Musical Notes..

[Mescalito]

ABCEFG.. I am very high.. so bear with e... due to our accustomedness with the usual notes of most instruments alone or joined in together.. we can find that anything outside of the usual frequency to be somewhat unpleasant to the ear.. but how do you think these notes, associated with the particular frequency, were associated in the first place? I forgot a hile back where I was going with this.. so here is my post.

M

[moldyorangepeel]

wow. I was just flipping though a magazine yesterday and they talked about this. Someone thinks the sounds we like come from the sounds of the human voice.

Musical Scales Mimic the Sound of Language
The harmonics of human vocalization may generate the frequencies used in music.

by Susan Kruglinski



Throughout history, humans of many cultures have found approximately the same small set of sound frequencies musically appealing, as in the 12-note chromatic scale played on the black and white keys of a piano. The frequency of every note occurs in a simple ratio to those of other notes, such as 3:2 or 2:1.

Dale Purves, a neuroscientist at Duke University, set out to understand if there was a *biological origin to this tonal preference, and struck a chord in April when he reported (pdf) that the tones of the chromatic scale are dominated by the harmonic ratios found in the sound of the human voice.

“Tonality in nature seems to come only from vocalization,” Purves says, but previous researchers had found no evidence of music-like intervals in the rise and fall of speech. So he looked at the harmonics of vowel sounds, which are created when air passes through vocal folds that can be controlled with a precision similar to the range of a musical instrument. He discovered that when the tonal intervals, or harmonics, of a single vowel sound were broken down, the frequency ratios of our familiar music scales are usually found.


“If this really holds water, it’s an entry into the whole question—and it’s a very divisive question—of what human aesthetics is all about,” says Purves, who usually studies the neuroscience of vision. “The implicit conclusion in this work is that aesthetics is reduced to biological information, and that is not what musicians and philosophers want to hear.”

[Mescalito]

Yeah.. nice find! I was thinking that there might be some link also to the sounds we hear in nature...

M

[Mafoo]

its physics. the chromatic scale was developed by a greek i believe it was pythagoras. he noted that 2 peices of string, one being twice as long as the other produce the same sound but the shorter string has a higher pitch. i guess thats how the octave was discovered. then he varied the ratio of the string lengths and discovered the 12 chromatic notes between the octave and the root note. the ratios he used were the ones that produced a pleasant sound to his ear.

[JcP]

chinese/south asian music has a LOT of mid-tones that grate on my eardrums. Could this be why their languages (to me) are equally as unpleasant to listen to?

[Captain Cannabis]

indian music has crazy microtonals and shit

[ProfessorMurder]

Electric hum, mains hum, or power line hum is an audible oscillation at the frequency of
the mains alternating current, which is usually 50 or 60 hertz depending on the local
electric utility configuration (see Mains electricity).

The sound often has heavy harmonic content.

Assuming a tempered scale with A=440Hz, a 60Hz tone is almost exactly halfway
between A# and B two octaves below Middle C, and a 50Hz tone is between G and G#
two octaves below Middle C, but slightly sharper than the quarter-tone. These notes fall
within the range of a 4-string bass guitar.


60 cycle hum: As I mentioned above, electricity hums away at 60Hz, which is between B
and Bb. This means, that everything from lighting fixtures to your computer screen and
even your guitar amp is buzzing at this frequency while you are trying to tune. There's
really nothing you can do but attempt to minimize the effects of this situation. For
example, if you have an electric fan running, you may have to shut it off, or if you're
sitting in front of your computer, turn the monitor off while you tune etc...


So you 'could' tune your guitar to your refrigerator or sing along with it.

[Mafoo]

trippy prof murder!

i always tune my guitar with my amp turned off cuz i have a hard time hearing the fluxuation in the sound with the amp hum.

[ProfessorMurder]

An old guitar player studing to be a electrical engineer turned me on to it.

He would spend several minutes just trying to tune his guitar, with the ceiling fan on.

He couldn't figure it out why it always sounded out of tune when he finished.
(he wasn't no novice either)

He figured out the celing fan was "chopping up the sound" and making it very difficult to tune.
(Darth Vader voice sounds)

He eventually had to by a Hush System, the guy was like a perfectionist or something.

[Captain Cannabis]

i use a tuning fork at 440hz (A)

[ProfessorMurder]

Tuning fork?
That's for Quakers.

just kidding that's probably the best way,
but when you're on stage you have to tell everybody to quiet down.

That friend of mine, eventually bought a rack tuner so he could tune just slightly flat.

He convinced everyone else in the band to do the same.

He was real crazy like that.

I know some musicians that are tone def, too; no kidding.

[Captain Cannabis]

i use the soundboard of the guitar to amplify the tuning fork so i can do it a relatively noisy place (but likely not on a stage)

what is a rack tuner and why would you want to be flat? i suppose if everyone in the band is slightly flat then everyone is in tune and theres no problems

[ProfessorMurder]

He and the bassist had been playing for years before me, 4 yrs high school mariachi band.

There were several reasons.

The singer agreed cause it was, he said easier to hit the notes (cookie monster voice)

The guitarist liked it cause it was (what he thought was 'his' 'our' unique sound.

Some Metal bands play detuned or at lower tunnings; sounds spookier.

Sometimes called "Spaghetti string" tunnig.

The rack tunner is a huge honking "knight Rider KIT's hood in a suitcase"



You've seen those little pocket tunners, this one is like the size of a vcr.

In case, in between songs in the middle of a set you gotta tune, it's dark, noisy.

The huge led lights scroll across the unit.

You could fine tune it, just by looking at the lights turn red or green shifting notes and strings automaticlly.

Everyone agrees to tune, two red dots off the "center-standard".
just slightly flat, barely.

But everyone has to plug into the same unit or get their own.

Something like this:


^
tuner
wireless
pre amp effects
pre amp effects
power amp
storage unit

All the units are screwed onto the "rack" suitcase
with detachable front and back covers for safe transport.

It's a lot of shit!