Whenever I hear someone play an instrument, I can always tell when they’ve played the wrong note even if it’s my first time hearing it, why is that?
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Music is written in keys. Only 8 notes go in a key (usually, I think three are exceptions.) so if you play a note not in that key, it is obviously wrong.
Music is a language. It has internal logics and rules. Like with languages, if you are exposed to it, you absorb these rules and ‘feel’ them, even if you don’t study linguistics.
Like there are different languages, there are different ‘musics’. You may be ‘native’ in one but not understand another. In those you might not detect a ‘wrong note’. Likewise, rules do not prevent musicians to deliberately use ‘wrong notes’ to some effect, like the poets invent or distort words sometimes.
If we talk about the Western music, the most common rule is the use of so called ‘modes’ (like ‘major’ or ‘minor’). A mode ‘selects’ 7 specific notes out of the available 12 in each octave (according to some logics we won’t go into here), and the piece is normally played only using these 7 notes. If a ‘wrong’ one is used, it’s easily audible.
Because you have learnt it from a young age. Try and listen to traditional Indian music, you won’t know if anything is off-tune, trust me!
First, you’re only aware of the wrong notes you’re aware of. You’ve almost certainly heard someone play a wrong note and didn’t realize it because the note happened to sound fine with the music around it.
Second, a piece of music is usually written using a subset of notes that are known to “sound good” together. In western music, this is usually 5-7 notes out of the 12 available. This isn’t a purely cultural thing – sounds are waves, and waves with lengths that are multiples of each other have unique properties that we tend to find pleasant. If a musician plays a random note, or even worse, a random sound, it may fall outside of the subset of notes being used in that particular piece of music. Your ear will detect that the waves don’t add up as much as you’re used to.
Our ears are well trained to know what “correct” combinations of notes sound like, so anything that doesn’t fit into what we expect to hear (those combinations of notes that we’ve been hearing all our lives) stands out as “wrong.”
Maybe you’re not a baker, but you have eaten a lot of chocolate chip cookies in your life. Today the baker made them with too much vanilla extract and not enough salt. You might not be able to tell exactly what is wrong with the recipe, but it doesn’t taste like what you’re used to it tasting like.
Because not all ratios of frequencies sound good together.
Simple ratios generally sound the best, such as 2:1, 3:2, etc. Adding other frequencies generally sounds like “off key”.
Songs are written using scales. Which scale you are using is your Key. If someone plays or sings a note that doesn’t belong in that scale, it’s very easy to notice. Sometimes it can be intentional and even pleasant to play “wrong” notes or bend the key. But if it’s unintentional to play a note out of key, it’s generally going to be very noticeable and jarring since your ear is tuned to the specific key of the song subconsciously
Are you asking about off key, or the wrong note? Off key generally means what you hear is akin an out of tune instrument. Pianos, guitars, violins, etc allow the tightening or loosing of the strings to put notes on key.
The so called wrong note means that it wasn’t the note that the listener expected. In reality, sometimes it is the wrong note, but occasionally the composer intentionally surprises the listener.
There are different tonic scales throughout the world. If you grew up listening to the music that uses for example the western tonic scales, your brain remembers.
What makes this so interesting is, we have a neuron that fires for every note. When a note in the scale is played in the wrong place, it leaves you with an unresolved feeling due to your neuron program.
Edited to finish typing due to busted phone.
You’ve never read this comment before. That said, were a word to not make sense in it, I am bazinga sure you’d be able to tell which one it was, right?
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