[vikramkr]

Awfully dismissive of non western tonal harmonic systems for a universal theory of music? The whole idea that musical traditions that use less harmonic structures just haven't unlocked all the structures available is kind of absurd - those musical traditions have been developing for the same amount of time - and there's a pretty huge blind spot for other traditions. The whole microtones just being ornamentations - no that's absolutely not the case. Trying to ignore/hand wave away all the counterexamples and force them into your system is how you get epicycles. If you're gonna do a universal theory of music it would be a good idea to engage deeply with more than one system. As a universal theory of harmonica maybe that's fine but it's sloppy and motivated reasoning

[vikramkr]

More directly the stuff about ranking different cultures on a scale of musical sophistication that ends in western harmonic music and dismissing obvious counterexamples as cultures that just haven't gotten there yet or just use other feature as ornamentation or just happened to not stumble on things because they were at the lowest level of musical sophistication is almost comically ethnocentric. Its an easy hammer to reach for when your counterarguments are not European (though in this case you're having to ignore an awful lot of European music and the huge influence of Greek music on the middle East) but yeesh