[opinionator1]

Wow, that's really not what music theory is at all. This kind of eggheaded simpletonism is grossly offensive and embarrasses the HN community, not to mention engineers in general. Please, the world outside of STEM is not reducible to a few hand-wavy sentences about physics.

[steamer25]

It's more about the ratios than the example frequencies I provided. That's more apparent if you play an instrument with an exposed string and a finger-board but still true if it's hidden under e.g., the hood of a piano. The definition of consonance versus dissonance is basically whether or not the ratio is simple. The overtone/undertone series from which the various scales are derived is also one only one logical step away. One step past that gets you to diatonic harmony which leads to harmonic progression/retrogression which makes up the bulk of my theory text book and the real gist that I was getting at.

If you can provide a better overview or point out how it's anything more than a bunch of terms/shorthand for sonic patterns, I'd love to be informed.