[lbo-talk] Chuck's Cassirer posts

[Miles Jackson]

Michael Pollak wrote:
> 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?
>   
I don't agree.  The perception that two notes are an octave apart is due 
to auditory perception, not just the frequencies of the two notes.  The 
perception of consonance depends on the volume of the notes, the 
frequency range of the notes, and the acoustic context of the notes, not 
just the individual note frequencies.  I know I'm getting down in the 
weeds with the "technical details", but there is an important point 
here: the wavelength of a tone does not determine the musical perception 
of a tone.  (Our auditory system must do a lot of work to help us 
perceive two notes as an octave apart!  It's not just "given" to us by 
particular sound waves.)


> 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.
>   
Again, this is true of some scales but not others.  Many tones that are 
"at the heart" of a particular scale do not include the first few 
overtones of the fundamental.


> 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.
>   
Okay, I wondered why you brought up the fourth.  Same argument, though: 
many musical scales do not include the Western major third.

Miles