[cynicalkane]

Modern western music is based on medieval church music, which in turn is based on ancient Greek music. These are two cultures that placed strong value on harmony and mathematical ratios, and it so happens that notes in ratios are harmonious to the ear. Mathematically speaking, the ratios between notes come mostly from low-order ratios in 5-limit tunings: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Limit_%28musi... .

In short, the Western scale is chosen to maximize the harmonic possibilities between different notes while having a reasonably even collection of whole-steps and half-steps between them. The black keys are the "in-between" half steps that do not appear in the C-major scale. The reason the ear likes harmony is probably due to our ears performing a Fourier transform on the incoming sound waves, and our brain blending together collections of multiples of some base frequency into one "note"--this lets us recognize the different characteristics of periodic oscillations from different physical sound sources.

[Jun8]

Thanks for the information. I wonder if there are any "music universals", like the ones for language, i.e. universal grammar. If favoring certain tone ratios is a characteristic of the human auditory system, then there should be.

[cynicalkane]

Like Chomsky's search for universal grammar, the search for music universals has been a failure. Nevertheless, there are some ideas that pop up surprisingly often. Doing a quick mental search, I believe every musical tradition I've heard that emphasizes accurate pitch, and at least one I've heard that doesn't, utilizes the pentatonic scale: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pentatonic_sc...

[thesethings]

I wasn't aware that either of these quests for universals have been a failure. My friend did a relatively recent music thesis about universals.

I'm not in either field, but a belief in universal "deep structure" has helped me learn both language + music stuff. Even if they don't exist, I'm going to stick with what helps me :D

[cynicalkane]

Well, you could say music must have rhythm, yet there's music with almost no rhythm at all. You could say music is about melody, but there's lots of examples of music with no melody. And as I hinted above, there's cultures where notes don't really have definite pitches.

I can't really think of anything that universally defines "music", other than that it's sound with an aesthetically pleasing structure.

[hasenj]

> Chomsky's search for universal grammar (..) has been a failure

I don't know about Chomsky, but I took a linguistics course and the universal grammar was a major part of the course. It seems you're implying there's no such thing, what makes you think so? The impression I got from the course is that the idea of "universal grammar" is universally accepted (among linguists, of course).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-bar_theory

Ironically I don't remember Chomsky's name coming up during the course at all.

[pessimizer]

Chomsky is the first name mentioned in that article.

[hasenj]

Yea, but I don't remember hearing about him in the course I took in the University.

Although to be honest I probably ignored names on purpose because there were so many of them.

[maw]

Interesting question. I think there are some. Does N hz "sound like" N*2 hz and N/2 hz across cultures? I expect the answer is yes, but I don't really know.

Have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A13_QGMtlRE. I think Bobby McFerrin would say that there indeed are music universals.

[emillon]

It does. You can view any 2*N Hz signal as a N Hz signal with a doubled period. So two such signals will keep "in phase", and when you mix them it can compose a new coherent sound.

[jtheory]

The "counter-proofs" to music universals is often just presenting an example of music from somewhere that doesn't match the universal in question.

Counter-example don't disprove trends, though, and there are certainly trends (I think "universals" is just not quite the right word).