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There's a new study out that demonstrates how musical experience can change people's taste in music. This is good news to me because I've often wondered why I like so much music that other people couldn't care less about.
It can be quite amusing when journalists who are not musicians are assigned to write stories about music. It's often clear they don't quite get the story. Writing for Canwest News Service, the journalist gets this story mostly right, but not quite.
Most people, especially non-musicians, prefer the sound of harmony over dissonance. Harmony is when two notes ring together and sound similar--alike but different. For example, notes at frequencies of 200, 300, 400 hertz, tend to sound good together because they are all multiples of 100.
But notes that are somewhat dissonant tend to have a wobbling sound. This is called "beat." We listen for this beat when we're tuning our guitars -- if the notes are not in perfect unison, you can hear a fluttering underneath the tones. As the notes get closer in pitch, the fluttering dissipates. When the notes are exactly the same, it disappears.
But there are many musical genres that intentionally use dissonance to create dramatic tension. For example, blues musicians use the tritone interval, and that's as dissonant as it gets. They called it "the blue note." It's exactly half-way to the octave, and if you play it against the root, it is pure dissonance! (For example, play G and C# together)
In medieval days, monks were not allowed to compose music with the tritone. It was said to be the interval of the devil.
We can measure out harmonic tension in a song by adding a little or a lot, depending on taste. And it always seemed to me that musicians tended to be more open to the sound of dissonance.
If we write songs without any tension, it can sound a little boring. It's just a little too nice.
Western music, other than blues, jazz, and avant guarde styles, tends to have only a little dissonance. But the music of some other cultures around the world uses more dissonance, and therefore people from those cultures tend to be more accepting of it.
The writer of the article wanted to use an example of how this might work, but that's where he goes a little wrong. He says, "In other places in the world, where dissonant chords might be popular, Stevie Wonder might sound like fingernails on a chalkboard."
That's not true. If they are used to hearing dissonant sounds, then hearing more harmonic sounds would not be grating at all, it would just sound a little boring harmonically.
However, the reverse of what the writer says is true. Westerners sometimes find music from other cultures like "nails on a chalkboard" because many westerners are not used to hearing dissonant chords.
But anyhow, a little dissonance is a good thing, to my ears.
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