[Smt-talk] Question About The First 16 Partials Of The Harmonic Overtone Series

[Martin Braun]

Hallo Marcel and others,

You wrote:

“We are from birth hard-wired to "quantize" the interval space by a chain of perfect fifths and octaves.
That is, we identify unique intervals according to this "algorithm". Music is built upon this.”

You are right about the octave. Today there is a biology of the octave. But there is no biology of the fifth. From our knowledge of the auditory brain that we have today – as little as that may be – it seems unlikely that we will ever see a biology of the fifth.

Many humans can learn the chain of fifths as something apparently natural. But the main reason may be that in harmonic sound spectra the group of fifth-related partials is the second strongest group after the group of octave-related partials.

Martin Braun
Neuroscience of Music
S-66492 Värmskog
Sweden
http://www.neuroscience-of-music.se/index.htm




From: Marcel de Velde 
Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2014 1:35 PM
To: smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org 
Subject: Re: [Smt-talk] Question About The First 16 Partials Of The Harmonic Overtone Series
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