Why does the New York Philharmonic sound better to our ears than a high school band? Cognitive scientists have found an unexpected answer: Our sense of harmony stems from speech. The nicest sounding harmonies mimic the tones most commonly spoken in day-to-day conversations.
David Schwartz, Catherine Howe and Dale Purves from Duke University wondered why some combinations of notes sound better together than others. They analyzed recorded conversations from more than 500 english-speaking people, breaking down the speech into a sound spectrum--essentially a graph of the tones we use when we talk.
The tones that speakers used most often matched the chromatic scale-the same notes found on a piano. Furthermore, the researches found that some notes were used more often than others. Our favorite harmonies are combinations our most used tones. More specifically, when the tones on the sound spectrum graph are close together, harmony results.
