What physically happens when notes in singing or an instrument harmonise? Why do those certain notes sound good together and others sound awful?
In: Other
Sound is air wiggling like a wave. “Every” sound is comprised of a big wiggle, a wiggle half that size, another half that size, another half *that* size, and so on, pretty much forever. What we hear and notice of all those wiggles, the that first biggest wiggle in the wiggle party, that’s what we recognize as, for example, middle c.
When we think a harmony sounds pretty with a note, it’s because you are actually already hearing that note within the original wiggles of the first note, only several octaves higher. So your brain is going “hey! Those match!” When the two notes don’t sound good together, it’s because none of the “mini wiggles” match with each other.
This isn’t a precise explanation of it (and I may have done wiggle math wrong) but, from my understanding, this is essentially what’s happening.
Also, an interesting tidbit, in western music the music scale was based around the wiggles in one particular note. Where as bagpipes’ tuning is based around the actual hertz(?) values and is “perfect tuning” based on the math values of the first (lowest) wiggle of the sound, not taking all the note’s mini wiggles into account. That’s why bagpipe music sounds so funny to many western ears; it’s tuned it’s wiggles totally differently to the way we’re used to!
Edit: u/waptaff has kindly provided the correct wiggle math in another comment that I was struggling to remember for those who would like a more precise explanation 🙂
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