[1202.4212] Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music

Skip to main content

Search arXiv

Press Enter to search · Advanced search

-->

Computer Science > Sound

arXiv:1202.4212 (cs)

[Submitted on 20 Feb 2012 (v1), last revised 9 Jun 2014 (this version, v2)]

Title:Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music

Authors:Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson<br>View a PDF of the paper titled Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music, by Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson

No PDF available, click to view other formats

Abstract: Most music theory books are like medieval medical textbooks: they contain unjustified superstition, non-reasoning, and funny symbols glorified by Latin phrases. How does music, in particular harmony, actually work, presented as a real, scientific theory of music?

The core to our approach is to consider not only the Physical phenomena of nature but also the Computational phenomena of any machine that must make sense of sound, such as the human brain. In particular we derive the following three fundamental phenomena of music:

* the Major Scale,

* the Standard Chord Dictionary, and

* the difference in feeling between the Major and Minor Triads.

While the Major Scale has been independently derived before by others in a similar manner [Helmholtz1863, Birkhoff1933], I believe the derivation of the Standard Chord Dictionary as well as the difference in feeling between the Major and Minor Triads to be original.

We show to be incomplete the theory of the heretofore agreed-upon authority on this subject, 19th-century Physicist Hermann Helmholtz [Helmholtz1863]: he says notes are in "concord" because the sound playing them together is "less worse" than that of some other notes. But note that, in this theory, more notes can only penalize, some merely less than others, and so the most harmonious sound should be a single note by itself(!) and harmony would not exist as a phenomenon of music at all.

I intend this article to be satisfying to scientists as an original contribution to science and art, yet I also intend it to be approachable by musicians and other curious members of the general public who may have long wondered at the curious properties of tonal music and been frustrated by the lack of satisfying, readable exposition on the subject. Therefore I have written in a deliberately plain and conversational style, avoiding unnecessarily formal language.

Comments:<br>Say more directly that theory of Helmholtz implies harmony would not exist as a phenomenon at all. Elaborate on the mythical "undertones" red herring, saying it arises from the visual metaphor. Replace "sustained" with "suspended" as the term for chord of two interlocked fifths; point out that the metaphor originating the term "suspended" is a red herring. Thank some readers for their feedback

Subjects:

Sound (cs.SD)

ACM classes:<br>I.2.0

Cite as:<br>arXiv:1202.4212 [cs.SD]

(or<br>arXiv:1202.4212v2 [cs.SD] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1202.4212

Focus to learn more

arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

Submission history<br>From: Daniel Wilkerson [view email]<br>[v1]<br>Mon, 20 Feb 2012 03:16:20 UTC (1,065 KB)

[v2]<br>Mon, 9 Jun 2014 21:22:18 UTC (1,067 KB)

Full-text links:<br>Access Paper:

View a PDF of the paper titled Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music, by Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson<br>HTML<br>HTML Source

view license

Current browse context:

cs.SD

next >

new<br>recent<br>| 2012-02

Change to browse by:

cs

References & Citations

NASA ADS<br>Google Scholar

Semantic Scholar

DBLP - CS Bibliography

listing | bibtex

Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson

export BibTeX citation<br>Loading...

BibTeX formatted citation

&times;

loading...

Data provided by:

Bookmark

Bibliographic Tools

Bibliographic and Citation Tools

Bibliographic Explorer Toggle

Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?)

Connected Papers Toggle

Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?)

Litmaps Toggle

Litmaps (What is Litmaps?)

scite.ai Toggle

scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?)

Code, Data, Media

Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article

alphaXiv Toggle

alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?)

Links to Code Toggle

CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?)

DagsHub Toggle

DagsHub (What is DagsHub?)

GotitPub Toggle

Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?)

Huggingface Toggle

Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?)

ScienceCast Toggle

ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?)

Demos

Demos

Replicate Toggle

Replicate (What is Replicate?)

Spaces Toggle

Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?)

Spaces Toggle

TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?)

Related Papers

Recommenders and Search Tools

Link to Influence Flower

Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?)

Core recommender toggle

CORE Recommender (What is CORE?)

Author

Venue

Institution

Topic

About arXivLabs

arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators...