For a long time, we’ve believed that music’s beauty comes from perfect patterns, thanks to the Ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras.
He said that the best-sounding music follows simple number ratios, like 3 to 4, creating what’s known as ‘consonance’—those moments in music that feel just right to our ears.
This idea has shaped Western music for centuries, making us think that straying from these patterns leads to ‘dissonance,’ or sounds that clash.
However, a groundbreaking study by researchers from the University of Cambridge, Princeton, and the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics is challenging everything we thought we knew about musical harmony.
Published in Nature Communications, their research reveals two major ways Pythagoras got it wrong.
First off, it turns out we don’t always prefer music that sticks strictly to those mathematical ratios. In fact, we like a bit of deviation—a touch of imperfection in music makes it more appealing to us.
“We prefer slight amounts of deviation. We like a little imperfection because this gives life to the sounds, and that is attractive to us,” explained Dr. Peter Harrison from Cambridge’s Faculty of Music.
The second revelation comes from looking beyond Western musical instruments. The study focused on instruments like the ‘bonang,’ a Javanese gamelan instrument made of small gongs, which don’t fit the neat number ratios Pythagoras loved.
These instruments produce a different kind of music, one that can’t be explained by traditional Western theories of harmony.
The research involved an online lab where over 4,000 people from the US and South Korea participated in various experiments to rate the pleasantness of different chords or to adjust notes to make them sound better. Surprisingly, participants often chose slightly off-tune notes over perfectly tuned ones, showing a preference for imperfection.
Moreover, when participants listened to music from non-Western instruments like the bonang, they found new types of harmony that don’t fit into the Western musical scale. These harmonies are instinctively appreciated, even by those unfamiliar with Javanese music, suggesting that our understanding of what sounds good isn’t limited to what we’re used to.
This finding opens up a world of possibilities for music creation, suggesting that exploring different instruments can lead to new and universally enjoyable harmonic languages. It challenges the notion that music must adhere to strict mathematical relationships and encourages a more global exploration of musical sounds.
Dr. Harrison is excited about the implications of this research for musicians and producers. He suggests that blending Western harmony with melodies from other cultures could be more successful if it embraced the unique sounds of global instruments. This could lead to music that is both harmonious and rich in cultural diversity.
The team hopes their work will inspire further exploration into the vast array of musical instruments from around the world, potentially unlocking new concepts of harmony.
By stepping away from traditional Western notions of perfect ratios and embracing the imperfections and unique sounds of global instruments, we can create music that resonates on a universal level, offering fresh and engaging listening experiences to people everywhere.
