Science News | Exactly when are chords pleasant? | Science News @ScienceNewsMag | Uploaded March 2024 | Updated October 2024, 11 hours ago.
Here, 196 U.S. participants judged the pleasantness of octaves played with synthetic musical notes. The video tracks how people’s ratings for chord pleasantness as the interval between the notes changes. As the interval approaches 12 — a supposedly perfect octave marked with a blue vertical line— pleasantness ratings spike. But they peak just before and after this “ideal” octave interval, when sound pulsates slightly.
Read more: sciencenews.org/article/timbre-harmony-music-scales-culture
Video: R. Marjieh et al/Nature Communications 2024