Ignoramus Asks: Why Does This Sound Harmonic?
  • RachelR
    Posts: 41
    Someone as (dolefully? abysmally? lamentably?) ignorant as I am should likely not be on this forum, but they gave me access here, so...

    The carol/hymn "Good Christian Men Rejoice"
    --say you start with the melody on the F above middle C
    --and also have a "drone" going on that F
    --and have a "drone" going on middle C
    --and then have another "drone" going on the F in the bass clef

    Why does this sound okay to me on my piano? Would it work out with vocalists?
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,605
    They are all consonant pitches in the harmonic series of F.

    Adding a Bb would result in hearing a dissonant pitch pulsing against the other ones. (try it)

    And do try this:

    (Do not use the SUSTAIN pedal when trying this)

    Press down the same F on the piano you are singing, as well as the A and the C above that - without playing them and continue to hold them down.

    Strike the F in the bass clef hard and let it go immediately - a very staccato note.

    Now listen carefully (while still holding the F A C down).

    What do you hear?


    Detailed explanation.




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  • canadashcanadash
    Posts: 1,499

    Someone as (dolefully? abysmally? lamentably?) ignorant as I am should likely not be on this forum


    Stop that.
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  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,934
    Never run yourself down. Someone else will be glad to do it for you.
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  • Carol
    Posts: 849
    If you are here, you have a shared interest with those on the forum. The level of expertise and education of those who post and/or read posts on this forum varies greatly! You will learn a lot (occasionally more than you'd care to know) and you may have a salient comment to contribute from time to time.
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  • CHGiffenCHGiffen
    Posts: 5,150
    Alternative experiment: Press down the F on the first space below the bass clef and hold it down without playing it. Then, while still holding down the low F, play (or sing) the tune "Good Christian men rejoice" in the treble clef (in the key of F) beginning on the first space F. What notes do you hear afterwards? [Answer should be F, A, C, as these are in the (harmonic) overtone series of the low F being held down.]
    Thanked by 4CharlesW Incardination noel jones, aago eft94530
  • RachelR
    Posts: 41
    Thanks for the encouragement, dear musicians! I had several years of piano lessons in my youth, but it was all memory work, meaning I memorized pieces note-by-unrelated-note and chord-by-chord, never understanding any of the relationships between the notes. (Key signatures just told me what notes in a piece all of a sudden were randomly black instead of white. Sheesh, I didn't even understand what the scales were--I just thought they were warm up exercises to make my fingers more flexible!)

    So, never having had ANY music theory, when I heard choral singing for the first time (at the Musica Sacra conference in St. Louis in 2012) I was amazed. I did not know what was going on with that room full voices, but was absolutely riveted. Ever since then, that is what I have wanted to learn how to do. But I feel like I am traveling completely blindly. I have everything to learn--everything!
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  • dad29
    Posts: 2,217
    @Rachel: not to worry!! By the time you're 140 or so, you'll have 90% of it down pat.
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  • Liam
    Posts: 4,943
    Perhaps it's appropriate to offer a canonical moment of humor on these boards - all the better in French (with subtitles - but Père Blaise's French is wee bit more jolie):

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZviuVxI9zM
    Thanked by 3Incardination Carol eft94530
  • Carol
    Posts: 849
    Thanks Liam, I showed this to my husband and he laughed and called it "historic."
  • Chris Garton-Zavesky
    Posts: 6,902
    Rachel,

    I'm not the physicist hereabouts or the acoustician, so one of them will chime in in just a moment, but here's a summary of some useful information.

    When we play a major or minor scale, we use 8 tones, called an octave. That octave uses 8 of the 12 "half-steps" between a note and its nearest counterpart up (or down). The half step (also called a semitone) is the smallest unit commonly used in Western music until the 20th century. There is a special relationship between notes which are an octave apart: the vibrations of one are twice (or half, depending on your perspective) the other. That makes a round number: 2 (or, flipped upside down, 1/2). The 4th and the 5th (what C and F are from each other) form another "nice" fraction. All the "nice" fractions make consonances. All the "nasty" fractions make dissonances. The nastier the fraction, the more dissonant and, traditionally, in need of being resolved.
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