music theory

Well you've settled into these scales by listening to music, and that gives you a premonition of how things "should" go in terms of melody and harmony. This is what gives different scales (lydican, arabic etc.) their special qualities, we instantly connect them to a certain kind of cultural background or a feeling in our heads. If you'd never heard music before that off note wouldn't sound that much off I guess. Just like in the early days of orchestral music, the tunings were so different that the scales were practically different to our modern ones, still the people regarded them as normal.

There's a whole lot more to it, but it's scientific research stuff and I'm not really up to date with it.
 
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So it's learnt? Does that mean if you raised a baby on an isolated island to listen to atrocious scales it would find beautiful ones jarring?

I assumed there was something absolute or mathematical about what we find acceptable or pleasing in harmonies...
 
So it's learnt? Does that mean if you raised a baby on an isolated island to listen to atrocious scales it would find beautiful ones jarring?

I assumed there was something absolute or mathematical about what we find acceptable or pleasing in harmonies...

I think it's a bit of both as everything is. After all there are a lot of scales from different cultural environments that the average western ear can't really appriceate. That suggests it's learnt, but then again the notes in chords do resonate in specific frequencies that are in a constant ratio to each other - 4:5:6 a major chord for example - so that does suggest it's 'definite' or 'mathematical'.
 
So it's learnt? Does that mean if you raised a baby on an isolated island to listen to atrocious scales it would find beautiful ones jarring?

I'm carrying out a bit of research into this :) My son is 8 months old, and is in a very musical environment (even when in the womb). I listen to a lot of dnb, and I play dnb drums (an electric kit) at home, so he's heard tons of that too. My wife sings in a choir doing classical church stuff like Bach and Mozart.

I've seen him react very positively to choir and opera music on tv, especially with solo soprano (like my wife). He'll stop and listen if I play guitar. He doesn't seem to pay any attention to dnb when I put it on, or when I do some drum practice, but he definitely likes those major scale nursery rhymes (we don't play these often, but even totally new ones get a good response). His favorite song is the Can-Can :) that never fails to make him laugh :) I discovered this quite by accident when I was humming the soundtrack to Lemmings one day hehe

Im guessing that the major scale tunes are actually quite basic and easy to understand, and that rhythmic stuff comes later. Maybe I should try some techno. Also I think there's something with the tones and instruments used. Recognising voices is definitely hardwired into the brain, so anything thats sung gets a good reaction. Also, most nursery rhyme stuff is very pure, simple or sharp tones which I think help with pitch detection. Playing the same things on flute doesn't cause much of a reaction.
 
nursery rhymes normally dont exceed 3 chords, start and end on the same one and have a good rhythm, the most basic and easiest thing you could call a "chord progression" haha ^^
 
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