Synaesthesia – in this case a crossover between seeing and hearing, light and music. There are many of examples of this, at least on the music side, Scriabin’s Poem of Fire (its score includes a colour organ) and Messiaen’s Couleurs de la Cité Céleste are among the famous examples. — “I’ve tried to get into my work the […]
A fanfare for the major triad: It’s everywhere. Apart from being the principal building block of most music, its (sometimes) dulcet tones are used in shops, stations, airports and elsewhere to alert us to announcements of impending joy or (more frequently) gloom. It has a sibling but, unlike the bright, stable major, minor is darker […]
Spectral analysis: no, not something from a Ghostbusters’ film, but a computer gizmo used by composers from the late(ish) twentieth century onwards. Every pitch we hear normally comes with its own entourage of other ghostly sounds variously called partials, overtones or harmonics. It’s mainly the predominance of a particular gang of these (let’s stick with) partials […]
