Several years ago, I came across this interesting article (at least to me) about the above subject. The piece is not about the "theory" of dissonance, but more about how certain music sounds to many people when it does not follow the particular 1-3-5 chord structure with all of its subsequent systematic variations. Musicians know for example, that if you are building a G major chord, you start with G then add B (the 3rd) and D (the 5th). If you want a minor G, you flatten the 3. If you want a major 7, you add the seventh note (or F) to the chord. If you follow this mathematical structure through all its levels, you have a system for building harmony.

The author, Philip Ball, goes on to say, "Many people dislike the clashing dissonances of modernist composers such as Arnold Schoenberg. But what’s our problem with dissonance? It’s long been thought that dissonant musical chords contain acoustic frequencies that interfere with one another to set our nerves on edge. A new study proposes that in fact we prefer consonant chords for a different reason, connected to the mathematical relationship between the many different frequencies that make up the sound."

Remember, we are referring to the Western (Ionian) and Pentatonic Scales. Obviously, around the world, there are so many music scales, that it's almost impossible to count with any reasonable degree of accuracy.

Further in the article: "Cognitive neuroscientist Marion Cousineau of the University of Montreal in Quebec and her colleagues evaluated these explanations for preferences about consonance and dissonance by comparing the responses of a control group of people with normal hearing to those of people with any "amusia" (an inability to distinguish between different musical tones). Consonant chords are, roughly speaking, made up of notes that ‘sound good’ together, like middle C and the G above it (an interval called a fifth). Dissonant chords are combinations that sound jarring, like middle C and the C sharp above (a minor second). The reason why we should like one but not the other has long vexed both musicians and cognitive scientists."

As a musician that has played "Jazz" for most of my life, I've listened to hundreds of Jazz musicians; from the early "pioneers", to the modern artists. But, the one Jazz pianist that stands out in my mind as the most consistent demonstrator of "dissonance" brought to new heights, was Thelonious Monk. A good Jazz musician will find ways to depart from the melody line without losing it completely. Some Jazz artists depart from the rhythm of the melody line, and others depart from the actual melody by adding notes, taking notes away, or replacing note. What separated Monk (rather uniquely) from many Jazz pianists was varying the melody line by (to some degree or another) and playing the spaces that the "mathematics" of harmony say are out of bounds. Most commentators on Monk will say that his music employs dissonance (that is, it establishes its own intervals). I would say, in a variation of this, that his music is structured around an interplay of harmony and dissonance. For example, he might run through a chord progression that is a traditional and recognizable harmony and then throw in one chord that doesn’t fit. At other times, he might play a series of chords that are all discordant and then slip in a simple scale, running through the entire scale, exactly as laid out by the mathematics of harmony, one note at a time.

Monk's unusual approach to a song either inspired you, or completely turned you off. People have said to me, "What the fuck was that, man?" after hearing one of his pieces, such as "Blue Monk" for example or "Something In Blue".

I guess a lot of what people like or find musically palatable, has a lot to do with what they're used to listening. Growing up, I was fortunate to have been exposed to a veritable smorgasbord of music (just about every conceivable genre and style of music imaginable). So what may sound 'dissonant" to some, might sound totally 'harmonic' to my ears. What are your thoughts on the subject?

 

Last edited: Jul 27, 2016

Thanks. There was a recent article I'd read, but which I cannot find, describing how dissonant music sounds particularly displeasing to people raised on Western music, but not to others, who are likely to be raised on microtonal, quarter-note scales and other musical systems not 12-tone diatonic. This may also be linked to different cultures' lingustic relations to their musics.

Seldom discussed is the "passing tone," which is dissonance perceived as consonance as long as it doesn't overstay its welcome at the juncture between chords. It's a key component of arpeggiation, but no MIDI arpeggiator renders it - it's a part of the "human" touch.

Classical and Romantic composers utilized dissonance to create dramatic and thematic tension.

 

I was thinking about consonance/dissonance a lot and found that these terms are for the instrument players with tuned pitches. Those characteristics are ancient terms for ancient people.

In the modern days with strange sounds and timbres, this matter is not important to me anymore. I mean I can blend various frequencies together without considering what is consonant and what is dissonant.

I also hate piano roll, staff lines or even the midi keyboard because their shapes with specific keys or lines are seducing to me and limit my creativity. I hate A=440 HZ. I also don't love the "note" term. I just love the frequency spectrum.

Those terms are useful for people who deal with the vocals and predefined instruments not sound-designers or Electronic Dawishers.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jul 27, 2016

You know? I never even considered that piece of info. Glad you brought it up. I can also understand why a MIDI arpeggiator would definitely Have a problem duplicating the touch/response that is unique to humans. Music is definitely in the "ear" of the listener; much as "beauty" is in the "eye" of the beholder.

 

Good point. I'm 'still' from the old school of music. However, as I mentioned, musically my ears are open to all music. But, if I don't like something after I've heard it, I can get critical really fast.

 

Monk is one of my heroes. I don't find the recordings you posted to be that dissonant. His sense of all Melody, Harmony and Rhythm is fantastic. I've always loved the comparison of the following versions of Tea for Two.

Technically speaking you'd get a Dominant 7th. You'd need the F# for a major 7.

But what you are saying is true. Most harmony is built from a series of thirds. G (A) B (C) D (E) F

Interesting alternatives would be harmonising in 4ths, Quartal Harmony is a series of fourths. EG. G (A B) C (D E) F (G A) B

Or harmonising in seconds, Secundal Harmony. EG C D E F.

Invert all of the above and you have all of the intervals in one octave.
2nds == 7ths
3rsd == 6ths
4ths == 5ths

 

No, not quite as dissonant as many of his others, but "Something In Blue" has more than a few examples (check out his left-hand against some of his melodic phrasings). You really don't have to look for his use of dissonance, because it's there at the core.

 

Art Tatum. The Master of the Masters. Never before or since has there been a Jazz pianist like him. The man had it all. One can practice until one hand bleeds, but to play like this man, you would need to grow another pair of hands. Oscar Peterson comes close, but even he has admitted that it's like trying to catch a ghost. Thanks for posting both videos.

 

That's why the comparison is so interesting. While Tatum was pre-bop his style is almost a precursor of what was to come. Yet Monks version is almost after the bop movement. There are so many of the individual performers idiosyncrasies in those recordings. Inimitable.

At the time people, old school jazzers thought bop was ruining it. I can remember reading really harsh post-war criticism (Might've been Spike Milligan) about Monks playing. How it was "too different" and rhythmically "all over the place" to be any good.

Monk + Trane at Carnegie Hall is a fascinating recording. Must listen to any serious fans of either musician.

 

I sometimes think that dissonance calls to the primal part of our brains. I find it super effective to disrupt listeners from comfort, as though they're reacting instinctively to the calls of predators in the distance, or thunder. Interesting read and thoughts guys.

 

My late, great uncle (a fabulous alto/tenor sax and flute player) actually gave me the album many years ago when I was a snot-nosed,
thought-I-knew-it all pup. The album was, and still is, in mint condition, To preserve it even further, I digitized it with a turntable-to-WAV gadget I bought for doing that with all of my precious Jazz albums. As a matter of fact, I'm listening to it right now since you mentioned the concert. Damn, they played some rare and brilliant sets that night! Even to this day, it continues to send chills up my spine whenever I hear it. "Monk and Coltrane". Does it get any better?

Little did they know that the freakin' "Revolution" was about to descend upon their "square" heads. Thanks for mentioning the concert. Elegant memories, man!

 

Wonderfully insightful comments. I think I'll steal that "predator" line. <lol>

 

I'm not sure. It probably has something to do with genetics and how our ancestors audibly perceived threats...If you think about it, threatening sounds tend to be dissonant....In nature, harmonic sounds tend to be pleasing and harmless, as well.

It's just a hypothesis...Most human stuff has something to do with genetics and how our ancestors managed to survive the Darwinian dynamics.

 

DUDE!!! Thank you sooooo much for this article!!..

I havent even read it yet, but this topic?.. it's about the most interesting thing in music... I love dissonance... I thrive on it, so this is just crazy to get to read this.

Thank brother!!

Also... above, where the author refers to the dissonance, and harshness of playing C and C#...

Check this out... so, I listen to Deep Dubstep, along with many other genres of music. Specifically with deep dubstep though, there have been a variety of artist that will have a pad track in a song that is a sustaining form of this, I don't know, Diminished 2nd?.. is that what you would call that? Many times, in this genre, if the song is in F min., then F and F# will have the main focus... if it's in E min, then E and F, etc.

Despite the fact that there are two place in a minor-scale that have half-steps between notes, it's usually the root, and the next half step that people center around. Really cool from a theoretical standpoint.... For all I know, they may be using phrygian mode, etc... not sure, as I'm not at that level yet... been refocusing on theory with guitar after 15 years of playin that... but, anyways...

When I work on these tracks, I have a "dummy" track that plays this... and it's the beginning inspiration for starting the track. Sometimes I leave it in the track, whereby I will you know, add different FX, or do somethin that I did not do in another track... or, I may leave the sound out, cuz I don't want to always use it... never the less, great fuckin article : )

 

Last edited: Jul 28, 2016

minor 2nd?
flat 9?

 

Try not to use non musical descriptive terms to explain very structural musical concepts.
If you're thinking you're doing something different, you're not.
Ancient terms for ancient people? The basics haven't changed in centuries.
Turn off the computer and put some time in at the piano, look back at the work of composers and theorists from our past – we stand on their shoulders.
There ARE rules. And the rules in jazz scare the shit out of me.


Yin and Yang, consonance is found only by the use of dissonance.

 

Although Western music relies heavily on harmonic sounds, these are only one of a multitude of kinds of sound. Modern synthesizers can easily generate inharmonic sounds and transport us into unexplored musical realms.

All music–whether folk, pop, symphonic, modal, tonal, atonal, polytonal, microtonal, well-tempered or ill-tempered, music from the distant past or imminent future–all of it has a common origin in the universal phenomenon of the harmonic series.

As we have seen, the harmonic series is by no means “universal.” Harmonic sounds are only one kind of common sound; there are as many kinds of sounds as there are distinct kinds of vibrating objects. Musical systems have been built on many of these, and many others are undoubtedly possible.

In retrospect, a connection between the way musical instruments sound and the way they are tuned seems obvious. Almost 100 years ago, Helmholtz recognized the connection between harmonic sounds and the just intervals of the diatonic scale. Because most Western instruments have primarily harmonic partials, theorists and composers tended to limit their theorizing and composing to musical structures based on this one “kind” of sound. But there are many “kinds” of sounds.

It was not until the advent of electronic musical instruments that it became easy to create a variety of inharmonic sounds and to play them in a variety of scales and tunings. One conclusion is inescapable: Certain scales sound good with some timbres and not with others, and certain timbres sound good in some scales and not in others.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jul 28, 2016

These days there is more musical activity than ever which calls itself “microtonal”or is called this by outside observers. The term "microtonal" is commonly used to refer to any music made using intervals other than the traditional intervals of 12-note equal temperament, which has been the standard tuning model for Western music since the mid-19th century (coloristic pitch inflections notwithstanding). Under the umbrella of this definition may be found a wide range of different disciplines, some of which are only loosely inter-related or hardly related at all....


...So then why, with so many innovations to point to, hasn’t microtonality established itself more solidly in the conscience of the general musical public? Why, particularly in the United States, are so many still bewildered by—sometimes even disbelieving—the idea that the pitches themselves could change or increase in number? (A mentality theorist Margo Schulter calls “paucitonality.”) And this after a century in which so many other musical parameters have been explored and eventually accepted into the new music “establishment”: extended instrumental techniques, pantonality, timbre, sampled sound, electronically and computer-generated sound, musical multiculturalism, “non-intentionality,” issues of structure and time and even the function of music. Viewed from this angle, changing or adding pitches should seem simple, obvious, even inevitable...

Obvious answers to this question would include deep scepticism, fear of the challenge and a distaste for the unfamiliar. But in my view, another important reason is that the composers themselves, like Maneri, Eaton, Blackwood, Bancquart and Criton, have never established a truly prominent international niche, despite each one’s long-standing dedication to the “cause” of microtonality. This in turn must certainly be due to the absence of a theoretical-concept-as-rationale that is conspicuous, novel and unifying, and behind which they could collectively rally and distinguish themselves. (Bancquart: “I have no ‘theory’ for microintervallic music. I think it is too early, and in general I don't like theories.” Maneri: “My mind doesn’t understand all that mathematical stuff... I have it in my voice and in my heart” Eaton: “I've never been much of a theorist... I use whatever gets the job done...I've just simply used what I've used because of the great, great expressive potential of it.”) Even among complexity composers, the reasoning behind their use of microtones seems most often to be little more than some sort of creative urge. (Chris Dench, for example describes them as an “expressive resource,” “enstrangenings,” [sic] and “an attempt to match the subtle nuances of timbre in terms of pitch.”)

Certainly the act itself of adding intervals, though not much of a theoretical concept in and of itself, is nonetheless an act of such (quietly) earth-shattering, radical significance, that these musicians, as composers and as teachers, are more concerned with understanding the implications with regard to making music—issues such as rhythm, harmony and phrasing. Any theory for them will be limited to what applies directly to hearing and making the music successful.

And that leaves us the music itself—imagine!—from which to learn...

http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/archives/microtones1intro.html

 

The only people who resist "new innovations" are tutors. Because by accepting them, their profession is fallen in danger. Suppose how many chapters of the old-fashioned music theory or harmony books directly of indirectly are dedicated to dissonance and resolving them to consonance.

 

You're welcome. So far, I love the energy and well-thought out opinions and ideas that such topics bring to the discussion; proving that we, as musicians and music devotees, have a limitless ocean of musical concepts that have yet to be explored. I look at music as the last great frontier of human expression. Even amidst the seemingly endless turmoil and uncertainty besetting this Rock, music (does not matter the genre) is the one thing everyone can gather around and communicate. On the subject of "Deep Dubstep". I listened to the follow a few years ago and thought it was pretty damn good. (And, this is coming from a "Jazz Addict"). <lol>