As you know, we have an innate sense of musicality and we can sense when certain tones are off key and wrong. Im curious to what degree can we sense it? Is there a limit of deviation from the correct pitch where we can’t recognize that the note is off pitch anymore and it starts sounding normal?
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It comes down to the basic principles of what sound is and what chords are. The waveforms of pleasant-sounding chords overlap in ways to constructively add to each other, resulting in a rich but still relatively coherent waveform. When a note is off, it doesn’t add to the other notes quite right, so the resulting waveform is much messier, causing a dissonance we can hear. As to how far off a note can be, there is probably some correlation to the math on how the waveforms add up and the point at which a human can detect it.
Another interesting thing to note is that some people have perfect pitch and can tell if a note is off just on its own. But most people do not and wouldn’t be able to tell without some reference note. As such, if you were to play a solo on an instrument that has all of its notes shifted slightly out of tune by the same amount, most people wouldn’t be able to notice as all the waveforms would overlap nicely with each other.
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