… minor keys-implying that pop song that have used minor keys for joyous, celebratory purposes – songs like Rogers and Hammerstein’s “My Favorite Things” (1959), Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” (1965)…. Further, there is no shortage of major-key songs that deliver profound pathos …Radiohead’s “Creep” (1993).
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Data shows suggests that in the late 1960s, 85 percent of hits were in major keys, whereas in the late 2000s, only 42,5 percent were in a “happy” key.
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…our understanding of major versus minor is a mix. Not one or the other, but a combination of genetics (hearing overtones) and culture.
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In 2018 a team of Australian psychologists /…/ found that non-fans associate death metal with “tension, änger and fear2, while fans experience “power, joy, peace, and wonder” while listening.
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The violin, for instance, took three centuries to evolve into its current form …
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As the cultural theorist Stuart Hall has argued, “Instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact …we should think, instead, of identity as a ‘production’, which is never completed, always in progress.”
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Pulse and meter set up strong expectations of rhythmic regularity. Syncopated rhythms that dance between pulse violet listeners’ metric expectations, spurring a feeling of uncanny pleasure.
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You may notice something: the first tick [of analog clock] seems to hang for a moment before the rest proceeds at regular intervals. The effect is a product of our brain “slowing down” that first tick in order to process the information it is receiving.
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Though it’s rare to have a pop hit without lyrics, the lyrics don’t need to mean much.
John Seabrook
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The ethnomusicologist David Font-Navarrete explains that “although this spectrum of sound can contain fascinating melodic material it is usually more tactile than auditory. It is felt more than heard.”
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Sound travels as an invisible wave, but we sense timbre as a physical object. It has height, length, depth.
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In 1955, the slightly higher A4=440 Hz was affirmed by the International Organization for Standardization – and reaffirmed recently as 1975.
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