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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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tiompan
tiompan
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Re: Significance
Mar 29, 2006, 09:13
"When music is harmonious it's because the individual notes have synchronous relationships - the wavelengths are related by the ratios of small integers. The less correlated these ratios become, the more discordant the music sounds. Even cultures that have different musical scales from our own still embrace the overall concepts of harmony, so it's fairly clear that there must be some fundamental preference within the human brain for harmony rather than discord."


Steve , sorry to be a wee bit off topic and probably pedantic but the harmonic series which gave birth to the major scale is not quite as smooth as you suggest . To be very dull the 5th harmonic which gives us the major third is slightly sharper than the natural third and the 7 th harmonic is quite a bit sharper . Roger Sessions who was opposed to the hard wired view said "physics and music are different spheres that touch at certain moments" .Some of the worlds most intricate and beautiful music has no harmony and utilises scales that show no synchronous relationships i.e. the notes would not form "harmonious" chords to unsophisticated ears but would be perfectly normal in 20th C "serious " music and the melodies minus harmony would be perfectly melodic if a little strange to western ears.
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