the symbolic meaning (or lack of ) in aesthetics

[swears]

chris: I would say it's a bit of both. The old "nature and nurture" chestnut. Each reinforcing the other, but to what degree? It's hard to pin down.

 

[Edward]

he childish taunt Na, Na, Na Nah Nar...

do they have that in other countries? WICKED!!

i think basically 4ths, 5ths and octaves are pretty universal cos the ratios are so simple humans can't help but notice them and find them pleasing.

But the rest of the notes tend to move around from culture to culture, so you get different scales in china, bali etc.

There are also lots of different "western" tunings that are VERY close to each other but different.

All this stuff is worth investingating if you make music....

My sampler's got settings for different tunings which are quite interesting to compare.

 

[Edward]

wow lots of posts appeared while i was typing that.....

 

[IdleRich]

"hence there being almost a "science" to making dance-floor functional music, being able to engineer music that creates particular responses in the crowd..."

I remember reading a couple of years ago that someone had built or patented a machine that was incredibly successful in predicting (retrospectively) which tracks would be popular and thus hits. The point being that in the future people would design songs that the machine "liked" and which would thus have a much higher probability of being hits and making money. Presumably this machine would have to be programmed (or taught) with different parameters in different cultures but it certainly seemed to imply that there really was (or could be) a science to designing functional hits - and by extension dance-floor music or whatever type of music you taught the machine to like.
I found this both interesting and depressing but since then I've not heard anything more about it so maybe it never lived up to its promise - or maybe it's behind the scenes orchestrating exactly what's on the radio every day.

 

[Martin Dust]

I remember reading a couple of years ago that someone had built or patented a machine that was incredibly successful in predicting (retrospectively) which tracks would be popular and thus hits. The point being that in the future people would design songs that the machine "liked" and which would thus have a much higher probability of being hits and making money. Presumably this machine would have to be programmed (or taught) with different parameters in different cultures but it certainly seemed to imply that there really was (or could be) a science to designing functional hits - and by extension dance-floor music or whatever type of music you taught the machine to like.
I found this both interesting and depressing but since then I've not heard anything more about it so maybe it never lived up to its promise - or maybe it's behind the scenes orchestrating exactly what's on the radio every day.

SAW broke the bloody thing

 

[Martin Dust]

do they have that in other countries? WICKED!!

They do

i think basically 4ths, 5ths and octaves are pretty universal cos the ratios are so simple humans can't help but notice them and find them pleasing.

But the rest of the notes tend to move around from culture to culture, so you get different scales in china, bali etc.

There are also lots of different "western" tunings that are VERY close to each other but different.

All this stuff is worth investingating if you make music....

My sampler's got settings for different tunings which are quite interesting to compare.

For sure, it's amazing how hard it is to get a hold of different scales, it's like trying to drive with your feet.

 

[Edward]

What do YOU use to press the pedals with?

 

[Chris]

Yeah... modes/tunings are interesting.

To my western ears, the major and minor scales seem to be THE basic scales, and the other modes sound like exotic abstractions of them... but I wonder... do the major/minor scales sound spicy and exotic in cultures not familiar with them, or rather just plain and flavorless?

And... would one of the foreign modes that sounds exotic to us, have the same effect on the people of it's cultural origin that the major/minor scales has on us? Or do these modes genuinly have a more ambiguous emotional quality than just happy/sad, a more refined and nuanced flavor, which while commonplace and ordinary in it's country, is also appreciated on another level for it's quality in a way that us westerners are missing out on... like a cuisine that Americans who rarely go beyond hamburgers and hot dogs will never experience, or appreciate if they did?



And on that note, I'm off to Sequoia early in the morning to hike the redwoods... see ya'll in a few days...

 

[borderpolice]

The third is in the middle, it is the content, it is the bridge, the support, etc. When the third is major, it's higher, the chord is erect, positive, fuller, it "has". In a minor chord, the third is lower, it is empty (at least seemingly in relation to it's lack of an overt major third), negative, it "doesn't have", or "has less".

an immediate problem with this is that it doesn't account for inverted chords: Eg an inverted major cord with the third on the bottom still sounds major and a minor chord with the third on top still minor.

 

[borderpolice]

if you're interested the ratios are: major chord - 4:5:6 minor chord - 10:12:15

Well, with our western equal temprament, the actual ratios are much much more complicated! The above ratios are only approximated. But we (westerners) seem able to ignore equal temprament's being out of tune.

Another problem is that if simplicity was the only factor, pure octaves or power chords should sound even happier. But they don't, they sound somehow empty.

You also find that lots of music does not use major chords or V->I resolution, because it sounds bad.

I think one possible reason for the prevalence of simple ratios is that the are easier to sing in tune. for most of human history, music was vocal only (+ maybe some drumming).

 

[borderpolice]

Of course it's a cultural thing whether you prefer listening to fourths or fifths or whatever, for example flattened fifths used to be against the law in Europe because they were considered satanic.....

I'm not sure they were against the (state) law, just against (catholic) church laws. and that church used to be the dominant employer of musicians.

 

[vimothy]

i think basically 4ths, 5ths and octaves are pretty universal cos the ratios are so simple humans can't help but notice them and find them pleasing.

But the rest of the notes tend to move around from culture to culture, so you get different scales in china, bali etc.

They're (1st, 4th, 5th) actually the only "proper" notes in the western scale, everything else is an approximation (known as equal temperament).

Check out La Monte Young for something different.

 

[borderpolice]

And regarding old church hymns... maybe they actually are effectively solemn and serious sounding, based on mathmatic harmonic rules, the slowness that they are played, etc...

One of the reasons that (european as opposed to african) religious music is more on the slow and solemn side is probably to do with the architecture of places of worship: european churches were big buildings with loads and loads of reverb. Music was essentially only made by singing. add the two and you get a slow a droney sound.

African religious ceremonies were more open air affairs, due to obvious climatic reasons. and drums were used extensively together with singing ...

 

[borderpolice]

My sampler's got settings for different tunings which are quite interesting to compare.

Logic Audio (and presumably other programs like it) offers loads of tunings. You can also define your own. All my tunes sound horrible in most other tunings.

 

[borderpolice]

They're (1st, 4th, 5th) actually the only "proper" notes in the western scale, everything else is an approximation (known as equal temperament).

No, only the octave is in tune in equal temprament, everything else is out of tune, including 4th and 5th. mathematically this is easy to see because E.T. proceeds by 12th-root-of-2 steps, which is an irrational number. and you cannot get rational fractions such as 4th and 5th from irrationals.

The approximation of the 5th is fairly good though, which is also the key reason why the octave is split up into 12 semitones: if you want a better approximation you have to go to something crazy like splitting it into 44 or some number like that which would make pianos much harder to construct/play.

 

[borderpolice]

Yeah... modes/tunings are interesting.

To my western ears, the major and minor scales seem to be THE basic scales,

There are various minor scales. Harmonic minor sound fairly arabic to my ears.

I really don't like the major scale. Sounds way cheesy and classical. I never use it. i think it is rarely used in pop music. Instead modes like (mixo)lydian and so on dominate. And of course the blues scale, hugely influential.

Basically, in the first part of the 20th century, the conventional western classical scales have been generalised and displaced by the chord constructions that come from jazz (and not by atonal, 12tone, serialist stuff as classical musicians expected).

 

[nomadologist]

If it was sped up and played on massively distorted guitars with guttural death metal vocals on top, would the "churchy" evocation remain?

yes. being haunted by my mother's own severely roman catholic upbringing, i'll say that death metal often evokes "church" for me, the sacrosanct,etc

 

[dHarry]

It's more fun to compute

This is an endlessly fascinating subject!

An interesting project a couple of years ago (probably still ongoing) involved a computer-controlled piano which played a programmed aggregate of analyses of top concert pianists' performances. IIRC, in a blind test with human performances, classical music scholars often pronounced the computer to be the more superior, sensitive, emotive, etc. player!

Given the relative lack of complex musicality and the emphasis on changing parameters, intensity, etc and mathematically predictable rhythmic elements, surely computer-composed techno/minimal is possible by now, or even being done by some Eno-esque type?

Gek's Eleanor Rigby point is very pertinent also and points out how people often miss the wood for the trees - you don't need a very sophisticated technical musical analysis of Eleanor Rigby to hear how it sounds musically "churchy", and of course it's also played solemnly by a string quartet - hardly rock and bleedin' roll is it?! So it has not only churchy but also classical (what they used to call art music) associations with the attendant baggage of emotional depth, seriousness, etc.

Re - the satanic banned flattened fifth - Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath!

 

[Edward]

Well, with our western equal temprament, the actual ratios are much much more complicated! The above ratios are only approximated. But we (westerners) seem able to ignore equal temprament's being out of tune.

You're right when we're talking about pianos and computers, but not many people can sing in tune with no vibrato within the limits we are talking about, or find notes on violins/trombones that accurately.

It's interesting to play chords on a digital (ie highly in-tune) synth and swap between equal-tempered and just intonation, the pure harmonies sound so perfect and affterward you can really hear the beating in the equal-tempered version.

Another problem is that if simplicity was the only factor, pure octaves or power chords should sound even happier. But they don't, they sound somehow empty.

I wasn't suggesting that the simpler the ratio, the "happier" the music, I was just explaining that certain intervals can be recognised universally because of the simple physical relationships between the waves - ie that an octave is the same the world over. Obviously you know this already but some readers might not.
I wouldn't presume to judge what sounds happy and what sounds sad etc.

Instead modes like (mixo)lydian and so on dominate. And of course the blues scale, hugely influential.

This reminds me of watching Rock School in the 80s

OK I'm off to the music forum....

 

[borderpolice]

Given the relative lack of complex musicality and the emphasis on changing parameters, intensity, etc and mathematically predictable rhythmic elements, surely computer-composed techno/minimal is possible by now, or even being done by some Eno-esque type?

there are various automatic composition systems, they can sometimes do some quite convincing stuff in well-established genres. Here is an example. I'm sure it can be tweaked to do minimal techno.