This article would probably never be used by anyone as reference for signal analysis but it does offer a good overview of western harmonic tonality.
I do want to make one correction:
"Did I say music was based on notes? That's not true. Real music is based on intervals (the ratio of two notes) with high degrees of consonance (shared harmonics)."
Not true. Real world musical tonality is based on a combination of consonance, dissonance and noise. We don't just hear the fundamental frequencies and their harmonic compliments when we listen to a note coming from a musical instrument. The tonal character of any instrument and hence the tonal character of music is complimented and equally defined by other factors that this article is discounting as noise.
What about time ? the relative ratio of durations and displacement between sounds is , to me , as important as tonal frequency (well even if at the end of the day , both are frequencies on different abstraction scales).
the article focuses on tonality so I didn't even think to mention rhythm but you're right, rhythm does have a frequency equivalent which is not always on a different abstraction scale. 32nd notes in music played at 120bpm have an audible frequency of 64hz.
Comments
This article would probably never be used by anyone as reference for signal analysis but it does offer a good overview of western harmonic tonality.
I do want to make one correction:
"Did I say music was based on notes? That's not true. Real music is based on intervals (the ratio of two notes) with high degrees of consonance (shared harmonics)."
Not true. Real world musical tonality is based on a combination of consonance, dissonance and noise. We don't just hear the fundamental frequencies and their harmonic compliments when we listen to a note coming from a musical instrument. The tonal character of any instrument and hence the tonal character of music is complimented and equally defined by other factors that this article is discounting as noise.
What about time ? the relative ratio of durations and displacement between sounds is , to me , as important as tonal frequency (well even if at the end of the day , both are frequencies on different abstraction scales).
the article focuses on tonality so I didn't even think to mention rhythm but you're right, rhythm does have a frequency equivalent which is not always on a different abstraction scale. 32nd notes in music played at 120bpm have an audible frequency of 64hz.
Is tonal character the same as timbre?
Yes, I believe they are both terms for frequency spectrum.