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[BonsaiK]

Hey. You mentioned on the "Why are the Beatles so popular" thread that beauty in music is completely 100% subjective. This goes against my understanding that there are some basic mathematical principles inherint to "good" music, in regards to pleasing harmonic ratios, rhythms, etc.

I know you're going to show me 20th century music and show me how it just completely rips apart everything that was once considered pleasing in music. Pieces composed entirely of dissonances, pieces without meter. This music has always struck me as a rebellion against traditional form and structure, trying to see where music can go, but even these rebellions always keep as a frame of reference those classic musical beauties, even if just in order to try and get away from them.

This very frame of reference that the 20th century composers try to escape from strikes me as evidence that there really is at least some basic intuitive understanding of what is beautiful in music, what is not. This intuitive understanding of what is beautiful in music can be empirically shown to atleast roughly coresponds with objective and mathematical principles.

Without a specific question being asked from you, I assume what you want here is for me to attempt to "prove you wrong" or something like that.

However, you're actually not wrong. All music is based on objective mathematical principles to do with vibration of molecules, this is absolutely 100% correct.

However, there's a catch. How the brain interprets those vibrations and their related mathematical principles changes between one person and the next, because everyone's ears and everyone's brain is a little bit different. It also changes between one group of people/culture and the next. I don't have time to go into detail about this now, but I will later, if you want. And I'll do it without talking about any 20th or 21st century music or musicians at all, I promise.

I would very much appreciate that.

Okay, so here we go, I've got about 20 minutes, let's see how many words I can spit out in that time. I know I've told this anecdote somewhere before on this forum, perhaps earlier in this thread, or maybe in another thread but anyway, it fits, and I can't find it, so here goes:

Many years ago, there was an anthropologist who liked classical music. He decided that he was going to introduce the natives of the Amazon to the beauty of Mozart and Beethoven. So he got one of the world's first portable music playback devices (I think it worked on wax cylinders, which he had to store very carefully so they didn't get corrupted in the heat of the jungle) and trekked out into the jungle. Eventually he found this particular tribe and he set up his device to play some classical recording, I'm not sure what it was, Beethoven's 5th or something similar. Anyway, the tribe eagerly sat around while he set up the device. Then the device started playing back the music, and when this happened the tribe screamed and ran away.

The anthropologist stopped the device. It then took a fair bit of coaxing to get the natives to come out from behind the trees and talk to him again. When they finally did, he asked them what was wrong and it gradually became clear that they thought his playback device was a portal to hell and that they had just heard the sound of the devil.

The reason why they didn't have the typical western reaction to western music was because, where was their reference point? Sure, the music may be mathematically "harmonious" but if your brain isn't trained to hear and understand "mathematical harmony" as a pleasing thing then the noises suddenly have no context. Current western music tastes are something that has evolved through time, with various practices falling in and out of favour, none necessarily more harmonious than the next.

Another anthropological example - the western musical scale, as you probably know, is logarithmic - each successive octave note is twice the vibration of the octave below, so one A is 440Hz (Hz = Hertz, which is a mesurement of vibration, so 440 vibrations per second - I know you know this, just thought I'd throw that in for other readers) the next one up is 880Hz, then 1720Hz, 3440Hz, etc. Therefore, our ears hear logarithmically and each semitone as you go up the scale has a greater distance in Hz than the one before it. But guess what? People who aren't brought up in the western music tradition don't hear this way. Studying the music and chants of a partiocular tribe of Australian aboriginies who had very limited exposure to western music, ethnomusicologists found out something unprecedented - their perception of music wasn't logaritmic, it was "additive". So their scale would go 400Hz, 450Hz, 500Hz, 550Hz etc (migth not have been 50Hz exactly, just using as an example)... the same vibration amount would get added on eith each new note. Their ears had been culturally trained to hear additive intervals, not logarithmic ones. Did this tribe think western music was a pile of shit? No, but they sure heard it differently. If western ears hear an additive scale, progressing downward (as all the tribal music from this trible had melodies that went from the highest note to the lowerst one), the notes start off with very little difference between them, and as you get lower and lower, the differences become greater (like gravity making an object fall) as easch sucessive step downward occupies in equal Hz represents a greater pitch distance. But when they sing their own scales, they didn't perceive this increase in pitch difference as the notes went downward. Why? Because that's not how their brain was trained to hear it. As far as they were concerned, such a difference didn't exist and each step was equal.

Nobody processes music in a vaccuum, everyone filters sound through prior learning, their brain makeup and cultural experience. That's why some people are tone deaf and others have perfect pitch, it's also why some people find Slayer is a good release of tension but other people find it aggravating.

I also want to personally thank you for starting this thread, even though I probably haven't asked the best questions it's been a very interesting and informing read, and entertaining considering I read most of it while sitting in the hospital bored out of my mind.

Glad I'm giving you something to do in there. I'll try to think of you and type as much as I possibly can, seeing as you've got time on your hands...

 

[Ham_authority95]

Do you know anything about Micro-tonality? If so, could you tell us "the basics" about the concept and about what music uses it? I ask this because I was reading the above post about the "450 Hz, 500 Hz, 550 Hz," system and that sounded like pretty small intervals...

On a different note, I love this thread and thank you for making it. No class in school would have covered this many subjects at once.

 

[Chefodeath]

Another anthropological example - the western musical scale, as you probably know, is logarithmic - each successive octave note is twice the vibration of the octave below, so one A is 440Hz (Hz = Hertz, which is a mesurement of vibration, so 440 vibrations per second - I know you know this, just thought I'd throw that in for other readers) the next one up is 880Hz, then 1720Hz, 3440Hz, etc. Therefore, our ears hear logarithmically and each semitone as you go up the scale has a greater distance in Hz than the one before it. But guess what? People who aren't brought up in the western music tradition don't hear this way. Studying the music and chants of a partiocular tribe of Australian aboriginies who had very limited exposure to western music, ethnomusicologists found out something unprecedented - their perception of music wasn't logaritmic, it was "additive". So their scale would go 400Hz, 450Hz, 500Hz, 550Hz etc (migth not have been 50Hz exactly, just using as an example)... the same vibration amount would get added on eith each new note. Their ears had been culturally trained to hear additive intervals, not logarithmic ones. Did this tribe think western music was a pile of shit? No, but they sure heard it differently. If western ears hear an additive scale, progressing downward (as all the tribal music from this trible had melodies that went from the highest note to the lowerst one), the notes start off with very little difference between them, and as you get lower and lower, the differences become greater (like gravity making an object fall) as easch sucessive step downward occupies in equal Hz represents a greater pitch distance. But when they sing their own scales, they didn't perceive this increase in pitch difference as the notes went downward. Why? Because that's not how their brain was trained to hear it. As far as they were concerned, such a difference didn't exist and each step was equal.

What a strange system, I wonder what it sounds like.

Anyway, I acknowledge just how much of music understanding is culturally grounded, frame of reference etc. but I still don't want to give you that 100% label. I think there is still some basic cross-cultural principles inherint to music no matter who you ask. How we react to them might be changes, but there are still those basic principles. A 5th will always have some pull to its tonal center, maybe not the extra oomph provided by the leading tone, but still that naturally draw.

I have another question I thought I'd pose about popular music. How did the guitar become so prominent I wonder. I mean, the violin was the shit in both classical and folk music, still is, so one would think it would naturally lend itself to newer musics like jazz, blues, and rock. Violin has some chordal ability, and it seems a natural fit to fill the role that the lead guitar does now. It is able to do acoustically what a guitar needs to be amplified to accomplish, I.E. sustained notes, variety in timbre, fancy embellishments etc.

 

[BonsaiK]

Another anthropological example - the western musical scale, as you probably know, is logarithmic - each successive octave note is twice the vibration of the octave below, so one A is 440Hz (Hz = Hertz, which is a mesurement of vibration, so 440 vibrations per second - I know you know this, just thought I'd throw that in for other readers) the next one up is 880Hz, then 1720Hz, 3440Hz, etc. Therefore, our ears hear logarithmically and each semitone as you go up the scale has a greater distance in Hz than the one before it. But guess what? People who aren't brought up in the western music tradition don't hear this way. Studying the music and chants of a partiocular tribe of Australian aboriginies who had very limited exposure to western music, ethnomusicologists found out something unprecedented - their perception of music wasn't logaritmic, it was "additive". So their scale would go 400Hz, 450Hz, 500Hz, 550Hz etc (migth not have been 50Hz exactly, just using as an example)... the same vibration amount would get added on eith each new note. Their ears had been culturally trained to hear additive intervals, not logarithmic ones. Did this tribe think western music was a pile of shit? No, but they sure heard it differently. If western ears hear an additive scale, progressing downward (as all the tribal music from this trible had melodies that went from the highest note to the lowerst one), the notes start off with very little difference between them, and as you get lower and lower, the differences become greater (like gravity making an object fall) as easch sucessive step downward occupies in equal Hz represents a greater pitch distance. But when they sing their own scales, they didn't perceive this increase in pitch difference as the notes went downward. Why? Because that's not how their brain was trained to hear it. As far as they were concerned, such a difference didn't exist and each step was equal.

What a strange system, I wonder what it sounds like.

Anyway, I acknowledge just how much of music understanding is culturally grounded, frame of reference etc. but I still don't want to give you that 100% label. I think there is still some basic cross-cultural principles inherint to music no matter who you ask. How we react to them might be changes, but there are still those basic principles. A 5th will always have some pull to its tonal center, maybe not the extra oomph provided by the leading tone, but still that naturally draw.

I have another question I thought I'd pose about popular music. How did the guitar become so prominent I wonder. I mean, the violin was the shit in both classical and folk music, still is, so one would think it would naturally lend itself to newer musics like jazz, blues, and rock. Violin has some chordal ability, and it seems a natural fit to fill the role that the lead guitar does now. It is able to do acoustically what a guitar needs to be amplified to accomplish, I.E. sustained notes, variety in timbre, fancy embellishments etc.

The relationship between the 5th and the octave is mathematically very powerful (being vibrations divided into multiples of 2 and 3 respectively), however whether a listener actually cares about that powerful relationship is entirely another question. They'll care if they're trained to care. Fifths in music haven't always been desirable things and they haven't always had "gravitational pull to the tonal center" properties, these attributes are entirely constructed in the same sense that gold isn't a precious metal objectively, it's a precious metal because society places value on that metal. We expect to hear the I follow the V because we've heard it so many times before.

I'd say the prominence of guitar in recent years is because the guitar is a lot easier to play. The violin is an absolute ass of an instrument to get proficient at. The original blues guys were tired, they just spent all fucking day picking cotton in the fields, think they wanted to spend hours a day practicing some little thing with a bow? Hell no, they wanted something portable, cheap, and not too challenging, not some expensive fancy-schmancy thing that wasn't particularly durable and took months of practice just to make it sound like anything other than a strangled cat. And since blues begat most modern styles of popular music I think the instrument just stuck.

 

[Ham_authority95]

* "Personal differences" - basically someone isn't getting along with someone else. This affects all genres equally. When starting a band priority #1 should be finding people who you get along with. Skill deficits can often be worked on, but an asshole is usually always going to be an asshole. Drugs and alcohol certainly have an effect on this but that's something that also applies across the board in all music styles with the exception of classical musicians who are utterly loaded with pharmaceuticals in a manner with puts other genres to shame.

Do you mean that classical musicians take a lot of pills and end up being "enhanced" by them?

 

[BonsaiK]

* "Personal differences" - basically someone isn't getting along with someone else. This affects all genres equally. When starting a band priority #1 should be finding people who you get along with. Skill deficits can often be worked on, but an asshole is usually always going to be an asshole. Drugs and alcohol certainly have an effect on this but that's something that also applies across the board in all music styles with the exception of classical musicians who are utterly loaded with pharmaceuticals in a manner with puts other genres to shame.

Do you mean that classical musicians take a lot of pills and end up being "enhanced" by them?

In my experience classical musicians not only take all the same recreational drugs that rock musicians take in roughly equal quantities, plus the same prescribed medication that any creative-but-miserable musician might need to function in normal society, but on top of that some of them also take performance-enhancing drugs, such as drugs designed to stabilise nerves, remove shaky hands, perform better on tests etc. At the conservatorium I used to actually see people pin up ads for that stuff on noticeboards, and quite a few of the students there sure looked like they were living off that stuff.

On a side note, I've organised many musical sessions and the only time I ever got so pissed off that I had to actually sack someone on the night of a gig right before a performance and hire someone else literally at the last minute to do the job was in the case of a classical violinist who couldn't keep the needles out of his arm.

 

[Ham_authority95]

* "Personal differences" - basically someone isn't getting along with someone else. This affects all genres equally. When starting a band priority #1 should be finding people who you get along with. Skill deficits can often be worked on, but an asshole is usually always going to be an asshole. Drugs and alcohol certainly have an effect on this but that's something that also applies across the board in all music styles with the exception of classical musicians who are utterly loaded with pharmaceuticals in a manner with puts other genres to shame.

Do you mean that classical musicians take a lot of pills and end up being "enhanced" by them?

In my experience classical musicians not only take all the same recreational drugs that rock musicians take in roughly equal quantities, plus the same prescribed medication that any creative-but-miserable musician might need to function in normal society, but on top of that some of them also take performance-enhancing drugs, such as drugs designed to stabilise nerves, remove shaky hands, perform better on tests etc. At the conservatorium I used to actually see people pin up ads for that stuff on noticeboards, and quite a few of the students there sure looked like they were living off that stuff.

On a side note, I've organised many musical sessions and the only time I ever got so pissed off that I had to actually sack someone on the night of a gig right before a performance and hire someone else literally at the last minute to do the job was in the case of a classical violinist who couldn't keep the needles out of his arm.

Can't say I'm surprised. With Rock musicians, they're at least a bit more wild and free with their music, but Classical musicians are under a whole lot more pressure to be perfect with their music.

It seems pretty hard to not do drugs in the music industry...

 

[BonsaiK]

It seems pretty hard to not do drugs in the music industry...

It's do-able, but you have to be very resistant to peer pressure. There will literally be people doing drugs openly in front of you all the time, asking if you want to join in etc. Also drug dealers hover around the music business like moths to a flame, if you're involved in the business you'll get asked if you want to buy drugs a lot. I'm always happy to say no to something I don't want to do, it doesn't break my heart, but some people are stronger than others when it comes to these things.

The exception of course is the "straight-edge" scene where there's peer pressure to not do drugs. However that scene is stupid in its own ways, and their lack of drug-taking often comes hand-in-hand with rabid conservatism, organised religion, and mindless thuggery. Whatever side of the business you get into, having a really strong mind and knowing your boundaries is a must. I'd say without a doubt that the music industry is far more dangerous when it comes to leading people down the wrong paths with regard to substance abuse etc than the adult entertainment industry.

 

[Ham_authority95]

It seems pretty hard to not do drugs in the music industry...

It's do-able, but you have to be very resistant to peer pressure. There will literally be people doing drugs openly in front of you all the time, asking if you want to join in etc. Also drug dealers hover around the music business like moths to a flame, if you're involved in the business you'll get asked if you want to buy drugs a lot. I'm always happy to say no to something I don't want to do, it doesn't break my heart, but some people are stronger than others when it comes to these things.

The exception of course is the "straight-edge" scene where there's peer pressure to not do drugs. However that scene is stupid in its own ways, and their lack of drug-taking often comes hand-in-hand with rabid conservatism, organised religion, and mindless thuggery. Whatever side of the business you get into, having a really strong mind and knowing your boundaries is a must. I'd say without a doubt that the music industry is far more dangerous when it comes to leading people down the wrong paths with regard to substance abuse etc than the adult entertainment industry.

Heh, I'll have to have a few more life experiences to fully determine my tipping point in terms of peer pressure. The only people who have ever tried to get me to do drugs are idiots at the bus stop, not people I want/need to associate with...

 

[BonsaiK]

It seems pretty hard to not do drugs in the music industry...

It's do-able, but you have to be very resistant to peer pressure.

Heh, I'll have to have a few more life experiences to fully determine my tipping point in terms of peer pressure. The only people who have ever tried to get me to do drugs are idiots at the bus stop, not people I want/need to associate with...

Yeah the difference in the music biz is that it's not strangers - it'll be your best friends or people you look up to artistically or in the business doing the shit, and if you say no then that can put you on the outside of their social network. Because networking is so important, people often consent to the drugs not because they really love drugs but because they really want to be seen as someone who fits into the cool crowd - and for someone working in fields like A&R, studio engineer, management, etc, being seen as "cool" isn't just an ego thing, it actually has career ramifications. I take great pains to point out to my colleagues in the business that I'm a very tolerant person and that just because I'm not indulging in their drug habits doesn't mean that I'm making a judgement on them or that I think I'm morally superior or anything like that. In that way I'm able to finesse my way around the issue and still make my own choices. Some people still hate me or misunderstand me anyway of course, but you can't please everyone.

 

[Ham_authority95]

It seems pretty hard to not do drugs in the music industry...

It's do-able, but you have to be very resistant to peer pressure.

Heh, I'll have to have a few more life experiences to fully determine my tipping point in terms of peer pressure. The only people who have ever tried to get me to do drugs are idiots at the bus stop, not people I want/need to associate with...

Yeah the difference in the music biz is that it's not strangers - it'll be your best friends or people you look up to artistically or in the business doing the shit, and if you say no then that can put you on the outside of their social network. Because networking is so important, people often consent to the drugs not because they really love drugs but because they really want to be seen as someone who fits into the cool crowd - and for someone working in fields like A&R, studio engineer, management, etc, being seen as "cool" isn't just an ego thing, it actually has career ramifications. I take great pains to point out to my colleagues in the business that I'm a very tolerant person and that just because I'm not indulging in their drug habits doesn't mean that I'm making a judgement on them or that I think I'm morally superior or anything like that. In that way I'm able to finesse my way around the issue and still make my own choices. Some people still hate me or misunderstand me anyway of course, but you can't please everyone.

How often do your colleagues just not understand that?

 

[BonsaiK]

How often do your colleagues just not understand that?

Most of the people really close to me get it. More distant acquaintances usually start off on the wrong foot with me, eventually they usually hear through the grapevine that I'm not an intolerant asshole before I have to point it out to them. A few never get it though but they're in the minority and they're usually people that I don't have a really close relationship with.

 

[BonsaiK]

Do you know anything about Micro-tonality? If so, could you tell us "the basics" about the concept and about what music uses it? I ask this because I was reading the above post about the "450 Hz, 500 Hz, 550 Hz," system and that sounded like pretty small intervals...

On a different note, I love this thread and thank you for making it. No class in school would have covered this many subjects at once.

Sorry, I skipped over this question. Glad you're liking the thread.

The most familiar microtonal movement people will be familiar with in popular music is what blues singers and guitarists do with the minor 3rd interval. They tend to sing/play it somewhere between it and the next semitone up (the major 3rd). Most guitarists of intermediate level or above will be familiar with quarter-tone bends and these are also most commonly deployed in blues. This is by far the most common microtonal movement you hear in western music and of course anything that's in blues is also to some degree in modern pop, rock and heavy metal as these styles are all heavily blues-based.

Classical/orchestral/"serious" music didn't officially touch microtones with a ten foot pole until Harry Partch started fucking about with a 43-step scale (43 steps to the octave) of his own invention. Microtones do creep in by accident though due to the various western tuning systems. The tonal variances between just intonation and equal temperament are arguably microtonal, but both those systems are designed to not sound microtonal, they just go about the same objective through different means. Jury is out in the academic community on which one is better, but equal temperament has become the standard for purely practical reasons much to the dismay of certain purists who prefer the old way. Exceptions: vocalist emsembles don't equal temper, they try and sing completely in tune (whatever that means ehn you're a vocalist). Same with strings, and even pianos are deliberately "sweetened" when tuned. However, gypsy music has a clash between the accordion (equal temperament by default, cannot be changed) and the violin (tuned by resonating 5ths) which gives the music a unique flavour.

Bagpipes have some real microtonal oddities, I'll let this excellent website explain them: http://cityofoaks.home.netcom.com/Bagpipe_Tuning.html - now you know why the things sound so weird. The sitar and veena in Indian music also have moveable frets and they can be made to play all sorts of scales, then there's the sarod which is like a smaller fretless version of these, and Indian classical music divides the octave into 22 steps.

There's a bunch of other examples, that's a really quick overview. Not sure exactly what you wanted to know with that question, hopefully that answered something.

 

[Ham_authority95]

Do you know anything about Micro-tonality? If so, could you tell us "the basics" about the concept and about what music uses it? I ask this because I was reading the above post about the "450 Hz, 500 Hz, 550 Hz," system and that sounded like pretty small intervals...

On a different note, I love this thread and thank you for making it. No class in school would have covered this many subjects at once.

Sorry, I skipped over this question. Glad you're liking the thread.

The most familiar microtonal movement people will be familiar with in popular music is what blues singers and guitarists do with the minor 3rd interval. They tend to sing/play it somewhere between it and the next semitone up (the major 3rd). Most guitarists of intermediate level or above will be familiar with quarter-tone bends and these are also most commonly deployed in blues. This is by far the most common microtonal movement you hear in western music and of course anything that's in blues is also to some degree in modern pop, rock and heavy metal as these styles are all heavily blues-based.

Classical/orchestral/"serious" music didn't officially touch microtones with a ten foot pole until Harry Partch started fucking about with a 43-step scale (43 steps to the octave) of his own invention. Microtones do creep in by accident though due to the various western tuning systems. The tonal variances between just intonation and equal temperament are arguably microtonal, but both those systems are designed to not sound microtonal, they just go about the same objective through different means. Jury is out in the academic community on which one is better, but equal temperament has become the standard for purely practical reasons much to the dismay of certain purists who prefer the old way. Exceptions: vocalist emsembles don't equal temper, they try and sing completely in tune (whatever that means ehn you're a vocalist). Same with strings, and even pianos are deliberately "sweetened" when tuned. However, gypsy music has a clash between the accordion (equal temperament by default, cannot be changed) and the violin (tuned by resonating 5ths) which gives the music a unique flavour.

Bagpipes have some real microtonal oddities, I'll let this excellent website explain them: http://cityofoaks.home.netcom.com/Bagpipe_Tuning.html - now you know why the things sound so weird. The sitar and veena in Indian music also have moveable frets and they can be made to play all sorts of scales, then there's the sarod which is like a smaller fretless version of these, and Indian classical music divides the octave into 22 steps.

There's a bunch of other examples, that's a really quick overview. Not sure exactly what you wanted to know with that question, hopefully that answered something.

Yeah, you answered most of it. The reason i asked is because there's this bassist named Jereon Paul Theselling who studied microtones in Arabic music and developed a 72 tone system for the Fretless Bass. Those are some pretty small intervals, which made me really fascinated with the concept.

 

[BonsaiK]

The reason i asked is because there's this bassist named Jereon Paul Theselling who studied microtones in Arabic music and developed a 72 tone system for the Fretless Bass. Those are some pretty small intervals, which made me really fascinated with the concept.

The thing is that you can do microtones all you want, western ears will generally hear the result as one of the 12 tones or "something in between" one of the 12 tones. It's a bit like the situation I was talking about earlier that branched off from the Beatles discussion. Your brain will interpret whatever you hear as part of the existing system because that's the system you've been brought up with and that 99.9% of music you've heard up until this point is already in. Anything else will probably just sound "random" or "out of tune".


This guy is messing with microtones on a fretless bass but the tonal scheme is still identifiably phrygian with a raised 3rd (a mode of the upward-travelling harmonic minor where the 7th is raised). And that's a diatonic system. In other words your ear will filter out what doesn't fit into the diatonic system as "something else" and lock into the things that are diatonic as important.

Of course, the player is playing mainly diatonic anyway and that's just locking the brain into diatonic mode - he can faff about with slides all he wants but if he keeps landing on the root note. the minor 2nd and major 3rd all the time, the brain will still interpret it as "arabic stuff" whether he does the slides or not. To really force something else besides diatonic harmony down a person's throat you need to do something like this:


And that just sounds like an out-of-tune piano playing some modernist stuff to me. There's no "new sound" there, if you didn't know that you were listening to a quarter-tone piano just then, your brain would just listen to that and go "sounds like an out of tune piano", or "gee the recording seems to be speeding up and slowing down", not "gosh wow a new scale I never thought of".

 

[Ham_authority95]

The reason i asked is because there's this bassist named Jereon Paul Theselling who studied microtones in Arabic music and developed a 72 tone system for the Fretless Bass. Those are some pretty small intervals, which made me really fascinated with the concept.

The thing is that you can do microtones all you want, western ears will generally hear the result as one of the 12 tones or "something in between" one of the 12 tones. It's a bit like the situation I was talking about earlier that branched off from the Beatles discussion. Your brain will interpret whatever you hear as part of the existing system because that's the system you've been brought up with and that 99.9% of music you've heard up until this point is already in. Anything else will probably just sound "random" or "out of tune".


This guy is messing with microtones on a fretless bass but the tonal scheme is still identifiably phrygian with a raised 3rd (a mode of the upward-travelling harmonic minor where the 7th is raised). And that's a diatonic system. In other words your ear will filter out what doesn't fit into the diatonic system as "something else" and lock into the things that are diatonic as important.

Of course, the player is playing mainly diatonic anyway and that's just locking the brain into diatonic mode - he can faff about with slides all he wants but if he keeps landing on the root note. the minor 2nd and major 3rd all the time, the brain will still interpret it as "arabic stuff" whether he does the slides or not. To really force something else besides diatonic harmony down a person's throat you need to do something like this:


And that just sounds like an out-of-tune piano playing some modernist stuff to me. There's no "new sound" there, if you didn't know that you were listening to a quarter-tone piano just then, your brain would just listen to that and go "sounds like an out of tune piano", or "gee the recording seems to be speeding up and slowing down", not "gosh wow a new scale I never thought of".

I generally agree with you. Whenever I hear "Arabic" stuff and want to play it, I naturally just use the Phyrgian scale with a bunch of string bends, not anything outside of my natural diatonic way of thinking.

The piano thing sounded really cool to me after I got pat the fact that it sounded like it was sped up, by the way. Maybe I should listen to more of that to get used to other scale systems...

 

[BonsaiK]

The piano thing sounded really cool to me after I got pat the fact that it sounded like it was sped up, by the way. Maybe I should listen to more of that to get used to other scale systems...

What happens with the piano piece is your brain will instead lock into the chromatic movements because that's the "next most familiar" thing after any identifiable scale pattern. There's plenty of quarter-tone music out there, Charles Ives wrote a bunch, but chances of you rewiring your brain at this late stage of the game are slim. You can certainly grow to like the sound but you'll probably always perceive it relative to the things you already know, rather than the completely new system that it's trying to be.

 

[Ham_authority95]

The piano thing sounded really cool to me after I got pat the fact that it sounded like it was sped up, by the way. Maybe I should listen to more of that to get used to other scale systems...

What happens with the piano piece is your brain will instead lock into the chromatic movements because that's the "next most familiar" thing after any identifiable scale pattern. There's plenty of quarter-tone music out there, Charles Ives wrote a bunch, but chances of you rewiring your brain at this late stage of the game are slim. You can certainly grow to like the sound but you'll probably always perceive it relative to the things you already know, rather than the completely new system that it's trying to be.

I'll certainly look at some of his work. Now I wonder what would happen to my future childerns' musical taste if I played them micro-tonal music at first instead of regular western music...

It would probably fuck up their sense of the traditional 12 western notes, thus impairing some of their musical ability, that's for sure.

 

[Ham_authority95]

The piano thing sounded really cool to me after I got pat the fact that it sounded like it was sped up, by the way. Maybe I should listen to more of that to get used to other scale systems...

What happens with the piano piece is your brain will instead lock into the chromatic movements because that's the "next most familiar" thing after any identifiable scale pattern. There's plenty of quarter-tone music out there, Charles Ives wrote a bunch, but chances of you rewiring your brain at this late stage of the game are slim. You can certainly grow to like the sound but you'll probably always perceive it relative to the things you already know, rather than the completely new system that it's trying to be.

On another note, after listening to that music for 20 minutes, playing a major scale on a guitar is the musical equivilent of a drink of water after eating nothing but dark chocolate for a day.

 

[Ham_authority95]

When did you get more "well known" in your music scene, both by listeners and other industry people?