excreationist

Answers in Genesis <a href="http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/docs/v7n3_music.asp" target="_blank">has the answer</a>:

Oxymoron

This isn't the whole story, but music tends to damp out a lot of cognitive "traffic" - our day-to-day evaluation of the world and how it relates to ourselves. Perhaps this is because music requires quite a bit of neural processing power; or simply listening to loud music could saturate everything else.

lpetrich

Actually, "Western tonality" is a byproduct of making harmonies out of overlapping overtones. Human vocal cords and most pitched instruments produce tones which have frequences that are approximately integer multiples of some fundamental frequency. This should be easy to work out for string and wind instruments -- and simple electronic instruments also.

Using the usual "equal temperament" tuning, frequency multiples become:

1 - fundamental
2 - one octave
3 - 2.9966 - one octave + fifth (7 semitones)
4 - two octaves
5 - 5.0397 - two octaves + third (4 semitones)
6 - 5.9932 - two octaves + fifth (7 semitones)
etc.

It's possible to make some of the intervals sound better by shifting the tunings a bit, but other intervals then sound worse and become "wolf intervals", to use an old classical-music term.

bluefugue

Right, there are fundamental overtones that are the basis of Western tonality (if you play a C on a piano, a the strings on the G and E an octave above will automatically resonate). But there's been some jury-rigging along the way. The equal-tempered scale (which distorts intervals from their "pure" Pythagorean ratios) is an ad-hoc construct to allow instruments to play in many keys without constantly retuning, and the Major and Minor scales only achieved primacy after being sifted from the classical modes (Dorian, Lydian, etc.).

I think Western music is a strange admixture of pre-existing acoustical/physical properties, and human ingenuity/engineering/cultural conditioning etc.

I wonder, does someone who is not at all familiar with Western Music feel that a minor chord is "sadder" than a major chord; or that a dominant seventh "wants to" resolve to its tonic? And do other systems of music -- i.e. Indian -- have equally strong emotional responses in their listeners, to which the uninitiated are effectively deaf?

Xeluan

Remember, D minor is the saddest key of them all.

On a serious note when listening to the blues you'll find that the 3rd is very ambiguous in the blues as well as the 5th. Microtones also play a part especially in guitar where you can bend (or as the great blue smasters often did) slide notes around.

I think that is why the best blues is unsettling and often invokes an emoptional response.

Xeluan

[ November 29, 2002: Message edited by: Xeluan ]</p>

Butters

We enjoy music because uor brains evolved to seek out patterns, the same reason some people believe that prayer or rabbits feet bring results.

Reldas of Melchezidec

Good Points thus far
Perhaps it is the creativity heard in the modified wavelengths of sound that we delight in. Seeing as how we delight in each others creative abilities in other art forms such as drawing and plays, perhaps the aforementioned reasons combined with this hypothetical one make a big case for music lovin apes'. I have meandered around Socrates style, and have been inquiring to great minds and muscicians alike, and have gotten various answers- most pertaining to the way the rythems intertwine- and subsequent listening pleasure ensues...
I was under the impression that closely related apes did not have a properly positioned hyoid bone for the types of wavelengths that we verbaly articulate. Also, the primary flow of noises coming from a knuckle walker or any other mammal for that matter, has more to do with a specific area of the brain that, proper terms failing me, equates to the same part in human brains and thus produces the equivalent noises in humans such as crying out in pleasure or pain (or other raw stimulous response type emotions) However, there is, according to my authorities, a totally separate portion of the brain which is active in the formation of speech and song in Adam, which is absent in non-Homos'. Implications much.
Can someone provide some sources for the distinction? I'll look for some.
peas and grapes
reldas