What is it about Jimi Hendrix that so many people find appealing? According to scientists at UCLA, it’s all in the music – or rather, the dissonance in that music: the unexpected, jarring, almost ...

Why are some musical chords so inherently pleasing while others sound so obviously dissonant? A study of a group of people with the genetic condition amusia, which causes sufferers to incorrectly ...

The notes used in Western music—or, more accurately, the relationships between the notes used in Western music—have a strange power. Bobby McFerrin demonstrated this dramatically by showing that an ...

Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies Iván Ramos spoke at a book talk about his recent work “Unbelonging: Inauthentic Sounds in Mexican and Latinx Aesthetics” last Thursday in ...

The opening track of Black Sabbath’s self-titled 1970 album launches off with a jarring tritone, a reverberating note that, when combined with a young Ozzy Osbourne‘s atonal vocals, helped to spark a ...

Music displays all the harmony and discord the auditory world has to offer. The perfect pair of notes at the end of the Kyrie in Mozart’s Requiem fills churches and concert halls with a single chord ...