Reddit reviews Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization

There's a delightful book about the history of different tunings called Temperament, by Stuart Isacoff. I picked it up on a lark and found it surprisingly involving. Something about the idea of particular tunings being favored or disfavored by the church and therefore (in the church's opinion) pleasant or offensive to God amuses me to this day.

Octave equivalence is universal among humans, barring neural damage or problems. However, there are no universal preferences for any other intervals. For example, some scales in the folk music of places such as Java don't have a fifth in them... although they do have an interval that is (I believe) 17 cents sharper than a sharp. I'm not 100% sure if that's the exact value, but it's between a fifth and a quarter tone above a fifth.

The smallest interval that can be discriminated by the ear when the two pitches are not played at the same time is about 50 cents (a quarter tone). Because of this, the upward limit for number of scale tones per octave is 24.

If you want to read a good book that gives a lot more information than I can on the subject than I can, I highly recommend The Social Psychology of Music by Paul R. Farnsworth. Daniel Levitin's book This Is Your Brain on Music also discusses pitch, and I believe that's where I read that the limit is 24 tones.

And, more bonus information just because I feel like you might appreciate it. When we listen to two intervals at the same time, we can discern differences much smaller. Starting with two tones that are at the same pitch, if one of the tone rises, different things happen as the interval gets wider and wider.

While the tones are the same pitch, the sounds' amplitudes are added, which (in most situations) just makes it twice as loud. As the second tone rises to 15 Hz above the first tone, the average of the two tones is heard with a beating noise with a frequency of the difference in tone. Thus if one tone is at 440 and the other is at 450, the ear will hear 445 with a "beating" sound that happens 10 times per second. Above 15Hz, there is an unpleasant sound until the difference between the tones' pitches reaches a point called the Limit of Discrimination. This point is arbitrary and depends on things like the absolute values of the two pitches (for example, lower pitches are harder to discriminate between) and the listener theirself. Above the Limit of Discrimination, though, there is a sensation of hearing two pitches instead of just one. From there upwards, it reaches what's called the critical band, which is a continuum of decreasing dissonance. Above that point, most of the effects have more to do with culture than how the ear works.

Also, about scales. Traditionally, pentatonic scales come from Europe and West Asia, but heptatonic (7-note) scales were used primarily in the Middle East and India. You might also check out Temperament: How Music Became a Great Battlefield for the Great Minds of Western Civilization, because it points out how arbitrary our decisions of pitch in Western music are.

TL;DR: The octave is the only interval that's universal

>One of his problems as a kid was the complete lack of explanation as to why he needs to do certain things and unless he understands he loses interest.

Well, something to keep in mind ahead of time is that music theory is not a set of rules someone wrote down and everyone has to follow. The music comes first and then music theory is how people go back after the fact and explain why it worked.

I understand wanting to know why you do something, but it's really difficult with music. You really can't follow it as a set of rules, but also there are so many concepts both in theory and in practical playing application that you simply can't explain or understand until you understand more of it.

It's like doing a 10,000 piece puzzle with no picture on the box. You can connect a few pieces here and there, but you literally have to make significant progress to ever see the big picture and in this case, nobody can just say, "It's a puppy in a box of flowers." Trying to explain denser concepts to someone without enough of the piece put together is like trying to explain the color green to a blind person.

>Why are the keys layed out the way the are? Why did the scales develop the way they did (western or any other).

Tell him to read this book. It's not a theory book, but it basically gives the history of tonality, temperament and specifically how we got the scales and keyboard layout we have.

As dry as it sounds, it's actually quite the page turner. That said, while it's aimed to be accessible to lay people, certain concepts are going to be harder to really wrap your head around depending on levels of musical understanding.

>What really is a chord?

Multiple notes played at the same time. You'll have to be more specific.

>Why do certain chord sequences "work"?

That's a bit complicated... I recently responded to someone else explaining why I, IV, and V are so prevalent. I'll paste it in here:

Honestly, it's a ton of math a bit of culture.

It's a ridiculous dense topic, but essentially, intervals are made of ratios or sound waves. Certain intervals are more consonant than others. I, IV, and V are the only diatonically major chords in a given key, so they are particularly good landing points, but for other reasons having a lot to do with math, the construction of the major scale, and centuries of cultural programming, things want to go back to I.

vi and ii are next up. They share common tones with I and IV respectively and can be used as weaker substitutes for them as well. They are diatonically minor. The only other diatonic minor is iii. It's the redheaded step child. The combination of notes it shares with both I and V just make it a very shitty version of either. It has the 7, so it doesn't work as I sub. It has a 3, so it's almost too stable to work as a good V sub (V has a ton of tension from 7 wanting to go to I, and a little from 2 wanting to go to either 1 or 3; Making it V7 adds the 4 which wants to go strongly to 3... so a V7 reeeally wants to go to I).

The last man our is the viio . Diminished chord are pretty weak in general, thought they can work as passing chords, or as V subs and deeper in jazz theory, they actually do some amazing stuff as dim7s. Diminished triads are just lamer. While it has all of the tension tones of V, it lacks 5... which really wants to create strong root motion to 1. You'll notice that a lot in strong cadences in the bass.

The TL;DR is that it's about tension and release. The I chord feels like home, everything else wants to try to get there. Common tones and adjacent tensions create the motion that makes some chords want to go to others.

>I have looked through the sub for book recommendations and Alfred's series seem to always come up. Do you know whether they include this kind of theory explanation or do you have any other recommendations?

They really don't. They cover a bit of basic theory, but no much of the why. I think a better resource for theory study is this series of books. It's honestly a bit more practical and useful than the common practice theory you'll find on musictheory.net or in college texts. Those honestly should be reserved for people interested in period niche music study.

That said, as method books, Alfred are great. Seriously, he should not try to learn all of the theory before actually practicing. Work from those kinds of books, just don't get hung up on the theory right now.

>To sum it up, he would like something that doesn't just list the basics in theory but provides with an insight as to why it works and how did it evolve.

The Stuart Isacoff book should at least whet his appetite, but I'd strongly caution against getting hung up on it. That way lies madness. It's like refusing to learn arithmetic unless someone can explain calculus to you first. He really just needs to get started, learn a lot of theory, learn a lot of playing, and then his understanding of the concepts will make him understand why it works the way it does. Also, make sure he explores theory with his ears and not exclusively on paper. That overly mathematical approach will never even teach a fraction of what can be made clear by listening. Too many people will literally practice theory exercise on paper and never actually play them and listen to them.

So much of the understanding comes from the hearing it in context and that's why it's nearly impossible to explain all of it or even much of it purely in text.

Pretty good little book I read a couple of years ago on the topic: Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization by Stuart Isacoff.

An accessible read, not overly technical, which describes the progression of music "science" within social and scientific historical contexts.

On a piano? Nothing. They correspond to the same note and don't have a difference.

But, a piano is tweaked out of line with the pure physics of music, tempered the same way one would temper steel. Most instruments are tempered like this and can only play a finite number of notes. Singers, on the other hand, can sing whatever notes they want, and so it's possible for a singer to sing whatever they want.

For a singer? The difference is in context. C# in relation to A is slightly different from Db in relation to F.

There's a great book called Temperament that explains the difference and why it was such a big deal to so many of the great minds of the past 600 years.

While I don't have a formal music education, I think a discussion of harmony should discuss a bit of history on:

> Polyphony: of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody

and

> Counterpoint: the relationship between voices that are harmonically interdependent (polyphony) yet independent in rhythm and contour

In the western world, the development of polyphony occured largely with religious music of the medieval eras, such as choir chants. The composition of this music was basically to work a set of simultaneous melodies (horizontally) while maintaining an harmonious chord (vertically) at most times. The melodies themselves often came from sung folklore, but the set of conventions built into formal (eg. church) polyphonic music form a strong bedrock of what is considered harmonious today.

Polyphony sort of merged into counterpoint in the renaissance, becoming the study and research of a fairly complex model not only the melodies and chords, but also of "motifs" or relationships between the simultaneous parts. Here's a video with what these rules look like.

It's important to realize that in the renaissance, music was more like a science. Music was godly, and therefore had to follow the rules. But there was also the maths. When commenter -Rewind talks about chromatic scale and intervals, we have to understand that these things were settled in that same era from a strong desire to have a "perfect" musical model. The more golden ratio, the better, and composition was closely tied to that. Basically, one could/would not simply sit on a harpsichord and improvise free jazz. A fascinating subject and here's one accessible book about it.

So the job of the composer was to realize his "inspiration" through established conventions, evolution was rather slow and it explains why music from that era tend to all sound similar. Despite this, composers managed to make music greater than sum of their parts, probably culminating with Bach who mastered the ability to make something arguably beautiful out of strict conventions through sheer greatness.

Later, each consecutive classical era (Mozart->Beethoven->Chopin->Debussy) progressively eliminated the rigidity of counterpoint in favor of artistic expression. However, much of the basic harmonies and motifs that form western music can be traced back to polyphony and counterpoint.

Anyone interested on the subject should take a look at this book: Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization by Stuart Isacoff