[defrost]

> but there are some universals such as the Octave

Universal in the sense that a number of rocks or a number of sheep can be doubled just as a frequency can?

The notion that there are 8 sub divisions to a doubled frequency interval isn't universal. Balinese Gamelan doesn't even neccessarily have an agreed number of "notes" in an "Octave" from one village to the next.

[Intermernet]

There aren't 8 subdivisions in an octave in western music either. Well, there are in any given scale, but there are also many scales. "Octave" is a misleading term. Given that it's just a doubling of frequency, the term is sort of as good as any other, and that douibling exists in pretty much all cultures that have developed string, pipe or other resonant body based music (including hitting hollow logs and plucking vibrating reeds / sticks / tines).

It's pretty much the foundational idea of any modality. No matter how you divide it up, the purest harmony is doubling or halving.

[tshaddox]

The commenter presumably was talking about octave equivalence, which is reportedly present across all or nearly all historical musical cultures that we know about. It’s also supposedly present in some other mammals.

[defrost]

reportedly present, yes .. but the debate is still hot on universal.

I was asking to tease out some PoV perspective, again Gamelan doesn't neccessarily have powers of two, or 12, etc divisions of a doubling (or Octave, if we're using that term); it's a non western style of percussion that has a suprising number of local variations (it's essentially near unique to Balinese culture) in divisions and tunings.

The Octave wikipedia entry includes:

  Octave equivalence is a part of most musical cultures, but is far from universal in "primitive" and early music

but gets woolly on examples.

Cheers for the response, appreciated.

[tshaddox]

Yeah, that sentence on Wikipedia is a bit unclear though. It might be merely claiming that, for some musical cultures, we don’t have a written record of an explicit notion of octave equivalence or tone name circularity.

But I suspect there’s a clear biological mechanism which makes it easy to mistake one octave for another from any source of roughly harmonic sound. This is due to the similarity in the overtones of two harmonic sounds that differ by an octave. I would be surprised if this mechanism isn’t universal, although its on various musical systems can obviously vary a lot.

[codeulike]

Universal in the sense that a number of rocks or a number of sheep can be doubled just as a frequency can?

Yes thats what I meant, the doubling of frequency. It might seem trivial but the fact that doubling frequency sounds "right" to humans is actually quite interesting. Why does it sound "right"?

[sheiyei]

Interference is most of the answer. With frequencies f and 2f you get the smoothest interference patterns, even if the tones have a lot of harmonics. This applies reducingly to increasingly fractional ratios.

[otabdeveloper4]

1.5**12 is about 129.74, which is as close as you can reasonably get to a power of two.

So yes, the 12-tone scale is a universal thing - you want both octaves and fifths in your scale.

(12 is actually too much, so usually that's pared down to something like 4 or 5 or 7 tones, this is where you get cultural variation.)

[defrost]

> 1.5*12 is about 129.74,

Math checks out.

> So yes, the 12-tone scale is a universal thing -

I don't follow the logic here though. It's certainly true that a 12-tone / Chromatic scale is ubiquitous within the Western Music tradition .. but the universe is reportedly a little larger.

Even Western Music includes exceptions like the 9-note augmented scale, though the argument can be made that it's a 12-scale with 3 bits "missing" - not a case that can be made about a non-western 7 note percussive scale.

[otabdeveloper4]

All scales in all cultures are based on octaves and fifths. (E.g., the ancient Chinese musical scale also has 12 tones.)

Also the so-called "Western music" standardized on 12 tones very late in the process, long after the Chinese figured it out.

> a 12-scale with 3 bits "missing"

That's all scales, even the "non-Western" ones. Microtonality is added to the standard 12 tone to add tone effects. (Synthesizers in pop music do the same trick.)

[tolciho]

To confirm the claim that "all scales in all cultures are based on octaves and fifths" one might study the scales.zip scale files and find those that do not contain octaves and fifths, which should naturally be zero if the claim is true.

https://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/

Note also that certain musical traditions were suppressed or eradicated due to their unfortunate habit of using dissonant notes such as minor seconds, as opposed to the consonant traids favored by a particular group recently in power around the world. Happy Easter!

[otabdeveloper4]

The 12 tone scale is a natural property of the world that has been independently discovered by many different cultures across the world.

The microtonalities or strange scales (like gamelan) are evolutions of the natural octave/fifths grid.

Every synthesizer has a "detune" knob.

[tolciho]

Thank you, I am somewhat aware of the knobs present on a synth, though fail to see the relevance given that various other instruments do not have dynamic retuning options. Which 12 tone scale did you have in mind (for there are many) and why do you think 12 (for there are many other numbers, some of which are used by various scale systems) is a natural property of the world? Perhaps with a more cogent argument you could make a better case for your opinion.

[defrost]

> microtonalities or strange scales (like gamelan) are evolutions of the natural octave/fifths grid.

What is your source for this opinion?

  Gamelan predates the Hindu-Buddhist culture that dominated Indonesia in its earliest records and thus represents an indigenous art form of Indonesia

~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamelan

How do you know anything that comes prior to recorded history?

[rerdavies]

129.74 is not really close to a power of two. 31-tet scales have a better approximation of a 5th (and an impressively better approximation of a minor 7th).

The obvious exception in the western system would be the blues scale, which arguably has 9 tones (7 equal tempered notes, plus a just tempered 3rd and 7th).

And Indian ragas break all of these rules. They have scales that don't have 8 notes, scales that don't use equal temperament, and even a few scales that don't repeat on octaves.

[uwagar]

powers of 2 seem to work well in many things. in rhythm too. so dont be so quick to dismiss.