3 ms·
If you are interested in how music works, I recommend to read this paper about music theory from physics point of view: http://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1/ http
by monort 12y ago
If you are interested in how music works, I recommend to read this paper about music theory from physics point of view:
http://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1/ http://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1/
- ewoodrich 12y agoMusic "theory" as we find in books today contains none of the properties of a modern theory that we find satisfying ... We are sometimes told for example that the Major Scale comes from the Ancient Greeks. We are sometimes told it is arbitrary and it only sounds good because we have heard it since childhood. There are some very interesting portions of that paper, but I really wish the author would focus on the science and omit the jabs at what he considers "music theory". He's correct that music education doesn't typically start with Pythagoras, but should it? It would be almost impossible from this paper to aurally appreciate his points about intervals, tonal variety and intonation schemes without having a fairly broad knowledge of harmony already. It's certainly interesting, but it does not provide a framework that can reliably reproduce the characteristics of music he describes, which is the bulk of theory and harmonic analysis. EDIT: I don't think it needs to be portrayed as competing with existing theory -- it's something that has been extensively studied and dovetails well with the history of scales and harmony.
- nitrogen 12y agoI've noticed that intervals whose beat frequency is a subharmonic of one of the notes in the interval, or a subharmonic of a small integer multiple of one of the notes, are particularly consonant. Is there any discussion of beat frequencies in that paper?
- ewoodrich 12y agoThere's some discussion here: http://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1/#sec_5_1_0 http://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1/#sec_5_1_0