Your post just made me consider the idea that our understanding of the musical scale and it's progressions that constitute being "in tune", could theoretically be out of tune for other species, terrestrial or otherwise.
Like, imagine that to a different set of ears, what we consider harmonic was the opposite, and a group of notes that we consider incompatible are actually the pleasant sounding chord?
Imagine aliens played us their music, and to them it sounded like a sweeping, major key orchestral piece that sounded uplifting and happy to them, and to us it sounded like a completely out of key minor piece? Imagine if their version of music theory was also the "wavelength" that like, reptiles and insects heard it properly?
I've always loved music partly because it's "universal", if you can speak the language of music you can communicate with people from around the world without saying a word. But I never considered that it was because we all hear music/chords/harmonies the same way.
MoonMountain t1_ixllf8l wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in ELI5: Why do humans like music? by [deleted]
Your post just made me consider the idea that our understanding of the musical scale and it's progressions that constitute being "in tune", could theoretically be out of tune for other species, terrestrial or otherwise.
Like, imagine that to a different set of ears, what we consider harmonic was the opposite, and a group of notes that we consider incompatible are actually the pleasant sounding chord?
Imagine aliens played us their music, and to them it sounded like a sweeping, major key orchestral piece that sounded uplifting and happy to them, and to us it sounded like a completely out of key minor piece? Imagine if their version of music theory was also the "wavelength" that like, reptiles and insects heard it properly?
I've always loved music partly because it's "universal", if you can speak the language of music you can communicate with people from around the world without saying a word. But I never considered that it was because we all hear music/chords/harmonies the same way.
What a trip.