mjApr 8
This paper deserves a rant 🧵! Besides HARKing, there are plenty of other ongoing, institutionalized problems in #science. Cherry picking, retconning, historic negation &/or narrative reframing to make your results sound surprising (clickbait) all seem to apply here. www.cam.ac.uk/research/new...

Pythagoras was wrong: there ar...
Pythagoras was wrong: there are no universal musical harmonies, study finds

The tone and tuning of musical instruments has the power to manipulate our appreciation of harmony, new research shows. The findings challenge centuries of

University of Cambridge
Show threadmjApr 8
After that, it becomes more pathetic every century. Was there some truth buried in there? Ofc. But it sure as hell was not number magic. Pythagoras is to Western #jingoism what "Columbus" is to American exceptionalism: a poster boy meme. #Music history refutes this simplistic, reductionist claim.
Show threadmjApr 8
That #history includes the expanding definition for the arbitrary distinction between C/D & increasing # of divisions of the #octave that musicians used & society followed (every song is experimental confirmation!) "Jazz is Freedom" ~Duke Ellington Freedom from what? The false dichotomy of C/D!
Show threadmj
A comment for clarification: Consonance & #Dissonance as a false dichotomy is a nuanced claim. It is not meant to remove human taste or preference from study in general, it's about removing "good or bad" from the physics involved so that physics would take center stage. But it's too late for that!
Apr 12 at 2:37pmWeb
Show threadmjApr 12
I think it's better at this point to just leave C/D to people studying how perception of sound & music affect humans and other life forms. That doesn't mean that there's zero C/D involvement in the effort to revise & refine the study of resonance. Other vocabulary already separates these contexts.
Show threadmjApr 12
It's also worth pointing out that other musicians have made the same quote regarding jazz, but refer to the 'freedom' that black musicians gained through the popularity of jazz & subsequent #evolution into other forms like #Blues or Rock. It's quite possible that Mr. Ellington meant both.