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Intervals

Bibliography & method

Read past
the interface.

Run each experiment to verify its claim. This page holds the sources behind all of them. Everything here sits inside Western tonal theory, one deep tradition among many.

Book · lecture I

Leonard Bernstein

The Unanswered Question: Six Talks at Harvard

“Musical Phonology” supplies the opening architecture: the child’s call, vibrating string, sympathetic resonance, harmonic series, octave, fifth, triad, and the analogy between musical and linguistic universals.

Harvard University Press · lectures delivered 1973
Book · chapters III–IV

Arnold Schoenberg

Theory of Harmony

“Consonance and Dissonance” supplies the argument that near and remote partials differ only by degree, because they all belong to one series; the next chapter explores scale and chord as horizontal and vertical interpretations of a tone.

First published 1911 · English translation by Roy E. Carter

Core reference layer

Wikipedia reading trail

Used as the public, linkable backbone for definitions, equations, and chronology. Each article points onward to specialist sources.

1Interval (music)Definitions, naming, ratios, cents, classification↗2Harmonic series (music)Partials, tuning variance, timbre, combination tones↗3String vibrationLength, tension, density, wavelength, harmonic modes↗4Consonance and dissonanceHistorical, psychoacoustic, and cultural accounts↗5Pythagorean tuningStacks of fifths, commas, wolf intervals↗6Just intonationWhole-number interval ratios and tuning practice↗7Equal temperamentOctave division and modern keyboard compromise↗8Music and mathematicsHistorical relationship between number and sound↗
Explore

These pages sit behind the interval names.

Bibliography · Reference map

See where each claim is written down.

Add or remove remembered ratios, then play the constellation together and one note at a time. Notice how settled or tense each remembered relationship sounds. Every point recalls an interval carried from another room; the controls redraw that accumulated record without changing it. The map gathers the sounds you tested across the museum into one picture.

Add or remove remembered ratios, then play them together and one note at a time. Hear how settled or tense each relationship sounds. Every point carries an interval from another room without changing its record. The map gathers the sounds you tested across the museum.

Review the ratios3-point constellation