Music for Aliens

What is music?

My husband says that music is:

“Something nice to listen to.”

As someone who doesn’t fully understand how to be human, this doesn’t really make sense to me. The compulsory music classes at school made me feel like I was a computer, drawing my bow on the double bass to make sounds that didn’t resonate, or counting notes to write a formulaic chord down on my exam paper. People told me that I sang out of tune, and they could have been speaking a different language for all that I understood.

To be clear, I do like music. My favourites are Ben Folds, Kokia and Stromae. I enjoy their storytelling. I think their lyrics and rhythms are poetic and ingenious. My husband likes math rock, like Chon, Vasudeva and Tricot. He thinks the instruments are virtuosic and defy expectations. We dislike each other’s music choices. I have no idea how one dances to math rock.

But why? What makes music music?

Is it variations in pitch? Birds sing but we don’t seek to listen to birdsong unless we have a scientific interest in how birds communicate. We do, however, listen to rap.

Is it rhythm? Because the rhythmic crashing of waves isn’t music, but Gregorian plainchant or monastic shakuhachi flute playing is still considered music.

Or is it the human element?

Adam Neely says that music is:

“The relationship between regular events in time, as felt through hearing and in the body via wriggly air. Slow events in time create rhythm, and fast events in time create pitch."

Nice music is created through the "ritualistic application of mathematical ratios".

To me that makes more sense.

What I understand about music

I’ve been watching a lot of TwoSet videos lately. Even though I’m not a musician, I find the videos funny. They also have captions! It has, however, been making me think about music theory, and about how so much of basic music theory is assumed knowledge that people seem to acquire at birth.

In year 7, the teacher said that major chords felt happy and minor chords felt sad.

I felt bored.

The teacher said that consonant chords sounded nice and dissonant chords sounded bad.

It all sounded very confusing.

At the end of the term, we had a listening exam where we had to write down if a sound was major chord or minor chord - the emotion evoked could give us clues. I guessed the entire way through. I had a 50% chance of getting it right, and I could make up my marks on the written portion of the exam. In hindsight, more than 15 years later, I should have complained. There are all sorts of issues with making a congenitally deaf girl take an aural exam - and my tone deafness is only one of them.

And more than 15 years later, I am still confused about why we learnt all these things, so I spent a few nights trawling through the music theory section of Wikipedia.

Here is what I have learnt.

Pitch in music

Pitch is determined by how many times a second a particle vibrates - i.e. the frequency of the soundwaves. You can see visible vibrations in harp strings as they are plucked. High pitch sounds have waves that are close to each other (short wavelength). Low pitch sounds have waves that are further apart (long wavelength).

Pitch is measured by Hertz - the number of pressure waves per second that would move past a fixed point. It is also the same as the number of vibrations per second made by particles as they transmit the sound.

A pure note is a sound that is one single frequency - it looks like a smooth wave on a graph. Noise is when notes are not pure - it looks like a bumpy line on a graph - and when there are no repeating patterns.

But humans like patterns - pattern recognition feels good. Humans also like surprises (twists, subversions) since it creates interest. So music is a collection of patterns and surprises. (Math rock loving husband agrees with this definition.)

A melody is created when you have a pattern in pitches and rhythm.

Generally, in Western music, the spectrum of pitches are separated into octaves. An octave is the interval between one pitch and its equivalent pitch, which is double its sound frequency. An interval is the relationship between two pitches - how far apart they are. To musician ears, two pitches that have an interval of one octave sound the same (but also somehow also not the same). Most musical cultures use the concept of octaves.

The dominant music system these days is 12 Tone Equal Temperament. This means that the octave is divided into 12 equal parts. (A B C D E F G plus the sharps and flats) The space between the notes has two semitones, and it can be divided into 100 cents. Adults who are not tone deaf can recognise pitch differences bigger than 25 cents (half a semitone).

Modern instruments are built to align with the 12-TET system.

Prior to the Baroque period, other Equal Temperament systems were also used in Western classical music, like 19 EDO (Equal Division of the Octave), and instruments like the archicembalo can be tuned to 31-TET. Alternative turning systems are also used outside of the Western world. Carnatic music divides the octave into 22 shrutis and the Arab tone system is 24-TET.

The solfege system is also 12-TET but instead of letters, it uses Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti. Hence, the Sound of Music is literally Doe Ray Me Far Sew La Tea.

Although the 12-TET system has been around for a while, it wasn’t until 1580 when a Chinese prince (Zhu ZaiYu) was able to develop the mathematical theory around it. Some other European guy (Simon Stevin) tried doing something similar in later years too but he wasn’t quite as accurate.

In the 17th century, scientists figured out that sound was a wave and started trying to measure sound. They were only able to figure out how to observe soundwaves in the 19th century. This is when we start to describe pitch in Hertz.

The following table, scraped from Wikipedia, shows the frequency of different pitches, as divided up by the 12-TET system and anchored around the pitch of A440Hz.

The math is not AeStHeTiC but this is negligible because Hertz is calculated using seconds, which is an arbitrary measure of time, and the current standard of maths uses base-10, which we use because we have ten fingers. I’m sure if we tried we could find a logarithmic counting system and time measurement method that would give us musical pitches denoted by round numbers.

We don’t spend too much time on octaves that are lower or higher than those seen on this graph because they are outside the hearing range of normal human beings.

Prior to the introduction of scientific pitch, A was tuned to an arbitrary pitch - whatever sounded good at the time. Gregorian monks tuned A to the lowest note they could sing. The very first tuning forks put A at 400-420 Hz. The French government set the international standard for A at 435 Hz in 1859. British orchestras set A at 439Hz to sound the same as the French standard, accounting for changes in temperature and humidity. But 439 is a prime number and hard to replicate in laboratory conditions, so A got rounded up to 440. American instrument makers started creating instruments tuned to A440, and the A440 standard was set in 1955 by the ISO.

In tune

Being on pitch is relative. The melody is created through a series of intervals relative to the starting pitch (the tonic note), which in itself is also a set distance from the chosen tuning pitch.

When people play music together, they need to tune to the same hertz. Otherwise they will be playing at slightly different pitches. Someone will be playing out of tune relative to the group.

This is different to playing in harmony, which is when different notes within a chord are playing at the same time. A chord is when multiple specific notes are sounded simultaneously. Chords are considered to be consonant when there is a simple ratio between the notes being played, so the sound waves have the opportunity to line up. For example, A440 and A880 have a direct 2:1 ratio, making it a very consonant pairing, which is why they are also considered the same note. Note combinations with similarly simple ratios like 4:5:6 (major chord) or 10:12:15 (minor chord) also allow the sound waves of each note to line up.

But note combinations with terribly complex ratios are considered dissonant because the sound waves do not line up as easily. For some reason, this makes the resulting sound go wubwubwubwub. This effect is exploited in some music styles. I personally don’t agree when consonance is described as pleasant and dissonance is described as unpleasant, because pleasantry is very subjective. There are people out there who enjoy eating bitter melon after all!

The concept of just intonation is based on using ratios to create consonant intervals around a baseline, or “tonic”, note, rather than equal spacings within an octave. Even though just intonation might be more mathematically intuitive than the 12-TET system, it's much harder to use when playing modern instruments. Because the ratios create uneven intervals, instruments must be re-tuned every time the musician wants to play in a different key signature.

From what I gather, if a note in a well known melody was replaced by a different note with a different pitch interval, that would be considered out of tune. Having said that, jazz music has blue notes - or notes that are played at a lower pitch than standard. (Despite what TwoSet says, jazz is still music.) Also, if a melody includes an unconventional pitch interval (one that is not a multiple of 50 cents), it would be considered to have an off pitch note.

The western term for a note that does not appear in the 12-TET system is called a microtone. Microtones are not necessarily weird - they are used in normal speech and also in music that is not 12-TET. Microtones might sound out of tune to people who are encultured to the sound of the 12-TET system. This is also why Arabic and Indian music sound “exotic” - because we’re not used to these sounds.

I suspect that a lot of what is taken for granted in music theory is not rooted in human nature, but is a societal construct. Major chords are used a lot in happy music, so we start associating them with happiness, and vice versa for minor chords. We don’t hear a lot of microtones because we’re brought up listening to 12-TET music, so when we do hear microtones, they sound like they’re off pitch. We’re told that wubwubwub sounds are bad, so we start saying that dissonant chords are inherently bad.

What I still don’t understand about music

I wasn’t exposed to the “classics” growing up (unless Paris By Night and Trung Tâm Asia count). As an adult, I looked up Leonard Cohen out of curiosity. I thought it was interesting that so many people enjoyed him reciting poetry to background music in his gravelly voice.

My husband said, “No? He’s singing.”

I said, “What.”

(Same for Bob Dylan. He’s just talking really loudly and sometimes shouting, no?)

So I’ve always wondered whether I was tone deaf. And every once in a while, I’d google tone deaf tests, and I’d get articles saying that most people aren’t tone deaf, and videos that claimed that they could teach me to sing on tune. And I’d take the test, and yes, I can tell the difference between high and low pitches. Of course I can, my mother tongues (TeoChew and Vietnamese) rely on pitch differentiation.

(Having said that, I could never tell the difference between nặng, hỏi and ngã. Ngang, sắc and huyền were ok. Apparently I also have a horrendous accent when I speak TeoChew, but I chalk that down to growing up in Australia and learning it from parents who grew up in Vietnam.)

But amusia is not just about differentiating large pitch intervals. Amusia presents itself in different ways:

• The inability to recognise or reproduce familiar tunes

• Insensitivity to dissonant chords in a melodic context

• Inability to detect very small pitch changes

Those internet quizzes that measured pitch differentiation were measuring something else entirely.

I recommend these two tests linked by the ABC. These tests are administered by universities/institutes as part of studies into amusia. The results I got suggested that I should go get a professional opinion.

All these articles that insist that you’re probably not tone deaf also say that 1/20 or 4% of the population is genuinely tone-deaf. That’s 300 million people worldwide, which is a hecking lot of people. But where are they? Why don’t they have a bigger voice?

Having said all that, amusia or general tone deafness does not necessarily mean that people are unable to appreciate music. I would argue that tone deafness expands a person’s ability to appreciate music, because pesky things like a singer being off pitch or an instrument playing in the wrong key signature does not interfere with a tone deaf person’s ability to enjoy the song. On the other hand, people with perfect pitch lock onto a specific tonal system and get distracted when “wrong” tones appear.

I also do not understand when people use metaphors for sounds. People have said words like, “creamy”, “sweet”, “bright”, “thick” and “muddy”. I can imagine them in my minds eye, and in my memory of foods I’ve eaten, but not in my mental ear for music.

And I wonder, what do Renaissance and pre-Renaissance music sound like when they are played with historically appropriate instruments? Surely playing Renaissance pieces on a piano, which wouldn't be invented for another two or three centuries, would be anachronistic?

How do I experience music?

• The progression from piano -> piano forte -> forte, to me sounds like silence -> some music -> ankjsdfhjgfOhNo my poor eardrums!

• But my favourite thing is when singers change the dynamic within one note.

• The music coming from my husband’s speakers sounds like mostly drums and not much else until I get up close and stick my face next to the speakers. Only then do I hear the other layers to what otherwise sounds like a happy solo percussionist.

• In my very own personal but honest opinion, guitars sound twangy, violins sound waily and I don’t get the appeal at all. I like the double bass, piano, and female vocals.

When I was a very small child, my mum sat me in front of the upright piano in the living room and told me to start learning. I looked at the sheet music, matched up the notes to the keys and started plunking away. That I had never heard the tune of Good King Wencelas before, or that I didn’t have a music teacher didn’t register as being a problem. I plunked each key to the beat of the metronome.

It didn’t take long before I got bored. I declared that I didn’t want to play the piano anymore. In response, my mum threw an even bigger tantrum and broke the piano by throwing the hairbrush at it. A broken piano meant I couldn’t play it, so that worked out in my favour.

In primary school, I was told to pick an instrument to learn. I picked up a flute, and spent the rest of the year trying to coax a sound out of it. I succeeded in filling the flute with a lot of saliva. Last month, I had an epiphany when my husband said I could make a sound by blowing across my water bottle, not into it.

In high school, we tried out different types of instruments during year 7. After the flute disaster, I had concluded that my lungs weren’t cut out for woodwind or brass. I did percussion in the first two terms, and I have zero recollection of it. In the last two terms, I did strings. I and another girl picked the double bass. The school wouldn’t let me bring the double bass home to practice with because it was too big, so I had to sacrifice my lunch break to go to the music room to practice. At the end of the term in music class, I sawed my bow as practiced, and the teacher said nothing. The other girl, who was never around for the practice sessions, got praised by the teacher. Through this experience, I learnt that diligence and hard work aren’t everything. Some things just aren’t meant to be.

Although practical music classes stopped, we were still required to do music theory classes for another year. This was ok, because I could read the textbook and regurgitate out the words, and use the chord formula to count out the appropriate notes when required. My problems came when the teacher played out music for us to analyse in class, and I shrunk in my seat. I’d been brought up to hide my hearing impairment, and I wasn’t about to stick my hand up in class to announce to the teacher that I could not hear the music at all.

I have yet to recover from all this trauma, so I self soothe by listening to melancholy Ben Folds Five songs.