Why can music evoke different emotions?

exchemist said:
I’m always aware that so much of our music is restricted to 2 modes: major and minor, out of the 12 that were employed up to Renaissance times.
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I wonder if contemporary music really is all that restricted to major and Aeolian minor - seems like a lot of modern songs (and I don't mean just Van Morrison and other hibernian buzzsaws) use a fair amount of modal stuff. Carlos Santana, Yes, REM, Zeppelin, many many others using Dorian, Lydian, etc. And there's a fair amount of chromaticism and secondary dominants going various directions. I'm trying to think if there are any members of the ancient twelve that really have been abandoned. Vaughan Williams, Ravel, Debussy, all of Les Six really, explored quite a few modal scales. And composers are always going back to early music to borrow and renovate (this means you, Paul Simon!).
 
TheVat said:
I wonder if contemporary music really is all that restricted to major and Aeolian minor - seems like a lot of modern songs (and I don't mean just Van Morrison and other hibernian buzzsaws) use a fair amount of modal stuff. Carlos Santana, Yes, REM, Zeppelin, many many others using Dorian, Lydian, etc. And there's a fair amount of chromaticism and secondary dominants going various directions. I'm trying to think if there are any members of the ancient twelve that really have been abandoned. Vaughan Williams, Ravel, Debussy, all of Les Six really, explored quite a few modal scales. And composers are always going back to early music to borrow and renovate (this means you, Paul Simon!).
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Yep. This is a criticism often levelled against Taylor Swift. I don't much care for her music, but--being a world famous impresario--I recognize talent when I see or hear it. I feel like she knows better, but is just doing this for the "likes", or their material equivalent.

Really mainstream pop music has always been kinda crap, but it used to be more... experimental or something. I mean, a tune by Neil Sedaka or Burt Bacharach was always way more interesting, even with painfully awful lyrics.
 
Re: EADGBE
gmilam said:
Been playing guitar for 60 years and I had never realized that.
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Dude, you have totally realized this! Maybe not consciously, but on some level, certainly. I mean, the whole circle of fifths thing.

When I'm playing proper classical music for myself, I favor the simple and the complex equally, I think. But with writing and performing, I've always gravitated more towards minimalism, however one conceives that. But that qualification is important. With rhythm, a 7 or 11 or 13 can sound every bit as "danceable" or whatever as a 3 or a 4--see Can. Same goes for keys and chords (and harmony).
gmilam said:
Can't recall a minor, major 7th in Dear Prudence. Are you thinking Cry Baby Cry with that brilliant chromatic walkdown from the tonic all the way to the 5th?
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In Lee Hazlewood's "Boots", there's that descending quarter note bass line at the beginning (somewhere in the middle too, I think). Obviously, you need a double bass or a fretless bass. Nancy Sinatra used to lose her shit over bassists continuously messing this up somehow--I'm not much of a string player, but even I can pull that off without error. There's a funny clip from one of the late night shows during her '90s comeback where the bassist just butchers this, but Nancy just grins and bears it.
 
Ken Fabian said:
I can play the one string bass without knowing what key it is but I have only a limited recognition of the intervals - or the underlying chord progression unless I know the song from guitar. Even with the chords written out in front of me. Familiar progressions like the blues, yes, but picking out the relative chord changes from listening alone eludes me. Yet I can usually find notes that fit for whatever the chord is - until the changes go where I don't expect.
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I am primarily keys then reeds then tuned percussion, with least ability on stringed instruments. Yet I can pick up a violin--or other fretless stringed instrument--and passably play the correct notes and intervals. It's that "familiarity" thing, along with even just a very basic understanding of physics, I think. I would imagine that this sort of thing applies across cultures, wherein the intervals--see Arabic music, for instance--are quite different.

Olivier Messiaen, one of the two greatest composers for organ ever (the other being JS Bach, of course) was a synaesthete and a birdsong enthusiast. He composed a number of works which are essentially birdsong transcriptions. with embellishments, and the results are extraordinary. So cross cultural and likely cross species to some extent, as well.
 
Very much a music amateur here, primarily at home for personal enjoyment and now in a race against time re arthritis. Rarely in public - there was a time I performed with our local music club concerts but it was usually more stressful than fun. The box bass is great fun jamming - but I suspect I rely on getting near enough to the right pitch, or just being headed towards it makes it sound 'right' rather than actually getting it just right. Yet I am confident that whatever the tuning I start with (playing alone) I can maintain. Don't have perfect pitch, but I do wonder if by remembering a well known tune I can recall the correct pitch for the key that goes with it? If so, could a lot of people, more than we think, learn to have perfect pitch? (Getting yet further off topic here, just something I've wondered.)

Keys having emotional 'flavors' ? They never seem like that to me. The relative differences between notes - the intervals as arpeggio or as paired notes and chords - do seem to have emotional flavors. The changes between chords seem to have flavors. Why those combinations do that - and do it similarly in different people - remains a mystery to me. But I don't need to understand it to enjoy it.

Birdsong? I am quite fortunate for the range of bird life where I live (rural Eastern Australia). I am aware of one songwriter who has written songs built around Australian bird melodies. I have occasionally noticed a call that sounds like two (rising) notes sung simultaneously - without managing to get a clear look to identify the bird. That is the only birdcall I have noticed that is like that. My 'ear' is not good enough to identify the kind of interval it uses. We get some remarkable bird duets too, notably from the Noisy Friarbird.
 
Ken Fabian said:
Very much a music amateur here, primarily at home for personal enjoyment and now in a race against time re arthritis. Rarely in public - there was a time I performed with our local music club concerts but it was usually more stressful than fun. The box bass is great fun jamming - but I suspect I rely on getting near enough to the right pitch, or just being headed towards it makes it sound 'right' rather than actually getting it just right. Yet I am confident that whatever the tuning I start with (playing alone) I can maintain. Don't have perfect pitch, but I do wonder if by remembering a well known tune I can recall the correct pitch for the key that goes with it? If so, could a lot of people, more than we think, learn to have perfect pitch? (Getting yet further off topic here, just something I've wondered.)

Keys having emotional 'flavors' ? They never seem like that to me. The relative differences between notes - the intervals as arpeggio or as paired notes and chords - do seem to have emotional flavors. The changes between chords seem to have flavors. Why those combinations do that - and do it similarly in different people - remains a mystery to me. But I don't need to understand it to enjoy it.

Birdsong? I am quite fortunate for the range of bird life where I live (rural Eastern Australia). I am aware of one songwriter who has written songs built around Australian bird melodies. I have occasionally noticed a call that sounds like two (rising) notes sung simultaneously - without managing to get a clear look to identify the bird. That is the only birdcall I have noticed that is like that. My 'ear' is not good enough to identify the kind of interval it uses. We get some remarkable bird duets too, notably from the Noisy Friarbird.
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I must say I think the notion of keys having different flavours is all balls. Different modes yes, but not different keys in the same mode, e.g G major vs. C major.

The only basis I can see for this idea of keys having flavours is due to orchestration. For instance the open strings on the violin are G, D, A and E. All other pitches involve stopping by the fingers. There is certain extra sonority to an open string, which might give, say, the keynote chords in G major an extra depth - on the violins. Here's an example, Agnus Dei from Bach's B Minor Mass:

This is in G minor. A lot of resonance from the bottom Gs which give it a certain groundedness, in spite of the ethereal, chromatic nature of the melody and harmonisation (the score is full of accidentals). There is also a G string on the cello, so you get the effect in the bass as well. But this would not apply to other instruments, and certainly not to an equal temperament keyboard instrument.

Another example is D major which, before the valved trumpet, was the key all trumpet music more or less had to be in, hence its prevalence in triumphant or military pieces in Baroque music. (Bach uses a high F trumpet in the 2nd Brandenburg, but that seems to be unusual and must be a bastard to play.)

I suppose historically, in the days before equal temperament, different keys would have had rather different qualities, to the point of weirdness if one strayed too far from the "home key" of C. But anything post Bach (1750) would have been equal temperament so that would not any longer have been true. If you want a laugh, listen to this:

Christopher Hogwood playing an alternative (and I use the term advisedly!) Allemande from Bach's E♭ major French Suite, on a harpsichord tuned to one of the many non-equal temperaments of Bach's time. The further from the home key it gets the more strange and discordant it sounds. There is a palpable sense of relief when it comes home again. I can imagine Anna Magdalena wincing and saying : No dear, I don't think your public is quite ready for that." :)
 
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exchemist said:
Christopher Hogwood playing an alternative (and I use the term advisedly!) Allemande from Bach's E♭ major French Suite, on a harpsichord tuned to one of the many non-equal temperaments of Bach's time. The further from the home key it gets the more strange and discordant it sounds. There is a palpable sense of relief when it comes home again. I can imagine Anna Magdalena wincing and saying : No dear, I don't think your public is quite ready for that." :)
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Parts are ok but some parts are.....


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Contentment is how I feel. I'm 50 so I'm allowed to feel this way, nothing to prove anymore. I'm happy. Happiness is subjective, but this is the main reason I'm happy at this point in time.
 
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