Some more notes about music.

This is post basically a short collection of after-thoughts and P.S.'s for the last post. It is also a documentation of the though process which led me to "discover" and realize a vital part of the connection between physics & music, numbers & aesthetics.

I mentioned in the last post about how the chords in the middle of a chord progression really don't significantly affect the overall "positive" or "negative" quality of the progression. I drew a connection between this and how similarly you can have very dissonant and negative intervals in an individual chord and yet they have basically no affect on the overall "positive" or "negative" quality. They absolutely do change the quality of the chord some... but they don't truly affect the overriding positive/negative, consonant/dissonant polarity of the chord.

I thought about this "phenomenon" a little while after that last post and now I have to draw another connection; this time between a chord progression and "stacked" chords vs. "arpeggiation". A stacked chord is a regular chord--3 or more notes played at the same time. An arpeggio is when you take the notes of a chord and play them in sequence rather than simultaneously. It is a way of taking a chord--the harmony--and making it into the "leading" line--the melody; arpeggios can be played as a harmony though, despite their being played in a sequence like a melody line. The reason why?...When you play an arpeggio, the quality of the chord is still retained--despite the notes not sounding all at the same time!

The main thing that intrigues me about this is this: Tartini tones do seem to have an affect on the quality of intervals... the perfect intervals produce Tartini tones--even at the 2nd and 3rd levels of Tartini tones--that match up with the 2 tones of the interval, just at different octaves--essentially only those 2 original tones are being played, just at different octaves; conversely, the Tritone produces several different Tartini tones at the 2nd and 3rd and 4th levels, and in the end you hear 5 or 6 different tones being reproduced, rather than just the original two. So, logically, it would seem that these Tartini tones are what cause dissonance or allow for consonance. And yet, when the notes are played in succession, the quality of the chord is maintained, despite Tartini tones clearly not being produced. But, the consonance or dissonance of the chord disappears... the "mood"-quality is maintained, the consonant/dissonant-quality is removed.

I believe that a connection can, and must, be drawn here in order to better understand the connection between physics and music. Somewhere in the human neurophysiology a process happens which converts the dissonance and consonance caused by the physics of clashing Tartini tones into a certain perceived "mood" to relate to the chord... even more compelling: this process is independent of temporal context to a certain degree--the brain is somehow able to deliver the same mood to a chord played in sequence which contains NO Tartini tones, as a chord played simultaneously which contains SEVERAL Tartini tones. This is, perhaps, the basis of what I call the "Human Connection".