- Author
- Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson
- Published
- February 2012, revised June 2014
- Kind
- arXiv preprint
- Original
- arxiv.org/abs/1202.4212
- Subject
- Consonance and tuning
- Themes
- What the senses do, Rules that generate
What it is
Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson's preprint argues that music theory needs a real scientific basis. It considers physical sound together with the computation any listening machine must perform. This page rests on the abstract, because the arXiv page offered no PDF.
What it says
- The paper claims to derive the major scale, the standard chord dictionary and major-minor feeling.
- It credits Helmholtz and Birkhoff with earlier derivations of the major scale.
- It calls the chord and triad derivations original.
- It says Helmholtz's concord theory is incomplete, because more notes could only penalize a sound.
What evidence it gives
The abstract states claims and offers derivations, without experimental results. It is a preprint, and this page has not assessed its argument directly.
Interests and limits
It compares most music theory books to medieval medical textbooks, so its tone is combative. See the Hacker News discussion for pushback. Its claims concern tonal music, which is a limited scope.
Connections
These links are this wiki's own reading, not claims the sources make.
- The cultural evolution of distortion in music (and other norms of mixed appeal). Wilkerson looks for consonance in how hearing recognizes the harmonic series. Bryant and Smaldino explain a preferred noise partly through group dynamics. The two need not conflict. One says what a sound can do, and the other why a group keeps it.