Replies (2)

• @Stephanie@thetransagenda.gay 2026-04-28 16:33

  @kadse@chaos.social Western music interval chord names come from counting the notes in a major scale: a third is the interval between the first and third notes in that scale, a sixth the interval between the first and sixth notes, etcetera. Yes, some of these notes have notes between them, but for some reason they don't count, and instead we'll modify another interval's name, like "minor third" or "augmented sixth" (I'm not saying it's a good system, just explaining what it is). The intervals that @elilla@elilla@thetransagenda.gay@transmom.love describes are based on ratios of frequencies (much simpler explanation!). Some of these have corresponding western interval names, but the numbering/naming is completely unrelated. Therefore, the interval with a frequency ratio of 6:7 is not related to the sixth or seventh (however pretty each of these intervals might be)

  Open ##1749503

• @utz@social.xenofem.me 2026-04-30 17:46

  @kadse@chaos.social @elilla@transmom.love the names of intervals in conventional western music don't come from the harmonic series but from steps in the diatonic scale that is attained by comtinually "stacking" fifths, i.e. 3:2 ratios, and "folding them into an octave, i.e. a tone and the double of it's frequency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatonic_scale this was the state of things until around the renaissance people got really into the sound of 5:4 intervals and started retuning some tones of the original scale to it. thus tuning in western music became about nudging the diatonic scale around to fit 3:2 and 5:4 intervals to varying degrees, which by itself created some quite differing sounds. but ultimately nothing above the fifth harmonic was considered, which is why those kinda tuning systems are now referred to as 5-limit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-limit_tuning

  Open ##2698805