance: A Cultural Criterion" (http://www.jstor.org/stable/426253 http://www.jstor.org/stable/426253)