what is harmony and why does it sound good?
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It’s probably worth starting with the fact that most sounds we hear aren’t one frequency but multiple frequencies playing together, even a note on a piano isn’t just the frequency of that note.
When we play a note on an instrument it plays the root frequency (the frequency of the note) and a set of other frequencies above that note, these are harmonic frequencies, the volume of these higher frequencies play a key part in how the instrument sounds and why instruments playing the same note sound different, this is called timbre.
Essentially when a singer sings one note and another singer sings a harmony of that note, the second singer is complimenting the harmonic frequencies of that first singer by singing one or more of the notes the first singer produced. Like painting with the same colours as each other.
Dissonance is where you’re singing notes that don’t compliment that original singer and that sounds harsh because there are too many frequencies that don’t compliment each other.
Getting into the reason why harmonies sound good is more of a study of maths and philosophy going back thousands of years, but if you’re interested it’s a very interesting topic to deep dive into.
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