On the Origins of Harmony

Here you will find the sound examples referenced from the book On the Origins of Harmony.

Sound Examples

Chapter 1 – The Wellspring of Harmony

Chapter 2 – Complex Tones

Chapter 3 – Harmonic Relationships

What This Book Is About

This book describes the objective underpinnings of a subjective art. We will embark on a journey of discovery that will provide you with a new perspective that informs and equips you as a musician.

This book is not a history book, nor is it a traditional music theory book. You will not find voice leading rules or rules of using chord inversions. Nowhere will you find lists of “do this” or “avoid that”.

Instead, we will focus upon what we can objectively know, and how these observations inform our aesthetic sense, rather than starting from the finished aesthetic sense known as Western music.

I will prefer musical terms rather than mathematical or scientific terms wherever possible. It simply makes sense to use terms we already use daily (e.g. louder, Concert A) rather than terms that may be more precise, but less intuitively meaningful (e.g. larger amplitude, 440 Hz).

Why I Wrote This Book

As a life-long student of composition, I’ve struggled most with the subject of harmony. A few key books planted the seeds of understanding, but none of these books really filled in the whole picture for me. Also, many of these books were science books, heavy in math and terminology that’s not particularly accessible to musicians. What I felt was missing was a book that presented this material in a musically relevant way, and showed how Western music was related to fundamental realities.

I also wanted satisfactory answers to several questions that had bugged me for over a decade:

1. Is Western harmony “real”? Or is it just stuff we’ve been culturally indoctrinated with?
2. Why are there seven/twelve notes in Western scales?
3. How much (if any) of the major/minor harmonic system is objective? What is subjective or cultural?
4. Is 12-tone music “real” or not?

This manuscript aims to fill this void.

Ultimately, not much in this book is original. In particular, Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–1894) discovered most of the fundamental principles that we will investigate and apply. And there is a debt to those who came before: to every musician, composer, teacher, scientist, and writer who has contributed to the science and art of music.