Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music

gist

Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson proposes a physical-computational account of tonal harmony. Instruments generate harmonic series; a listener’s brain is conjectured to search for, normalize, and reconstruct that structure. Folding early harmonics into an octave yields the major triad, while interlocking three such triads yields the major scale. The same framework organizes common chords by harmonic fit, ambiguity, and contextual expectation. Its value is the mechanistic synthesis, but the neural assumptions and claims about major and minor feeling remain hypotheses requiring empirical testing.

ideas

• Treat harmony as reconstruction. The listener is modeled as inferring one ideal harmonic series from overlapping, imperfect overtone patterns.
• Derive pitch collections from ratios. Folding harmonics into one octave produces the major triad; linking three triads by fifths produces the seven-note major scale.
• Explain tension as ambiguous recognition. Suspended, augmented, diminished, and minor structures partially match multiple harmonic patterns, creating instability or “offness.”
• Separate additive harmony from low roughness. The author argues that Helmholtz’s dissonance account cannot explain why multiple notes can add a positive percept beyond one tone.
• Keep the neuroscience provisional. The paper’s brain architecture is conjectural; its explanatory reach depends on cognitive and cross-cultural tests it does not provide.

quotes