[pythko]

It is artificial, in the sense that the western twelve tone scale is essentially arbitrary (why not 6? why not 16?), and it is a constraint in the sense that what most people consider “in tune” is defined by what they’ve gotten used to hearing. Culturally, in western music, that is twelve notes to an octave.

People from all cultures can and do use notes from outside those twelve tones in music. In western music, sometimes you’ll notice (check out King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard[1]), and sometimes you probably won’t (that “raspiness” in blues music is usually because they’re singing/playing a note slightly “out of tune” aka “microtonally”).

Music and “what sounds good” is a cultural construct, and I’d encourage you to check out music from around the world as well experimental microtonal artists if you’re interested in hearing what happens when you aren’t tied to the idea of twelve notes in an octave.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U72rbtrufws

[netizen-936824]

Personally I quite enjoy when my expectations are broken by interesting patterns in music. I enjoy a lot of 'experimental' stuff. Again this is just my personal preference, but most of the popular music in the US I find boring because it all seems to be rehashes of the same patterns, just getting louder.

I wish more people were exposed to a wider variety of types and patterns in music, there's a lot of great sounding music out there which breaks the usual mold played on radio stations

[vericiab]

I'd guess personal preference of the musicians themselves is part of the reason microtones aren't more common in "western" music. Most of the musicians that I personally know at least seem to prefer creating/performing music that sounds good to them. And compared to non-musicians, most of them are also more aware of and bothered by notes that are "out of tune", especially ones with "classical" training.

[neverminder]

> I wish more people were exposed to a wider variety of types and patterns in music, there's a lot of great sounding music out there which breaks the usual mold played on radio stations

The 12 tone standard didn't just come out of nowhere, it is dominant for a reason. It developed throughout the entire existence of humanity. Think about it, currently the scientific consensus is that singing actually came before speaking. It's those 12 tones that create the best sounding melodies and harmonies. The greatest composers of all time used them. Maybe you're a guy who likes impro jazz (which coincidentally uses micro tones), but most people don't.

[netizen-936824]

But again, isn't this primarily a "western" phenomenon? That makes me think it isn't quite so clear cut

Side note: yes, I love love jazz in all its forms ^^

[analog31]

We know it goes all the way back to the ancient Greeks, don't know its prior origins or if it developed in parallel in other places.

[netizen-936824]

The use of microtones, or rather lack thereof, is what I'm referring to (from a comment by pythko):

>I believe the GGP meant to refer to “microtones,” which are frequencies that don’t fall into the Twelve Tone Equal Temperament tuning system. These are commonly used in non-western music (Indian music is a typical example), and occasionally in some western music styles (blues, some jazz, some sub-genres of rock, maybe), but you’re not going to find microtones in most western music.

[analog31]

>>> (why not 6? why not 16?)

12 is the simplest scale whose intervals match the harmonic sequence. It's a technology.

[pythko]

The 12-TET certainly has some neat mathematical properties, but my point is that it’s not the only way to decide what “notes” are. It’s an interesting debate on whether there’s something fundamental to this particular approach that sounds good to the human ear, but I think it’s clear that there’s a hefty cultural component.

It’s also worth noting that modern 12-TET is not the series of whole number ratios that someone might expect from basing it off a harmonic series [1]. It’s an approximation based off a logarithmic scale. 12 Tone Just (or “Pure”) Intonation sounds pretty weird, and in my opinion, bad. If people had been making music with 12 Tone Just Intonation for the last millennium, maybe it would sound good to me!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12_equal_temperament#Just_inte...

[analog31]

Indeed, temperament is its own technology. I assume that the music, technology, and culture co-evolved. And nothing stays constant for a millennium. Temperaments were developed and refined as music began making fuller use of the available scales and chords. Yet each system had to be within the capabilities of musicians to tune their own instruments. A harpsichord had to be tuned before every performance. Equal temperament had to wait until instruments (the modern piano) were stable enough to stay in tune between visits of the technician.

To make just temperament sound "good" even relative to the ears of another time period, probably required playing music written for that particular tuning.

As a double bassist, playing pitches repeatably enough to claim any specific temperament would be a lifelong challenge, if it's even attainable. Most of the time, musicians don't think about temperaments. We try to play in tune and sound good.