Researchers writing in Current Biology say they may have determined what makes musical notes sound good (or bad) by studying the preferences of more than 250 college students from Minnesota to a variety of musical and nonmusical sounds.
The University of Minnesota team was able to independently manipulate both the harmonic frequency relations of the sounds and another quality known as beating. (Harmonic frequencies are all multiples of the same fundamental frequency. For example, notes at frequencies of 200, 300, and 400 hertz are all multiples of 100. Beating occurs when two sounds are close but not identical in frequency. Over time, the frequencies shift in and out of phase with each other, causing the sound to wax and wane in amplitude and producing an audible "wobbling" quality.)
The researchers' results show that musical chords sound good or bad mostly depending on whether the notes being played produce frequencies that are harmonically related or not. Beating didn't turn out to be as important. Surprisingly, the preference for harmonic frequencies was stronger in people with experience playing musical instruments. In other words, learning plays a role—perhaps even a primary one, argues Josh McDermott, the study's lead author.
Whether you would get the same result in people from other parts of the world remains to be seen, McDermott says, but the effect of musical experience on the results suggests otherwise. "It suggests that Westerners learn to like the sound of harmonic frequencies because of their importance in Western music. Listeners with different experience might well have different preferences." The diversity of music from other cultures is consistent with this. "Intervals and chords that are dissonant by Western standards are fairly common in some cultures," he says. "Diversity is the rule, not the exception."
That's something that is increasingly easy to lose sight of as Western music has come to dominate radio waves all across the globe. "When all the kids in Indonesia are listening to Eminem," McDermott says, "it becomes hard to get a true sense."
Citation: Josh H. McDermott, Andriana J. Lehr, Andrew J. Oxenham, 'Individual Differences Reveal the Basis of Consonance', Current Biology, MAy 2010; doi:10.1016/j.cub.2010.04.019
