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Physiology & Medicine / Re: WHy do certain frequencies of sound make us feel different emotions?
« on: 01/11/2020 00:30:57 »
"Minor chord sadness" seems to be partly a cultural phenomenon. It's associated with melancholy in European music but a lot of very jolly Balkan and Middle Eastern folk dances are in minor keys throughout, and in my mind a minor interval signifies femininity in Far Eastern songs.
It may be something to do with the tone of a human voice - we certainly adopt a different timbre when whingeing or pleading, and this is learned in childhood.
There's some subtlety in key signatures too. Common sense says it doesn't matter what the root frequency of a scale is: all transpositions of a tune have the same quality. But a lot of musicians say that F major is a "weak" key. I think this may be due to the dominance of the even-tempered piano and organ scales in western music: if you change the pitch of all the strings on a guitar, or use portamento on an electronic keyboard, you can transpose without altering the "strength" of the song.
It may be something to do with the tone of a human voice - we certainly adopt a different timbre when whingeing or pleading, and this is learned in childhood.
There's some subtlety in key signatures too. Common sense says it doesn't matter what the root frequency of a scale is: all transpositions of a tune have the same quality. But a lot of musicians say that F major is a "weak" key. I think this may be due to the dominance of the even-tempered piano and organ scales in western music: if you change the pitch of all the strings on a guitar, or use portamento on an electronic keyboard, you can transpose without altering the "strength" of the song.
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