[lbo-talk] Chuck's Cassirer posts

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Wed Jun 18 23:38:00 PDT 2008


On Wed, 18 Jun 2008, Miles Jackson wrote:


> In sum: there is nothing natural and necessary about any particular
> musical scale.

BTW, to leave aside all the technical details that most people would find bewildering, surely you'll agree there *one* thing natural and necessary about all musical scales, namely the octave. The idea that humans hear two notes an octave apart as somehow being the "same" note; that the higher note is double the frequency of the lower note; surely that has something to do with the natural and immutable properties of sound? And surely that is universal?

And to go back to the arcane stuff, surely you'll agree it's also not an accident that the octave is the same as the first harmonic overtone? If you're looking for a natural basis for the shared ratios of musical scales, it's that the notes at the heart of every scale are the first few overtones of the fundamental note. And surely we'll agree that every scale has to have a fundamental note to be called a scale.

PS Mea Culpa: Now that I just thought about the harmonic series I realize I've been saying "fourth" all along when I meant "third." That's the next overtone after the fifth. Fourths are actually a later development. The ancient Greeks' major pentatonic scale actually didn't have them.

Michael



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