Why do the minor chords sound sad and major chords happy? I've read everything there is to read on this subject, and there's still no answer.
Science has yet to come up with an actual conclusion for this question.What the evidence does point to though, is that it is a product of our culture. We perceive, in western harmony, a minor third to be sad because that is how it has been perceived for centuries. It has become engrained in our brains to be sad.However, if you listen to Hebrew music or Eastern European music, they use tons of minor intervals in their music. They have their own scales such as the Hebrew scale or the various Hungarian scales. Their music isn't sad though, a lot of Hungarian dances and folk music used minor scales.Other scales to look at are the flamenco scale, Japanese scales and Chinese scales...basically all world scales actually XD.In other places around the world, cultures are used to pentatonic scales which are vastly different from our western ideas of music. Pentatonic scales can have minor intervals or major or even augmented or diminished intervals yet their cultures perceive these as normal and with their own emotions attached to them.I haven't found any conclusive articles online where scientists have found an actual reason for these intervals sounding happy. Especially since other cultures can contradict the western idea of 'major' and 'minor'.
Longest string quartets?
Longplayer by Jem Finer (1000 years) : Longplayer is a one thousand year long musical composition. It began playing at midnight on the 31st of December 1999, and will continue to play without repetition until the last moment of 2999, at which point it will complete its cycle and begin again. Conceived and composed by Jem Finer, it was originally produced as an Artangel commission, and is now in the care of the Longplayer Trust. Longplayer is composed in such a way that the character of its music changes from day to day and – though it is beyond the reach of any one person’s experience – from century to century. It works in a way somewhat akin to a system of planets, which are aligned only once every thousand years, and whose orbits meanwhile move in and out of phase with each other in constantly shifting configurations. In a similar way, Longplayer is predetermined from beginning to end – its movements are calculable, but are occurring on a scale so vast as to be all but unknowable. ORGAN2 / ASLSP (As Slow As Possible) by John Cage (639 years) The slowest and longest piece of music in the world John-Cage-Organ-Project in Halberstadt, Germany Since September 5, 2000, which is the 88th birthday of the avantgarde composer and artist John Cage, the slowest and longest concert that the world has ever heard has been playing: ORGAN2/ASLSP As Slow aS Possible that means this piece of music, for the organ, will be performed for 639 years in the church of St. Burchardi in Halberstadt. Deutsche Welle, July 5th, 2008 One Thousand Hear Change of Note in World’s Longest Concert The next musical change in John Cage’s slow masterpiece will happen in November More than 1,000 music-lovers showed up on Saturday, July 5, in a German town to hear a change of note in the longest-running and slowest piece of music ever composed. Eccentric US composer John Cage (1912-1992) planned his composition to last 639 years, meaning more than a dozen generations of musicians will be needed to play it on an automatic, as-yet unfinished organ at Halberstadt, Germany. Entitled ORGAN2/ASLSP, it began in 2001 and has so far reached its sixth note. The second part of the name means "as slow as possible."
Why is it important to learn scales when playing piano?
The vast majority of music that has been composed in the western world since the earliest forms of music in the 1400's right up to the present day is tonal music. There are other types of music composition that evolved in the 1900's that rejected tonal principles. Some of those are atonal, chromaticism and serialism. Tonal music is the most popular. The idea is simple. You take a scale which may be the major or minor ones that you've been practicing. You can even use other ones such as modes. You then compose all or most of the melodies using the notes in this chosen scale. These notes begin to sound familiar as you listen to the music. The pattern of whole and half steps that make the scale give the music a certain sound. You establish a familiar sound and that is the sense of a key. Your chords that harmonise the melodies will mostly be the ones that are constructed from the same notes as your scale (in the same key). Then the whole piece of music uses mostly the same notes and you hear that like before. Establishing a sense of key sounds pleasing to the ear and is easy listening and that's why most pop music uses this idea. Most baroque and classical piano music uses the major and minor scales and practicing those scales helps you to play those types of music. You'd practice other ones also if you played jazz. Playing any up and down sequences of notes also develops technical ability. Keep practising those scales! Here are the chords that are made from the C major scale: Cmaj, Dmin, Emin, Fmaj, Gmaj, Amin, Bdim. Play each of these chords with the C major scale and your hear the sense of belonging to a key. Then play a Csharpmaj chord with the Cmaj scale to shatter the sense of key!