The mathematical rules for creating musical harmony may be more malleable than thought. Western music theory traditionally holds that chords sound most pleasant when they contain notes separated by ...

Notes with frequencies that are in simple whole-number ratios, like 1:2, 2:3 or 4:5, sound good when played together. This is the basis of musical harmony. After unison (1:1) and the octave (2:1), the ...

"Western research has focused so much on familiar orchestral instruments, but other musical cultures use instruments that, because of their shape and physics, are what we would call 'inharmonic'. The ...