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A biological rationale for musical scales
1Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Neurobiology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America. kzg2101@columbia.edu
Plos One
|December 10, 2009
Summary
Humans prefer musical scales with intervals similar to harmonic series, explaining why only a few scales are widely used across cultures. This preference may reflect innate auditory processing of vocalizations.
Area of Science:
- Musicology
- Psychoacoustics
- Ethnomusicology
Background:
- Music relies on scales, which are specific sets of tones dividing octaves.
- Despite a wide range of audible pitches, most musical traditions use a limited number of scales (5-7 tones).
- The reason for this limited selection of scales remains unknown.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate why humans utilize a small subset of possible tone combinations for music.
- To identify the acoustic properties of widely used musical scales.
- To explore the relationship between scale intervals and the harmonic series.
Main Methods:
- Analysis of the component intervals of historically and culturally prevalent musical scales.
- Comparison of scale intervals to the spectral characteristics of the harmonic series.
- Assessment of spectral similarity across scales from different musical traditions.
Main Results:
- The most common musical scales exhibit the highest spectral similarity to the harmonic series.
- This spectral similarity suggests a preference for intervals reflecting natural harmonic structures.
- Significant spectral similarity was observed among scales used across diverse cultures.
Conclusions:
- Human preference for specific musical scales may be rooted in the spectral properties of the harmonic series.
- These findings suggest that scale selection is influenced by innate auditory processing, possibly related to vocalizations.
- The study highlights universal acoustic principles underlying musical scale construction across cultures.
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