[ektimo]

I've skimmed a lot of articles on music "theory" but none of them provide anything like what I'm looking for. A music theory should explain:

1. Why do we like pieces when played forward but not backward or inverted?

2. Why do certain sounds evoke certain emotions?

3. How could you write a program to pick out music that people find especially good (versus music that has surface similarities)?

In other words, why does a particular sequence of sounds A, B, C lead to a mental state M that has particular internal qualities?

[pdkl95]

> 1. Why do we like pieces when played forward but not backward or inverted?

Why do we like text when read forward, but not backward or inverted?

There are, of course, works that are palindromic or otherwise written to be read/heard backwards, but most of the time that kind of global transformation tends to ruin the "spelling"/"narrative".

> 2. Why do certain sounds evoke certain emotions?

Just like text, evoking emotions needs some sort of narrative. A story isn't a single fact or statement (or a single sound); it's about how those facts (or sounds) flow or change.

In music you might hear a brief bit of new melody that foreshadows something big later in the song. A clear rhythm or melody might be repeated to get the listener to follow along only to have it cut short at a key moment to deny the obvious resolution (similar to a melodrama that suddenly reveals a new twist in the plot as a cliffhanger).

It's the story you tell that matters, and it takes a skilled composer to put sounds together to make a song emotionally evocative. The song that is mostly a 16 bar loop probably sounds boring (but not always!), while the song that introduces the same 16 bars and then plays with variations of it to create an initial conflict, rising action, and a climax is probably a lot more interesting. An obvious example might be Mozart playing Salieri's march in Amadeus[1]. It's not just that he embellished the simple march; Mozart adds a lot of variations that culminate at a comic ending.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5n0pkNpDWY

[sverige]

Actually, great composers such as Beethoven and Bach and Chopin had very definite ideas about what emotions are evoked by certain keys. They even argued about it with their peers. Music is not something that is reducible to mere quanta and waves and frequency. You all are missing the human part. Sorry, but it's true.

[pdkl95]

> what emotions are evoked by certain keys

Yes, choice of key is one of the tropes that is useful when composing a song's "plot".

> Music is not something that is reducible to mere quanta and waves and frequency.

That's my point; interesting aspects of a song are not derived from specific sounds (and their frequency/etc). Those are the atoms that can be used to create the larger plot.

While it is possible to reduce music to the frequency and timing of its atomic structure, it's similar to analyzing the phonetics of speech or the glyphs of text in isolation. A low level perspective may be useful, but misses the larger structure we call a "song" or "essay".

[coreyp_1]

That, and they didn't all necessarily use a pure Equal Temperament, either. Different temperaments can give more distinct feelings to certain keys more so than the modern equal temperament. (Note: I used to tune pianos.)

[redial]

Music is waves and frequency. Music appreciation is what you are describing. And appreciation is very dependant on culture. That is why Bach is not (as) appreciated in certain cultures.

Just like photography. Why is one photograph more meaningful than another? it has nothing to do with photography, per se, it has everything to do with the culture of the person doing the appreciation.

There is a link between the two, between creation and appreciation, and those who understand it generally fare better. But it is not required to be a musician, or a photographer or a poet or anything really.

[pdkl95]

> Music is waves and frequency.

Sound is waves and frequency. Music is a collection of sounds arranged in a specific sequence.

> Music appreciation is what you are describing. And appreciation is very dependant on culture.

Music relies on various "tropes" to construct a narrative. This includes the choice of key/scale (or none at all), ideas about timing and harmony, etc. These "standard parts" of music are usually from the local culture, just like how a play or movie will use standard character archetypes ("tropes") that are culturally derived.

[gugagore]

"music is waves and frequency" in the same way that "spoken language is waves and frequency"---not very usefully. I think bringing in" appreciation" muddies the waters.

[redial]

I was just responding to the parent who claimed that music was not "waves and frequency".

My point is music is (mostly) independent of its appreciation. Machines can, and do, make music based entirely on the theory of music.

[ketralnis]

Music theory is an accepted and used term of art for the category of things that this article talks about. There are courses, books, university departments, and degree programmes that use the term. Nobody is going to stop using it because you skimmed it but it doesn't describe some other thing that you think it should.

Some examples:

* http://www.music.msu.edu/areas-studios/music-theory

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_theory#Fundamentals_of_m...

[andy_ppp]

Grand parent is saying he wants an article that covers the "why does music sound good" part of music theory, something I want too. I think most people have a basic grasp of notes, scales and that a middle C is air oscillating at 440 cycles per second. How can you make something sound good is the interesting part of music theory for me and I still haven't found a good intro to it!

[autarch]

> How can you make something sound good is the interesting part of music theory for me and I still haven't found a good intro to it!

As someone who majored in music composition, I have a very simple answer. I'd have some sort of idea in my head of what I wanted the music to sound like (or the emotion to evoke). Then I'd fiddly around for quite some time, discarding the things that didn't meet my criteria.

That's sort of a glib answer, but the fact is that no one really knows exactly why certain things evoke certain emotions, even though most composers understand various building block ideas like "odd meters like 5/8 and 7/8 generally evoke intensity and tension" or "brass chorale in a major key sounds triumphant" or "gong crescendo roll is scary". And of course, even then, we could find counter-examples for every one of those things.

Also, all music theory will tell you is why something in some piece of historical music sounded the way people expected it to sound at the time. It will definitely not tell you how to write good original music (though it may be a good guide on how to imitate past composers if that's useful for what you're trying to do).

[estefan]

> like "odd meters like 5/8 and 7/8 generally evoke intensity and tension" or "brass chorale in a major key sounds triumphant" or "gong crescendo roll is scary"

Can you recommend any books that teach these sorts of general rules, or the emotive feeling generally associated with different keys and modes?

[autarch]

AFAIK there are no such books. As for whether certain keys evoke certain emotions, that's highly debated other than "major happy, minor sad (other modes weird)".

The way I learned about how composition worked was mostly two things. One, listening to lots of music, ideally with the score in front of me so I could zoom in on some particular bit I really liked. Two, writing music and seeing how it turned out in practice.

[ktRolster]

How can you make something sound good is the interesting part of music theory

You need something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Alfreds-Essentials-Music-Theory-Self-...

It's not something you're going to learn in an afternoon or a weekend, it's hard work and Beethoven was still working on it at the end of his life.

Last month I spent an evening analyzing and discussing a passage of Rachmaninoff, trying to understand how he knew how to write a certain sequence.

[acjohnson55]

Or http://dmitri.tymoczko.com/geometry-of-music.html

[ktRolster]

That may be a very good book, but I'll be honest, it doesn't look like a very gentle introduction.

[acjohnson55]

It's not :(. Although the average person could probably get a lot of good high-level info by browsing it.

I haven't yet come across anything that is a good gentle intro. Most resources that approach music and math make the mistake of treating music theory like the law, without any rationale for it provided. Music history textbooks typically give a lot more context of how our music theories emerged, but they don't talk about why that might be, based on acoustics, psychoacoustic, and math.

Maybe one day, I'll write the comprehensive intro I wish I'd had.

[byproxy]

middle C isn't 440hz. that's generally an A.

[andy_ppp]

Good point, not sure where I got that from then. Record updated.

[jacobolus]

When we have discordant sound (e.g. a collection of plucked strings where the fundamental frequency ratios are not in nice simple ratios, so that none of the overtones align), there’s a great deal of complexity to the sound, and you get interference patterns between them, similar to moiré patterns in images.

This causes “musical tension”.

Some types of discord are mild, and cause a bit of mild annoyance or “sadness” in the sound. Other types are aggressive and cause serious anxiety.

When you return most of the sounds to be in harmony, that tension is relieved. This causes a more positive emotional response. The greater the former tension, the more satisfying the release.

Imagine you’re in a crowd of applauding people, each clapping at a different rate, so that the sound is like a cacophony. Your brain can’t make out any pattern except a wave of sound. Now imagine the people start clapping in rhythmic unison, with some kind of structure. Suddenly your brain can make sense of the pattern.

[buzzybee]

Music theory can't explain why a piece is designed in some way; it explains what patterns can be found within an existing piece. Designing any aesthetic is primarily about how patterns are prioritized, associated to other parts of culture and turned into conventional tropes or motives. As we get new genres of music the pattern languages tend to change. (The idea of music as "universal language" is only true in a basic sense of what things our ears and brains can comprehend and how we would perceive them in an ungrounded state. In the details, cultural differences will definitely matter.)

So, music theory "catches up" to the pattern language by associating it to human natural language, but it doesn't say why. I concur with the "music appreciation" recommendation for learning the whys. When you get deep into analysis of a work, all sorts of angles can be found to correlate "the thing in the work" with "the reason and context of its creation". For one song, maybe it's the lyrical content that is important. For another, it's about rhythm, or dynamics. The artist's life at that moment, sociopolitical context, and newly available technology are often considered as factors. In a complete work, these elements blend such that it can't be reduced to a singular "this word or phrase is definitely all this thing is" - analysis highlights parts of an experience that can't be fully conveyed in a different form, rather than trying to "spoil" or "solve" its mysteries.

[undershirt]

An aesthetic just seems like a unconscious favorable reaction to stimuli based on genetics and culture. Why our genes and culture have favored certain forms, I suspect there isn't a way to reduce it to something satisfactory.

I used to wonder why I felt good when looking at sunsets, landscapes and clouds. But I figured that our aesthetics probably evolved in response to what was around us. Happier people probably survive better.

The way we hear music seems like such an aesthetic, as it might've occurred within ancient cultures as a form of play and release. I suspect that our random genetic hunger towards different aesthetics might have created an incredible developmental feedback loop. I'm not sure where I'm going with this incredibly complicated topic, but I have a lot of very unrefined thoughts about them, that are probably overly-reductive and wrong.

[pjdorrell]

You are looking for a "theory of music", as opposed to "music theory", ie an explanatory or scientific theory.

I offer my own efforts in this direction at http://whatismusic.info/.

[ektimo]

Thanks! This sounds like good terminology and your writing attempts to answer the question in ways I haven't seen elsewhere.

Also I think the fact that songs can get stuck in your head suggests some kind of mental reinforcement exercise for patterns over time.

[efnx]

Those qualities aren't universal in people and as such what you are describing is more of a study of culture than musical theory. You would probably enjoy a music appreciation course, and possibly one taught by a philosophical professor.

[BurningFrog]

Music theory describes music.

Your questions are very interesting, but theories answering them would describe humans.

[dizzystar]

Not an article, but I think this talk hits a lot of interesting points:

http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passio...

[lohankin]

Answer to question 1 is simple: good resolution is a semitone up, but scale step down (normally, whole tone). No symmetry here. If you play backwards, you won't get resolutions - it will sound as nonsense.

[monort]

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music

https://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1/

[ktRolster]

3. How could you write a program to pick out music that people find especially good (versus music that has surface similarities)?

Be an artist.

[zodiac]

I don't think really we know the answers to those questions.

[adamnemecek]

> 1. Why do we like pieces when played forward but not backward or inverted?

Would you like a movie played backward?

> 2. Why do certain sounds evoke certain emotions?

Large part of this boils down to if the waves representing the sounds meet at zeroes or not.

> 3. How could you write a program to pick out music that people find especially good (versus music that has surface similarities)?

I think that this is currently impossible. The music composition search space is actually extremely large, larger than say the search space of Go. You can restrict the search space quite a bit but it's still large.

> In other words, why does a particular sequence of sounds A, B, C lead to a mental state M that has particular internal qualities?

Think of it as design. It's the same sort of problem.