Dissonance: The Musical Sound People Keep Underestimating

[@SamWickens]

I remember at university, I once tried to explain basic harmony to my non-musical physicist friend, and when I showed him a tritone, his immediate reaction was that he liked it because it sounded powerful. He had none of the context telling him he should find it unpleasant, so he didn't. And I honestly found that kind of beautiful.

[@stephenweigel]

that's how kids react to music. Music prudes' performative disgust towards the avant garde is thoroughly, paradoxically, learned.

[@diabl2master]

Metalhead probably

[@Spookatz.]

​@@stephenweigelwell put!

[@nathanreiber6819]

Tensions are heard all over music tho.

[@vigokovacic3488]

​@@stephenweigelin some cases yes, but mostly I don't think kids are all for dissonance. Their instinct would be closer to calling it ugly and unpleasant, as David says early on in the video.

[@Koettnylle]

Missed the opportunity of mentioning bulgarian folk music choirs. Their dissonances are sublime.

[@flowresonance1248]

been expecting Kaval Sviri too

[@r0bophonic]

Any recommendations?

[@pingunooty]

Plz give recs!

[@spokeydoke]

⁠@@r0bophonic@pingunooty “atomic bird” by yoko kanno

[@Plamen_Zhelev]

To those asking for recommendations: check out The mystery of the Bulgarian voices, particularly songs from the 70s and 80s.

[@OrchestrationOnline]

I'm an unashamed tonal populist composer with a 4-decade career, and there's no way my music could work without dissonance. I love it. I don't know who this "everyone" bloke is, but he sure isn't me.

[@dabeamer42]

Hey Professor Goss -- nice to see you!

[@OrchestrationOnline]

@@dabeamer42 Hey my guy, good to see you.

[@PierrePblais]

Always there for you including some gamelan! As a gamelan nerd and someone who trained to tune Balinese gamelan instruments, I can also add that not only is the scale used in gamelan loosely derived from the inharmonic overtones most present in the sound of a gong, the instruments themselves are tuned in pairs with 6 to 12 hz difference between instruments (the amount will change depending on the style of ensemble), this in order to create that beating vibrato you demonstrated with the two sound waves, which Balinese believe makes the sound more complete and alive with taksu, a concept hard to explain but that I can roughly translate to “the spirit of gamelan”…

[@m.dave2141]

That's so cool honestly! because even for people culturally conditioned to 12 EDO, who are not used to hearing other tuning systems or microtonality, gamelan usually sounds, despite all the differences, quite pleasant to the ear, at least in the case of my non-musician friends. Really beautiful music. but at the end of the day it's all about familiarity I guess.

[@RichardJNeo]

Wtf I love dissonance

[@Ian_Standley]

Me too 😊

[@Nooticus]

@@Ian_Standleyme three!

[@SpencerTwiddy]

Especially cognitive

[@rismosch]

Ditto

[@drackaryspt1572]

Yes it's great and it can contain so much complex emotion if well utilised.

[@addyd.3140]

15:00 Chorus pedal for organ! Replicating the slight out-of-tuneness of a group singing or playing together is a highly attractive effect to musicians of many modern/pop styles as well. Even just the thickness of a doubled lead vocal in a pop song or the classic 80's chorus effect guitars. Anyways, thanks again for a wonderful video DB!

[@jankbunky4279]

I could do without the ugly AI generated simpsons characters, personally.

[@alvarostockle]

Yeah, that was dissapointing.

[@hhdhpublic]

Nice to notice that you included merzbow in the experimental roster. I must admit that you managed a perfect clickbait title, it triggered me enough to watch this instantly because goddamn, the title is sooooo wrong :D Especially personally since I love a lot of music that includes dissonance from jazz to extreme metal

[@leSeide]

Thanks!

[@poissonpuerile8897]

Very amateur musician here. Your videos make even the most arcane topics fascinating and accessible. Bravo!

[@garybeman9497]

aren't we all really just amateurs? I absolutely love that David presents in a way that makes me (at least) feel like we're all in this together. So as you say - accessible. Thank you for your comment it 'resonated' with me 😇 and thank you David , looking forward to your video on cognitive dissonance! 😵‍💫

[@Maurice75]

My teacher used to say that it's all in the context of music. Somethings might sound "off flavour" but in the right context...

[@anomymouse5043]

Guitar virtuoso, Guthrie Govan, discussed about improvisation in some video. He had, not sure of this, a background track with probably just a root and the fifth. Next he played either minor or major stuff over it (edit: and moved between two). First the switch sounded wrong and odd, but soon the ear got accustomed to it. This goes probably further: death metal, swing jazz and traditional classical sound very different. But the listener accepts the rules that we have, say a lot altered 7th chords and variations from blues melodies.

[@ericleiter6179]

Great to see another David Bruce video...they are so rare anymore! But, as always, they are brilliant, entertaining and educational at the same time, thank you. I also have to say, it has been a pleasure hearing much more of David's music being programmed on classical radio stations than ever before-at least here in the Midwest of America anyway...keep up the good work!!! When is the sequel to Guardians of Tonality coming out btw? Arnold Strikes Back??? Revenge of the Minor Second??? Can't wait!

[@MassimilianoCerioni]

Man, I can't thank you enough for this impartial, comprehensive, and scientific discussion about dissonance. You managed to defend the relativity of beauty without avoiding to address the elephant in the room (the forced use of dissonance that many did after 12-tone theory emerged). I love many of Schoenberg's works, and still find a point in using unresolved harmonies in an impressionist way. If you reset your listening references when you approach Gamelan, you don't really care if that temperament is different. 🙏

[@billsybainbridge3362]

Yet again a useful video piece, David! What is still to be explored theoretically is that Dissonance has as much to do with Timbre, Rhythm, Texture, and Formatics as it does Melody or Harmony. That is what recent works in many popular genres are exploring more fully (perhaps) than in prior musical eras - finding the Dissonance in ALL the Musical Factors, and further... rotating through the Aesthetic Facets of Tension, Release, Expectation, Prediction, and Surprise in each of them. They surely DO exist, yet are just waiting for us to highlight them through the regularity and rarity of expression in sound.

[@DBruce]

Yes I wanted to explore timbre and texture in particular, but couldn't find the space here. So many fascinating moments from my own experience as a composer about that.

[@LesterBrunt]

It hits at one of the core aesthetics values our culture holds. I know that in Gamelan, they value sound that 'moves', that 'vibrates', that is 'alive', and so some things that to some western ears might sound horrible out of tune, sounds good to them. To me that just conclusively proves that all these perspectives are just that, a perspective on a more larger thing. I can see both sides, how spot on intonation is beautiful, how it is so calm and pure, how it boosts the overtones. But I can also see how detuning creates these wonderful vibrant tones that shimmer and feel alive. I take the Cage approach to sound, that it is all good, it is all just sound. I can listen to a Mozart piece and get lost in the wonderful rhythms of functional harmony, and at the same time I can listen to Schoenberg and be fascinated by the unique textures, beautiful contours, etc. I like the sound of 12ET, of just intonation, of a minor 2nd interval, or any other kind of tuning. It is just sound.

[@luc8639]

eyo why the hell they do the simpsons Ai in this bih?

[@ronald3836]

You want them to hire artists to create a YT video?

[@Adam-cc3zd]

ugh it's so lame, I haven't watched a david bruce vid in a while and wasn't particularly thrilled to see that. it was jarring...dissonant, even

[@LemonJefferson]

​@@ronald3836 this is literally common practice

[@ronald3836]

@@LemonJefferson So you are now defending the little guy against "tech bro" David Bruce? I hope you will not forget to feed your horse.

[@m.dave2141]

I don't mind, the video is so good that I can ignore that. not big deal.

[@eyvindjr]

I think Shoenberg's main mistake was abolishing a tonal centre, not embracing dissonance. Dissonance thrives better when a firm tonal centre is established first, and Shoenberg made systems to take that anchorpoint away.

[@DBruce]

I think I agree with this.

[@Joie-du-sang]

I think you're right. By taking away any tonal center it makes everything homogenous, and thus makes it very boring. There's no tension and release. See my longer top-level comment for more on this.

[@rhesarozendaal]

I'm not sure a tonal center would be necessary, but contrast in one form or another probably is. You reminded me of the saying "when everything is urgent, nothing really is". Likewise, if every note is equally important, they all become equally unimportant. Now, I can't think of an example offhand, but I'm sure there's been lots of composers after Schoenberg trying to correct for this. Surely Stockhausen and Boulez must have given this some thought, when they went even further with serialism. Would love to learn more about this.

[@debrucey]

I mean, I wouldn’t call it a “mistake”. It might be and element of his music that you don’t like, but without it it wouldn’t sound like Schoenberg, and I love Schoenberg.

[@quel2324]

Maybe I'm weird, but there's something hauntingly beautiful and comically cute in Schoenberg's early work (maybe in the 10s/20s) that makes his music incredibly fun to play or listen, even without relying on a tonal centre. IMHO Schoenberg's big mistake was abandoning expressionism to pursue the more mathematical 12-tone approach, which takes art away from music. It's the systematization rather than the aesthetic. It's almost an exercise. Just like species counterpoint isn't good music, 12-tone music isn't either.

[@Android480]

A little touch of dissonance is always supremely beautiful, like those first 2 examples

[@sp00ky_guy]

The AI imagery makes this video so uncanny

[@mynameisjack0618]

Yeah. I don’t like it one bit.

[@jankbunky4279]

Agreed! The content of the video seems sound and useful, but the imagery is just *ugly*

[@ronald3836]

What AI imagery? The graphics in the video seem all fine to me.

[@jankbunky4279]

@ronald3836 2:14 5:57 7:00 Just as some examples. A bunch of the "simpson" character images, are weird AI generated charicatures.

[@ronald3836]

@@jankbunky4279 Thanks. These three examples look really good. Would you have preferred them to be hand-drawn?

[@johnmccool5716]

Excellent job using a Philippe Jaroussky version of Pur ti miro! I think the version you used is the best example of the dissonance but I love the version with him and Nuria Rial.

[@4dultw1thj0b]

Not these AI Simpsons images omg

[@BronDunbar]

As a music educator prepping the new school classes, Thank you! This ties together a number of units, starting this fall! I have followed this channel for years! This is one of your most inclusive discussions yet. And, it would be nice to see more women represented. Ie: Pauline Oliveros, Bulgarian folklore women’s choirs, Inuit Throat singing, or the melisma of cantaoras of flamenco such as Niña de los Peines, or voices such as Betty Carter, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae. Again, wonderful work. Fantastic discussion.

[@nichttuntun3364]

Refreshing and inspiring. Thank you. A lot of dissonance content can be found in Italian 70th and early 80th movie soundtracks from Morricone and Riz Ortalani (especially Don't Torture a Ducking or Canibal Holocaust), to name just a few examples. I love it.

[@funkrobert99]

It would be interesting to have seen an example coming from drum and bass. Synths are often described as filthy or disgusting - go to a rave to hear the various other adjectives, which are often hilarious and creative! Apart from heavy distortion and effects, I know that some in synthesisers a second oscillator will be detuned to give it a more dissonant sound.

[@lemon_milk1216]

Great video as usual, David, but I really wish you didn’t use AI images as b-roll; they feel just a bit tacky and certainly very uncanny. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would love to create art for a video as (otherwise) well-crafted as this!

[@ronald3836]

Will you pay them?

[@MixMastaCopyCat]

​@@ronald3836 It's not like making engaging videos would be impossible without hand drawn art or ai generated images. In fact, if you go on his channel, you'll find an entire catalogue of videos that don't use either and are still very engaging

[@Howard_Wright]

The deliberate slight mistuning effect is used in lots of places that many may be unaware of. It's basically the chorus effect. In 12 string guitars, mandolins and other string instruments that use pairs of strings, these are usually tuned close to, but not quite at, the unison or octave. The slight mistuning gives a richer, chorussed sound. The same thing happens with string orchestras. The main reason many violins playing together sound richer and more interesting than a single violin is the many small mistunings. Same with piano tuning, where there are two or three strings for the same note, these are typically tuned at slightly different frequencies, to give a richer sound. The borderlands between these very slight mistunings (rich, chorus sound) and somewhat larger mistunings (less pleasant dissonance) is an interesting area of discussion.

[@tuc5987]

I'd argue that most people's whistling resembles a Schoenberg piece.

[@jake_ams]

When I was 6, my piano teacher used the Bartok piano school. I can’t be happier that I went through „dissonance“ hell - it built up my absolute hearing and also being able to impro any song I like today :)

[@henrikmulders8633]

The fourth is a dissonance 😂 as all viewers of Elam Rothem‘s Channel know. Early Music Sources

[@thepotatoportal69]

Only between the lowest voice and any other voice though. They are considered dissonances because they sound like they should resolve to a 5th or a 3rd, not because they sound unpleasant or discordant.

[@henrikmulders8633]

@@thepotatoportal69 Well of course, but that relativates the drama 😉

[@ThomAvella]

+1 to your point on schöenberg's 12-tone work. i definitely prefer the work of his pupils berg and webern in that idiom! berg seemed to have a better ability to reconcile 12-tone materials and tonal structures, and webern pushed even further into alien territory and created a bunch of truly haunting things.

[@josephatthecoop]

Dissonances are intervals that I was taught to dislike hearing as a listener, but learned to love creating as a musician, especially as a singer.

[@tableface77]

Lydian has a tritone and I've heard it mentioned many times that it's the brightest mode. And the soothing sound of the major 7th interval when heard in context of the maj 7 chord. Always fascinated me

[@CappeSun]

The FMaj/E in Yuji Nomi's "Oka no Machi" is one of my favorite examples of exceptionally beautiful dissonances. And the tightly grouped vocals and flutes in Taeko Onuki's "Tsuki no Kizahashi ~ Arisu", together with their performance, is indescribable. Oh, and Choro Club's "Mizu no Kagami", the microtonality at round halfway expands the soundscape something incredible. Choro Club in particular uses dissonance very well for complex expressions.

[@LearningMusicSkills]

excellent video. Great examples and amazingly produced.

[@spiralganglion]

Enjoyed the video, though it makes me sad to see AI-generated images at all, let alone aping the style of a big cultural institution like The Simpsons in a way that goes a bit beyond mere reference or parody. It invites a whole host of complicated feelings on taste and authorship, which don't seem relevant at all to the point of the video. (Well, except in the meta-ironic sense that these creative choices could be described as "dissonant", but I don't think that's intentional or well-supported, hah). Hopefully in the future you'll avoid AI-generated slop.

[@xvvvvr]

agree it feels like im watching a youtube kids video that happens to be an essay about something worth discussing

[@oronyahalom]

Microtonal differences are not usually relevant to dissonance, it’s usually referred to as “out of tune”. in the instruments shown they create the effect known as “chorus”, because It resembles a group of human voices. It's harder to sing precisely than to play most instruments precisely, so we are used to this sound. This kind of sound attribute is relevant to the term “timber” (next video?). The “usual” dissonances refer to the scale we are playing, usually the major scale, due to historic reasons (see Adam neely video 18th century etc.). Those dissonances have degrees of “irriness” according to culture and fashion. For example, the blues 7th was once considered a dissonance and nowadays it is totally acceptable. for the issue of the triton go see the Adam Neely video. There is also a difference between a dissonant interval (two notes) and a dissonant chord. an interval by itself lacks the harmonic context, and therefore i don't consider it to be dissonant or consonant. a chord, on the other hand, is bound to become dissonant after adding to it a certain amount of different extensions (a topic suitable for Adam's videos). a voicing of a chord effects its dissonancity, because of the chorus effect mentioned earlier. for example, close low notes sound “muddier” than close high notes. As a composer one of my goals is to use as many dissonances as I can, and still come up with music that “sounds good”, whatever that means. I can't enjoy atonal music yet, so I try to create within the confinement of tonal music .for example we can use a dissonant chord progression or introduce an out-of-scale note. As you rightfully mentioned, this kind of use is not only acceptable, it is the cause of most of the extreme emotional effects of music. For example a song or a piece using only full triads would be BORING. it usually helps to omit the defining 3rd, or suspending it with 2 or 4. Those are “light dissonances”, compared to out of scale notes like the sharp 5th (augmented chords, see debussy’s use of the whole tones scale). There is a fine line between using those dissonances as garnish and composing a challenging yet listenable piece. I think Stravinsky was a master at this, and as you mention, many movie scores nowadays. dissonances are spicy spices that make a dish interesting and deep, that's why many musicians like them. it's not for everyone’s pallet but it's an acquired taste, so it can be taught.

[@rhesarozendaal]

completely off topic, but i just noticed in another comment the british spelling of "centre", where i'm used to spell "center". Your "timber" leapt out to me as a pun on that, but i'm sure you totally didn't intend that :D

[@jestemqiqi7647]

@@rhesarozendaal It may be a reference to Tantacrul's video about Thoughty2 where he pronounces 'timbre' as timber.

[@oronyahalom]

​@@rhesarozendaal honest mistake...

[@JScaranoMusic]

​@@rhesarozendaal I noticed that too, and thought for a second that it was the US spelling, but isn't it always spelt "timbre" regardless?

[@gavbrown01]

Excellent video and made me thoughtful about disonnance in a way I am usually not (but likely to return to within 3-5 minutes). P.s. I caught the easter egg about the end music being your name

[@Globularmotif]

I love dissonance in all art. And you are totally right. The addition of a 2nd to a major triad is maturation for what would otherwise be a child like simplicity.

[@daanbaas2962]

I love your videos! Great attention to detail and the subjects are always interesting. 💪

[@muse4ik]

Dissonance is where all the feels are, without it all you're expressing is a desire to have a nap

[@m.dave2141]

nah both are great

[@racheddar]

Don't diss dissonance

[@DBruce]

that's a better title!

[@martynspooner5822]

A lot of what makes music good is the tension and release but I guess everyone likes what they like and that's beyond argument. Thanks for the great video.

[@jcb4258]

Let's not forget either that two dissonant voices can create surprizing harmonies. This video is constructed like a piece of music since it's about challenging expectations, but also halve baked ideas. David, thank you for challenging us with the dissonance concept. You are adding sophistication to our humble ears and thinking ability! All is indeed about context, connexion and relation! Your references to Eastern european chant, egyptian "flutes", indian and, as covered by established research, amazonian music do not need to fit, the helpful, but quite limited western views or of theories (or should we say French) on harmony. In The Netherlands they "The one who writes stays."? There is plenty to write or make great videos about to adjust and challenge well established occidental views. Thank you, this is a contribution towards a better humanity. I am already waiting for your next video.

[@Arden7one]

Just like silence and noise, dissonance has had its place in the musical scene I believe for centuries, no? ❤Thank you our good sir, another educational video on a brilliant topic

[@jimsongsjimsongs]

Well done. Another example to bring up might be major seventh chords in jazz. They sound pretty despite including two notes a half step apart.

[@voicemagic]

The minor triad is in the harmonic series.: 10th-12th-15th harmonic. That's the minor triad in just intonation. If you have C as fundamental, than you have 10=E / 12=G / 15=B => E-minor. (If you are looking for a more piano-tuning-style version you can go for 16-19-24 which gives you the minor triad with the fundamental as the root.)

[@Darm0k]

I thought for sure this video would include a clip of the female Bulgarian folk singers that was making the rounds on music theory youtube a year or so ago. It's very dissonant, and very cool.

[@calleja332]

Dissonance is like salt, not enough is boring, too much will make you hurl.

[@ronald3836]

The video is a pleasure to watch, despite all the dissonance.

[@bakkiemelk6310]

Listening to music without any dissonance sounds is like eating a meal prepared with no salt and spices in it. When properly portioned and blended, this makes the meal taste better, or in other words, makes the music sound more rich and special.

[@mm-slithytoves]

Loved the voice cameos from your fellow music YTers.

[@brandobin]

I for one am captivated by the "beating" effect, especially when exploring microtonal systems. Would be an interesting followup to examine the new wave of metal bands composing primarily with dissonance, such as Pyrrhon and Ad Nauseum.

[@cometsmith]

Loved the video! As always your analysis is super poignant, and provides a lot of insight into a topic I thought I knew a lot about! It makes me kind of sad to see all of the AI tho. Besides the moral issues, it kind of looks sloppy. I would much rather see stock images or poorly-made images made by hand than AI generations. They look a little uncanny, and just off-putting in an otherwise very clean and polished video.

[@TopaT0pa]

thank you for that video. Absolute masterpiece!

[@latheofheaven1017]

In the 1980s particularly, electric basses were often processed through an Eventide 910 Harmonizer set to a pitch ratio of -0.1 or +0.1 mixed in with the original signal. This made a big, rolling vibrant sound that was anything but dissonant.

[@tutubism]

If it's not loud or annoying like white noise or brown noise, then im fine with dissonance. Always enjoyed natural sounds or sounds that imitate real life natural sounds from when i was a kid like the howling wind sfx in old animated films to the calm-inducing/therauptic effect of the sound of ocean waves from growing up near a beach. It also depends on the execution/arrangement like when it only appears for a brief moment & serves a purpose like creating tension or drama within the song/piece which i find really stimulating and dynamic. Almost like it has a life of it's own or that it's telling an audible narrative

[@mattnieri1202]

That mijwiz sounds amazing!

[@inclinedplane0192]

David, I'd love to hear you chat with some ethnomusicologist friends. It's always fascinating when I learn snippets about the building blocks of music from different times and places. Each of the examples you gave in this video could be its own full episode! This was such a fun piece of educational entertainment.

[@ReubenCornell]

01:55 Sweet Jesus! This comparison is certainly... something.

[@2li678]

Agree 😶‍🌫️

[@ForkySeven]

The crazy thing is that composers at the time took themselves just that seriously as to compare using more dissonance in their music to some kind of noble "emancipation". They used that language themselves.

[@ramahadranhennessy9300]

Love your discussion of Debussy as impressionist painter of dissonance, very well framed

[@agsmith001]

perhaps it has a lot to do with tension and release. for myself, the Debussy example would be the extreme to one side (the crashing wave example is perfect), with no tonal center always releasing and Schoenberg on the other where there is no tonal center either but instead of releasing it builds tension and never releases. 🤔

[@londrescatamarca]

what great teaching material. good examples and the focus on the physics of sound is also celebrated. It is also pleasant and fun. excites.

[@jayducharme]

Another wonderful analysis! Thanks. And of course, remember Charles Ives' memorable quote: "Stand up and taken your dissonance like a man!"

[@LisztyLiszt]

In my view, it wasn't the abandonment of tonality that put people off western art music since Schoenberg, at least not that on its own. It was the abandonment of meter and pulse and doing to rhythm what 12 tone music did to harmonic tension and repose. I think it's why composers like Bartok, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev were and still are popular. Their music tends to have a rhythmic vitality which engages the audience in a way Stockhausen and Webern usually don't.

[@rupertaustin]

This is 100% correct. Music without identifiable meter and pulse becomes incomprehensible and random such that only a very small audience derive any pleasure from it.

[@yat_ii]

Perhaps that is true with some composers (like Stockhausen and Webern as you mentioned) but there are others like Messiaen who also abandoned traditional senses of pulse and meter and still have a lot of popular appeal in 2024

[@LisztyLiszt]

@@yat_ii And what are the pieces of Messiaen that have the most enduring appeal? I would suggest the Vingt Regards and the Turangalila Symphony would certainly be among them, and both of which have enough grounding in a sense of tonality and/or meter for long enough periods for audiences to latch on to.

[@florencelingaynemusic]

@@rupertaustinI enjoy it :(

[@sjlearning149]

Want some witchcraft?…take the third harmonic of C2 (G3) and the 4th harmonic of B1 (B3) and Isolate them and play them against each other. It should be a consonant major 3rd but its dissonant as hell. The trick is that harmonics aren’t actually pure tones but instead they are amplitude modulated by their fundamental. This means that no matter how hard we isolate them they still carry relics of their fundamental that cannot be removed with filtering and that original minor second relationship of C2 and B1 cannot be removed from the apparent major third. The cool bit about this is that it shows why Fourier analysis and frequency analyzers can give an incomplete picture and that sometime oscilloscopes are needed to see the full picture.

[@addyd.3140]

That sounds fascinating. I'd love to see some kind of video/demonstration for those of us less technologically/DAW savvy, such as myself.

[@richardchapman8855]

Perhaps a simpler way of putting this is that the G3 you mention, being a partial of C2, would have as its partials the overtones of C2 and those overtones would be dissonant with B3.

[@sjlearning149]

@@richardchapman8855 Actually its weirder than that..I'm talking isolating it completely to G3 using a series of high Q peaking filters. You are right though that harmonic spacing would be a dead give away and is something people don't think about enough.

[@JonasCVogt]

I appreciate your exploration of harmonics but would like to clarify some points from a physics perspective. When you isolate the third harmonic of C2 (which corresponds to G3) and the fourth harmonic of B1 (which corresponds to B3), you're combining frequencies that should form a consonant major third. If you're perceiving dissonance, it could be due to the tuning system used. In the equal temperament tuning system, intervals are adjusted so that the octave is divided into equal steps, which can cause intervals to be slightly detuned compared to their pure ratios in just intonation. Regarding your observation that harmonics are amplitude-modulated by their fundamental: In acoustics, harmonics are indeed integer multiples of the fundamental frequency and can be considered pure sine waves when isolated. An amplitude-modulated sine wave is by definition not a pure frequency because the modulation introduces additional frequencies (sidebands) into the spectrum. This means that an amplitude-modulated sine wave no longer exists as a single pure frequency but includes a spectrum of frequencies. However, in the natural generation of harmonics (like on a string instrument), the harmonics are not amplitude-modulated by the fundamental in this way. If the harmonics are properly isolated using filters, the influence of the fundamental frequency should be negligible. This means that the original minor second interval between C2 and B1 should not affect the consonance of the isolated major third interval formed by their harmonics. As for Fourier analysis, it provides a comprehensive breakdown of a signal into its components and delivers a complete picture of its spectral content. While oscilloscopes display time-domain waveforms, they may not reveal frequency-specific details as effectively as Fourier transforms or spectrum analyzers. It's possible that the dissonance arises from slight deviations in tuning or imperfections in the harmonic isolation process. I recommend checking the tuning system you're using and ensuring that the harmonics are accurately isolated to truly assess the interval's consonance.

[@JonasCVogt]

Additionally, the dissonance you're experiencing isn't due to amplitude modulation by the fundamentals. It's because the third harmonic of C2 and the fourth harmonic of B1 don't form a pure major third interval-even in just intonation. Their frequencies don't align perfectly due to the mathematical relationships between their fundamentals and harmonics, especially since C2 and B1 are a semitone apart. To have these harmonics form a pure major third, you'd need to adjust the fundamental frequencies accordingly-retuning them so their harmonics align properly. This mismatch leads to the dissonance, not residual effects from the fundamentals. Also, to clarify this: An amplitude-modulated sine wave wouldn't be a pure frequency; modulation introduces additional frequencies into the spectrum. Fourier analysis actually reveals this, while oscilloscopes might not show the full frequency content involved.

[@Steven_Loy]

Excellent, excellent video essay on dissonance. Bravo. Just another thought: "The history of harmony is the history of the evolution of the human ear, which has gradually assimilated, in their natural order, the successive intervals of the harmonic series.” - Nadia Boulanger. Ears evolve based on the sounds they consume. "Dissonance" is an evolving perception in each individual.

[@ryangiraldi5722]

Celeste stops on organs are some of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard, especially on examples by E.M Skinner, G. Donald Harrison, and W.W Kimball. American Flute Celestes live rent free in my ear. ❤

[@B3MDUSA]

I love the dissonance of Bach’s C-Major Prelude. There’s tons of half-step dissonance in the left hand, and then there’s the big major-7 bass “bonk” at the end that just sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s tremendously consonant punctuated by major sevenths and minor seconds.

[@PaulAirs]

I was tone deaf coming into this video, but there's just such an excellent quality and watchability to your content that I stuck it out and learned a thing or two.

[@frywolny]

As always great material. By extend, please make a video that helps to understand why we (but not all and not everywhere) we feel the way we feel listening to music. Why Lacrimosa makes many of us weep and why in for example Indonesia it won’t? I’m aware it’s a very complex and in many cases subjective. But there have to be quiet a lot of attempts to understand it, from Ancient Greek till now. I found it fascinating. Keep it up David

[@Joie-du-sang]

It's interesting to note that just ten years before Schoenberg created twelve tone music, Stravinsky premiered The Rite of Spring. The Rite is dissonant AF, and while the premiere was ... interesting, it quickly became accepted. Nowadays, it's performed all the time by orchestras and I don't think it's particularly controversial. But at the same time, twelve tone works are mostly not performed, except for a few pieces by Berg, including his Violin Concerto. So what's the difference? It's not dissonance or harshness. The Rite is about as harsh as it gets in many places. I think the difference is just that a lot of twelve tone music is both "harsh" _and boring_. IMO, it's just very difficult to make a really interesting and emotionally engaging piece using the twelve tone system. Certainly, the absolute serialism that followed demonstrated how this sort of rigidity leads to really awful music. Meanwhile, there's lots of very dissonant music that people find far more engaging, like The Rite or Messaien's Quartet for the End of Time. I think these are just better pieces of music than most twelve tone music, at least for the things I look for in music, which is obviously very subjective.

[@DavidSaulesco]

Agree very much with this. Also, I think that a piece like the Rite uses compositional and structural elements like repetition and rhythm (also re: someone else’s comment about more musical parameters than just harmony) to give the listeners something to hold on to when their sense of chordal structure was being bludgeoned. Irrespective of whether or not Stravinsky wanted to “pander” to an audience or not, I believe the fact that Rite was always supposed to be an epic, public-facing piece as opposed to something academic and perhaps primarily intellectual influenced it/the composer. I haven’t actually gone looking - yet - for anything to either prove or disprove this theory of mine, but it rhymes with for instance your assessment (with which I personally concur) as serial music as boring, for the reasons you state. That’s not to say that a composition using serial techniques needs to be boring, but I sure think it can be.

[@DavidTMarchand]

There's a GLARING logical inconsistency early in the video that frankly invalidates the whole argument for me. 1:15 The standard 3x3x3 Rubik's cube has no red/orange edges, nor any red/orange/yellow corners, since red and orange are on opposite sides of the solved cube. Those pieces simply do not exist. Now we could be dealing with non standard coloring of course, EXCEPT… 1:10 …the UNSOLVED cube features BOTH a red/green edge AND an orange/yellow/green corner, AS WELL as a white/green edge, meaning (once solved) the green face would have to share an edge with the red, orange, yellow and white faces, leaving only blue on its opposite side. Which is exactly how a STANDARD Rubik's cube is colored! Indeed, if you look at the solved cube in the video, there's nowhere for an unseen green face to be placed that would touch the visible red, orange AND yellow faces, even though the UNSOLVED picture features green touching ALL of those colors. I expect a public apology by tomorrow.

[@RD-db7pi]

As a cubing nerd, i can confirm i am absolutely apalled by this

[@ShaharHarshuv]

What you are saying makes sense to whoever studied even a little bit of sound sythesis. The "buzz" effect you relate to is a common effect.

[@ClaudeWernerMusic]

The octatonic system of tonal organisation explains a little bit about why certain interval combinations are more “consonant”. Despite its name, the argument is that of a hierarchy of intervals, not necessarily based around a tonality or key centre. But it does explain why minor chords still fall within “consonant” chords.

[@vigokovacic3488]

I love this topic and I suggest you do at least another video on it, maybe discussing it with someone live to see different points of view.

[@ericbingham-kumpfcomposer5293]

I like dissonance because it is something that can get the listener's attention. Two half notes played together is something that I really like!

[@Ballistichydrant]

Great video. Thanks. There is one example that I can only describe as violence in my ears, European Skies. I don’t know why, but I actually feel pain when this song is played. But it is popular so it makes me wonder if other people are actually hearing something different in a similar way to how I see colors differently as a color blind person.

[@katetranscribes]

I think it’s also a false dichotomy to say that music has to be beautiful to be “good”. Composers like Bret Dean do a particularly good job of creating compelling and narratively interesting sound worlds that aren’t traditionally “beautiful” but are nonetheless fantastic compositions

[@_WeAreSeeds_]

Thank you very much for this amazing video! As andrew bird put it in his beautiful song "don the struggle" "...but dissonance is energy while consonance reminds you of your poverty..."

[@BackspinZX]

Oh hey, another DB vid that makes me want to rethink my way of looking at music! Sweet! :D

[@maxwellkowal3065]

Context is key 🔑

[@jules153]

Dissonance=emotion. Think about it. Also I think the Amazonian people experiment confirms what we need to know. After listening to thousands of hours of non-disonant music obviously most westerners hear dissonance as bad sounding.

[@liti1554]

Musicians work with contrast,tension/release in dynamics cadense direction and all kinds of expressive factors inkluding ..consonance/ dissonance.

[@WhiteOakAmps]

I feel this most excellent video should be taught in school, in kindergarten through high school as a reference piece. Second, the "emancipation" has always been obvious to me as closed versus open chords (even over many octaves): shove many people in a jail cell and there is an increased mathematical likelihood of violent dissent, but put those same folks on a football field and everybody typically moves towards one another. Same notes, different behavior with only modifier being the amount of space. Third, space is also a corollary to granularity when those nice sine waves become stair step waves of ever fewer, larger stairs with increased granularity. Finally, I thought you were cheating to leave the overtone series until 2/3's of the way into the presentation; and fusible numbers, their number lines, and the waves of those lines will be recognized as ever more important in composition. Thanks, best video ever.

[@IvanEngler]

fantastic video, so informative and interesting!

[@enmorot]

Great stuff David! Thank you!

[@nathanbarnes4740]

Having thought about these concepts for quite a while, in my own composition I have abandoned the concept of consonance and dissonance. To me they are too heavily associated with tonality that even in the modally based pieces I write, those words have no practical relevance. I think of them as highly technical terms in relation to tonality only (and of course earlier western music where their concepts were equally established though at times a bit different). I prefer to think about harmony contextually in terms of either inducing stabilty or inciting instability. That can happen over the space of a single chord, a progression, or as I write polyphonically most of the time, within a single voice in relation to whatever else is going on. I would also like to point out that as dodecaphonism, in some ways, diminished the standard tension and release model present in tonality, the ability of the composer in such systems to achieve that ebb and flow in other ways was opened up considerably. It forced composers to look beyond just harmony and focus on the other aspects of music; timbre, texture and voicing etc. to create that tension and release. If you come to that music with only reference points from tonality, then a lot of those dimensions will be opaque. Making the music much harder to relate to. Niw while I don't write dodecaphonically I am thankful that the Second Viennese School did what they did to open up the horizons of Western music.

[@loganstrong5426]

That "voix celeste" creating an "undulating effect" using closely detuned stops is exactly the theory behind chorus guitar pedals: slightly detuning/retiming your signal to make it sound like multiple voices as once (since perfect pitch matching is difficult to impossible with more people).

[@martifingers]

Two more common examples of "dissonances" dependent on small tuning discrepancies are the 12 string guitar (the minute differences give a sort of chorus effect) and the various accordion tunings.

[@tymime]

Slightly "clashing" tones also are the main factor in guitar or synth effects like chorus and detune

[@dabeamer42]

I remember reading a comment (probably in a newspaper) from the 70's or so, looking back on the previous few decades of how things went "in the concert hall" (generically speaking). The author wrote about the dissonant music being programmed by the big orchestras, and how "the public stayed away in droves". That's the first thing that comes to mind in defining dissonance -- music that the average music listener finds unpleasant. And hooray for Tantacrul (7:14 and 17:40)!

[@johntrotta5375]

Dissonance can be best understood as tension. A dissonant sound is not an unpleasant sound, it is a sound that requires resolution to stability.

[@bcasarotto]

Mozart's string quartet no. 19 is one of my favourites because of the haunting dissonant opening. It feels like he used a time machine to write that.

[@music-zv6je]

17:05 The Gamelan music which is made by striking free plates with inharmonic spectrums, also uses very different Slendro and Pelog tuning systems and scales to accomodate these timbres in such a way that the inharmonic partials actually *overlap* when its odd, "irrational" intervals are played together, resulting in the perception of alien, celestial consonance. This all is featured extensively in the works of W. A. Sethares and others, which I'm sure you're aware of but probably due to time constraints couldn't put it in the video. There's also a brilliant channel called New Tonality who explores timbre-harmony relationships, and their video called "Tuning of Gamelan and Sensory Dissonance" covers the topic of Gamelan music specifically.

[@r0bophonic]

Inspired by this video, I went searching for Alban Berg on streaming platforms. On Berg’s page I found something very odd: a brand new 2024 release by a generic electronic dance pop group using his name. I went searching for others tracks made by the publisher, Erdix, and found a similar group called “Arvo Pärt” with similar generic dance pop that sounds like it could be the output of one of the new AI music generators. From what I can tell, I suspect some “entrepreneur” is trying to make money using the names of 20th century composers to spam the algorithms with AI music. 😒

[@halflearned2190]

Another banger of a video, damn!

[@jacobrobbins3147]

Dissonance is what made me fall in love with music

[@05degrees]

Comments from the synth land: like with the organ, subtle detuning of voices (so-called “unison detune”) is a basis for many classic sounds like supersaw; summing ten or more voices that are detuned to various amounts around the common center is similar in effect to an ensemble of instruments. Doing not much to the lower partials, it smears higher partials significantly, denying us an effect of phase locking and usually adding a noisy or airy quality. This can also be compared to a chorus effect with many taps, which additionally adds subtle frequrency modulation not unlike a mess of Doppler-shifted sounds in a large hall where air is free to move in different directions at once, smearing phases of sound too. Though usually this kind of detuning is taken to be subtle. When you try to detune more, you usually need to add more voices to alleviate the beating; the same happens with chorus. Incidently, when you're working with smeared timbres like that, they seem to allow more liberty in detuning _intervals_ you're playing without getting the same amount of harshness or discordance. (That’s not without psychoacoustic basis but the observation itself is a practical thing to note and use, with or without explanation.)

[@fburton8]

I'd love to hear more examples of chords that sound really dissonant yet perfectly natural and not displeasing in the context of the piece.

[@robertray2714]

I feel like atonal stuff is the musical equivalent of finding out about linguistic prescriptivism and taking it to mean that words have no meaning. Neither words nor intervals have i n h e r e n t meaning, but they both do rest on shared conceptions. When there are no shared conceptions as is the case with atonal music, people will not find meaning. Schoenberg and his ilk basically tried to make the Esperanto language in music without considering that no one spoke it or wanted to speak it.