Humans can distinguish about 240 different pitches across an octave in the middle of the hearing range, so the number of possible tone collections is enormous. Western classical, folk and popular music, along with many other traditions, keep returning to a handful of of five to seven tones. Nobody knew why.
They sound like voices. The intervals of the most widely used scales, throughout history and across cultures, are those with the greatest overall to a . The authors suggest people prefer tone combinations that reflect the spectral characteristics of human vocalization, and note how much the scales of different cultures resemble each other.
Scales are collections of tones that divide octaves into specific intervals used to create music, and humans can distinguish about 240 different pitches over an octave in the middle of the hearing range. In principle a very large number of tone combinations could have been used.
In practice almost none of them are. Compositions in Western classical, folk and popular music, as well as in many other musical traditions, are based on a relatively small number of scales that typically comprise only five to seven tones.
Why humans employ only a few of the enormous number of possible combinations was not known. The analysis here compares the intervals of the most widely used scales, throughout history and across cultures, against a harmonic series.
Those scales turn out to be the ones with the greatest overall spectral similarity to that series, which suggests humans prefer tone combinations that reflect the spectral characteristics of vocalizations. The analysis also highlights how much the scales of different cultures resemble one another.
wat. The scales that survived are the ones whose intervals most resemble the harmonics of a voice.
wat wat
It proposes that the music people find natural is tuned to the sound of their own species rather than to mathematics alone.
How do we know?
Gill and Purves compared the intervals of widely used scales against a harmonic series, measuring overall spectral similarity and examining how much the scales of different cultures resemble each other.
What is still unknown
Spectral similarity is a correlation between scale structure and vocal sound, which does not establish that one caused the other.
Learn something?
Where to next
How many different feelings can music raise without saying a word?music
Why does almost every language name red before it names blue?perception
Can an audience in a hall really hear a Stradivarius?music