Listening to music should be an everyday thing for many people. But behind these "good music", have you ever wondered how they came about? Why are some sounds so pleasing to the ear, while others make you want to cover your ears?

The book "The Science of Good Music" that I want to introduce today, the author John Powell is a doctor of physics, and also has a master's degree in music composition. This cross-disciplinary background allows him to use his physical knowledge to describe the principles behind music. His narration is simple, and has a unique British humor (?), which is enjoyable and rewarding to read.

Next, let's follow the author's footsteps and explore the mysteries of the music world!

【What is music】

What is music is a big question, and what can be considered as "music" in everyone's mind is probably different, and it is difficult to have a single definition. Like I listened to Jay Chou when I was a child, but now the children may listen to Gao Erxuan? I don't mean to fight, I just feel emotional (laughs).

But if you define the individual components of music, it is much simpler. Like tones, melody, harmony , etc., can be clearly explained. What are these familiar but unfamiliar terms that may sound similar to you? Let's hear what the author has to say!

【The composition of music】

Tones can be composed of four parts: duration, pitch, timbre, and loudness.

[time value]

Timing sounds high-end, but it actually refers to how long the sound lasts.

〔pitch〕

The pitch is the level of the sound. I believe that everyone in the country has learned physics (probably...), the higher the frequency, the higher the sound.

The pitch naming system uses seven English letters: C, D, E, F, G, A, B. These pitches are the sound of the white keys of the piano, and if B goes up, it will return to C. The frequency between the second C will be twice that of the first C, and the musical theory will say that the two pitches are 8 different. Spend. What about the black keys? For example, the black key between F and G would be called F-sharp (#F) or G-fall (♭G), and so on.

I believe that everyone has been poisoned by this system before in music classes. But did you know that not long ago, the pitches of different countries were not uniform? Because this would cause many difficulties, musicians from different countries would play chickens and ducks together. Therefore, in 1939, at a conference in London, the "standard tone" to be used today was decided.

Next, let’s talk about the difference between noise and music. There are all kinds of noises in life, like boiling water, shredding paper, or closing doors. Why don't we think of this sound as "music"?

Take the sound of a door closing as an example. Such a sound is composed of various sound waves at the same time, which may include a combination of vibration sound waves of doors, locks, walls and door shafts. So what ends up reaching our eardrums is a chaotic, unconnected mix of individual fluctuations, which is what we hear as noise.

What about the music? The so-called musical sound is actually composed of repeated wave patterns. It doesn’t matter how long a single wave is, as long as the pattern is repeated all the time. The figure below is the wave pattern of the clarinet.

By the way, noise is not useless, for example, percussion instruments make noise. Because their purpose is to create rhythm, if they produce musical tones, they will destroy the harmony and take away the style of the main melody instrument.

[timbre]

With the concept of pitch, let's talk about timbre. I believe that everyone can hear the same song, playing it on a guitar or piano, it sounds completely different, and this difference is reflected in the shape of the sound waves. Different instruments, even if the pitch is the same, still have different sound wave patterns. The chart below compares the waveforms of the recorder, oboe, and violin.

If you are interested in how musical instruments produce different sounds, you can read the chapter "Time for Instrument Solo", which is quite interesting.

[loudness]

Finally, loudness, it refers to the size of the sound, which is the so-called volume. Sounds intuitive right, but things are not that simple. The key is that the addition of sounds is not a simple 1+1=2.

Just think about a question. The orchestra you hear today may be composed of more than 100 instruments. If the sound of the orchestra playing in unison is 100 times that of a single instrument, isn't your ear still deaf? This is clearly not the case, in fact, a hundred instruments will only make about four times as loud as one instrument.

What sorcery is this? In fact, the size of the sound is related to the amplitude of the wave. The larger the amplitude, the greater the change in air pressure, the eardrum vibrates with it, and the louder the sound is heard. When many instruments are added together, many of the pressure waves actually cancel each other out, so the ear does not perceive the absolute sum of all amplitudes.

As an aside, noise-cancelling headphones work by taking advantage of this pressure-offset effect, so when you put on the AirPods Pro, the annoying MRT announcement sounds are cut off.

In addition, there is another important reason, which is our body mechanism. Smart brains don't add up all the sounds. Just as six stinky socks are not six times as stinky as one, the human body gradually reduces the impact as the volume gradually increases, lest the ear be scrapped.

Okay, I've basically finished talking about the basic music principles here. Next, let's go a step further!

【How much you know about music theory】

〔melody〕

I don't know if you have observed the situation when children learn to sing. At first, they could only hum a few monophonic sounds, and sang them slowly with changing pitches. Then they will begin to learn that a song is actually just a few simple notes, and as long as it is sung with the correct rhythm and melody, it can get great applause from adults.

These pitch fluctuations are called "intervals". When there is a problem with the ups and downs of intervals, it is the so-called out of tune, which is what the fat tiger is doing.

〔harmony〕

With the concept of melody, let's talk about the so-called harmony. When you play two notes on the piano at random, sometimes it's nice, sometimes it's harsh. These nicely combined notes form chords , and chords are the basis of harmony .

The standard definition of a chord is that three or more notes are played simultaneously. A series of chords can form harmony. When composers compose a piece, they usually use harmony to set off the melody. As mentioned above, some note combinations sound pleasant, while others are oppressive, and composers use this technique to manipulate the listener's emotions.

Usually when we play the guitar, we make chords to accompany the song. If you're playing the piano, you're usually playing the melody with the right hand and the chords with the left. And some perverts, like Bach, will use one melody to accompany another, keeping both hands busy. The harmony system can be said to be ever-changing, and it can even be said that the harmony is almost as important as the tune!

〔scale〕

Now let's talk about scales. A scale is simply a series of notes played up or down, one by one, usually covering an octave. That is to say, start from a certain frequency and play until the sound is twice that frequency.

"Scale" is related to "key". Take C major as an example, when you play from the C tone of the white keys of the piano to the next C tone along the white keys, you complete a C major. 's scale. And when we say that a piece of music is in the key of C major, we mean that the pitch composition of the piece is all in these scales.

The Western music world will divide the octave into twelve equal intervals. Usually only seven tones are used at a time to form the familiar "key". The commonly heard key of C major or A minor is one of these combinations.

Humans are not suddenly struck by lightning, and with a flash of inspiration, the octave is divided into twelve scales, and it is decided which seven notes to use for a key. This is the result of the musicians' long-term experimentation on how to place the sound to sound good. Much of the early music used a simpler "pentatonic" system.

If you have a piano handy, you can fiddle with the black keys of the piano, and it usually sounds great. When I was a child, I liked playing like this, and I instantly felt that I was very powerful and knew how to compose! These black keys make up the pentatonic scale. But people still want to use more sounds to create. As a result, the system of dividing the octave into twelve steps, the so-called "equal temperament", was born.

For the mathematical system of the twelve-average law, those who are interested can refer to the chapter "Some tedious details" in the book. In short, mathematicians have calculated a system in which every note level is "equal", let's start with any note and get a lot of pleasant groups at the same time. Every two adjacent notes on the scale, the interval is called "semitone". There are twelve semitones in an octave.

【Listen to music】

I don't know if everyone has fainted when it comes to this. Fortunately, these things do not affect our listening to music. Here are some interesting music tips.

[absolute pitch]

If you ask two people to sing the same song together, you may find that they sing at different pitches. If you compare it with the original song, you will probably find that the sound they sing is different from the original. And some people can perfectly sing the same pitch as the original song, and this ability is called absolute pitch. That is, they can master absolute pitch.

It is mentioned in the book that in tonal language countries like China or Vietnam, there are more people with absolute pitch. And when to start receiving music training is also closely related to this ability. It is usually difficult to develop the so-called absolute pitch after the age of six.

Interesting, because the current pitch system was only unified in 1939. Before that, a German pianist and a French flutist might have different "absolute pitch". In fact, the pitch system used in Mozart's time was a semitone lower than it is today. Therefore, if Mozart is in modern times, he may wonder why we help his Qu Sheng key?

Does it have an absolute sense of sound to be distinguished? Indeed, because I don't... If you are interested in training the tone, you can refer to the video of good chords below. I have been playing for a while, and although there is still no absolute pitch, the pitch has indeed improved a lot. If you are interested, you may wish to try it out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ueyqx4rDCM

[Major and major]

I believe everyone has heard the saying that major music is more happy, and minor music is more sad. Regarding what is the major and minor key, I will not continue to embarrass you here. If you are interested, you can refer to the incisive explanation in the book, or refer to this major and minor video of good chords. In short, a major would add two more related tones to the pentatonic scale, while a minor would replace one or two of the major with the less harmonic of the twelve. Therefore, music in minor keys is usually more ambiguous, with less explicit passages.

Is that minor really sad? This is actually because we have become quite accustomed to connecting the minor key with sadness, and the lyrics of many minor key songs are also more sad, and the result of being familiar with it from a young age makes everyone connect the minor key with sadness quickly.

Such a connection is not certain, and we can still find sad songs played in a major key, or happy songs played in a minor key. Like the "Round O" mentioned in the book, it's a fairly brisk minor-key song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exdgIOcmHG0

[Vinyl VS. CD]

The difference between vinyl and CD is actually the difference between analogy and digital. The book uses image duplication and reproduction to illustrate. Let's think of music as a wavy line and compare how vinyl and CD create that line.

The so-called analogy refers to copying , so the wavy lines will be completely copied like hand-painted. And digital is the way to use remake . The computer will break up the graphics page into many small squares and start checking each small square for black lines. If there is an order, you will get a "yes" order, if not, you will get a "no" order. These instructions can easily create this squiggly line. The downside is that the resulting curve will not be as smooth as it would have been since its lines are made of small squares.

Vinyl, on the other hand, uses analog technology, which is the reproduction of music onto vinyl records. CDs use digital technology to reproduce music onto CDs. So in theory, it is indeed vinyl that can express the original taste of music.

But there are very few people who can tell the difference between the two. The author cited a blind test experiment done in 1993, found 160 listeners to test, and found that only 4 people could tell the difference between vinyl and CD. Perhaps more often, vinyl represents a kind of feeling, but I think it's quite romantic.

【postscript】

I'm ashamed to say that I actually learned the piano for nine years. But when I was young, I was always interested in music theory and the science behind music. I was even more impatient with the music theory part of the music test, and even after the third grade passed the eighth test, I told my mother that I didn't want to take the test in the future. Now it seems that he is just a kid. Don't you know that you can show off by passing the test when you grow up!

It was only when I grew up that I realized that the theory of music seemed to be full of fun, so the process of reading this book can be said to be full of interest, which slightly made up for the lack of ignorance when I was a child. If you are interested in music and want to learn more, this book is definitely worth buying and savoring.

Finally, let me push the online music theory course I took last year. The teacher is Anandora's guitarist. For people who are interested in music theory but don't know how to get started, I'm very useful, although I think it's a bit difficult later on...

https://hahow.in/courses/58af266c5c4e6507007c492a/discussions

I really like what the author said, just like knowing how to prepare a dish, you can know how to enjoy it better; knowing more music theory will not lose the fun of listening to music, but can be more immersed in the details of the music. I hope that through this article, everyone can understand and enjoy music better!