Biology Form Five Notes: Fill & Download for Free

A great question!It forms part of a larger debate in music and aesthetics generally: is there some intrinsic quality to a piece of art that makes people like it, or is it all a matter of triggering cultural and personal memories?There are merits to both sides of the argument. All musical cultures have five-note (pentatonic) scales, and these scales use roughly the same musical intervals[math]^1[/math]. So if music evolved independently in each culture, then perhaps the relationships among the notes made them intrinsically appealing. But if pentatonic music emerged once, so that all musics have a “common ancestor”, then perhaps pentatonic music is a cultural memory?It’s hard to really test such ideas. If babies respond preferentially to pentatonic scales, does that mean the scale is somehow innate to our brains? Perhaps the mother’s musical experiences influence the unborn infant’s sense of sound? There is a lot of evidence that babies can be influenced by what they hear in the womb[math]^2[/math].Now lets come to the I–V–vi–IV progression. Chords, unlike melodies, are not universal. Polyphony — the playing of two or more overlapping musical notes — was until recently only found in European music[math]^3[/math]. Since the period of colonialism, imperialism and global cultural interchange, polyphony has traveled across the world, and is now found almost everywhere.Does the European origin of chord patterns mean that they are culturally specific? I recall reading of a British person in colonial India who wanted to see if Indians could appreciate western harmony. So he took tunes that were familiar to Indians, and gave them chordal arrangements that he thought were fitting. The Indians he “tested” did not find these chord patterns unpleasant or jarring[math]^4[/math]. If this sort of result holds, it tells us something about the universality of at least some chord patterns.But these general ideas doesn’t really explain why the I-V-vi-IV in particular is so popular. I think a cultural explanation might make sense here. Since the beginning of the modern pop era (roughly the 1950s), many major hits have used this sequence. So when parents play their favorite songs for their kids, a powerful emotional link can be formed. Once this associative link is formed, subsequent songwriters can tap into this feeling to produce a satisfying musical experience.Perhaps this is not the whole explanation. Over at stackexchange, the same question was asked, and several explanations rooted in music theory were offered:Why are four-chord songs (I-V-vi-IV) so prevalent?Here are some excerpts from one of the answers:“The first thing that I would point out is that within a given key, you can harmonize any diatonic melody using only three chords, I, IV and V.Key of CI = C = CEGIV = F = FACV = G = GBDYou can see that all 7 notes of the scale appear in at least one of these chords, allowing you to consonantly harmonize each scale degree. The classic diss on Rock music comes to mind, "You only need to play three chords and scream".”[…]“I like to think of the 3rd chord that appears in the 4 chord progression as a texture change.”[…]“I'd also point out the plagal cadence (IV-I) the progression creates.”So it seems as if the I-V-vi-IV progression is one of the easiest progressions with which to harmonize any diatonic melody — in C major that would be a melody only featuring the white keys. (Have a look at the other answers too, which go in a somewhat “Pythagorean” direction.)I’d like to draw attention to the very last part of the excerpt: the part about the plagal cadence or “Amen cadence”. The IV-I pattern often occurs at the end of Christian hymns, when the “Amen” is sung[math]^5[/math]. A significant proportion of music listeners in the English speaking world are from the protestant Christian cultural sphere, and would have heard the Amen cadence even if they are no longer religious — for example, during weddings, baptisms, and funerals. And of course, movies that feature such events will also have this cadence. Religious events, weddings, baptisms and funerals are among the most emotionally intense social gatherings humans regularly attend.So songwriters can tap into memories of these emotions, conjuring awe, wonder, contemplation, spirituality, love, longing and nostalgia. Lyrics often help cement the association between emotion and sound. And once one generation has heard these songs, they can pass on the feelings directly to the next generation, as well as to cultures that have never even heard the Amen cadence. This is the power of associative learning.All this is very speculative of course, but great fun to think about.Notes[math]^1[/math] This paper makes a case for the universality of the pentatonic scale:Is the pentatonic universal? A few reflections on pentatonism - World of Music[paywalled, but contact me by direct message if you want to find a free copy.]I just found a more recent paper that makes the same point, plus with data analysis:A Biological Rationale for Musical Scales - PLOS ONE“Here we show that the component intervals of the most widely used scales throughout history and across cultures are those with the greatest overall spectral similarity to a harmonic series.”~[math]^2[/math] For example, see this article:Babies Learn to Recognize Words in the Womb - Science Magazine~[math]^3[/math] The major exception to the Western-only origins of polyphony may be overtone singing, in which a singer can actually sing two notes simultaneously. It is found in various parts of the world, and was made famous in musicological and anthropological circles by Tibetan and Tuvan throat singers. Also, Indian classical music features a drone that accompanies the main soloist. But a drone is a static held note. Having two differing, dynamic melodic lines was a slow development that took place over many centuries in Europe. Howard Goodall has a wonderful documentary about it:Howard Goodall’s The Story of Music — Episode 3: Harmony~[math]^4 [/math][math][/math][math] [/math][math][/math][math][/math]I have no idea where I came across this early (and presumably unscientific) study, but if I find it I’ll put a reference here.~[math]^5[/math] This blog post makes the same point about the “Amen cadence”, and covers the whole topic quite nicely, incorporating elements of pattern expectation that I didn’t mention:Yabbut...Why THOSE Four Chords? - Dale McGowanAnd… I have to link to that “Axis of Awesome” video too. :)

“On a bleak island in the Aral Sea, one hundred monkeys are tethered to posts set in parallel rows stretching out toward the horizon. A muffled thud breaks the stillness. Far in the distance, a small metal sphere lifts into the sky then hurtles downward, rotating, until it shatters in a second explosion.Some seventy-five feet above the ground, a cloud the color of dark mustard begins to unfurl, gently dissolving as it glides down toward the monkeys. They pull at their chains and begin to cry. Some bury their heads between their legs. A few cover their mouths or noses, but it is too late: they have already begun to die.At the other end of the island, a handful of men in biological protective suits observe the scene through binoculars, taking notes. In a few hours, they will retrieve the still-breathing monkeys and return them to cages where the animals will be under continuous examination for the next several days until, one by one, they die of anthrax or tularemia, Q fever, brucellosis, glanders, or plague.These monkey had been ordered from Africa and immunized for these tests on Rebirth Island to search for new deadly resistant bacteria and viruses. Nearly all of them died.”These are the opening words of Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapon Program in the World Told from the Inside by the Man Who Ran It, a harrowing autobiography of a Kazakh physician who helped create and direct the largest and most advanced biological warfare program in the world, in the clandestine factories dotted around the Soviet Union for 70 years.Vozrozhdeniya Island, a top-secret testing ground for deadly Soviet super-pathogensBetween 1988 and 1992 the author, Ken Alibek, was first deputy chief of Biopreparat, the Soviet state pharmaceutical agency whose primary function was to develop and produce weapons made from the most dangerous viruses, toxins, and bacteria known to man.It was a gigantic effort that consumed billions of dollars and employed tens of thousands of people working in utmost secrecy to find ways of inflicting the most excruciating diseases and deaths on millions of people in the capitalist world. Biopreparat was a network of research, testing, and manufacturing facilities, spread out over 40 sites in Russia and Kazakhstan.The Soviet biological warfare program began in the 1920s. The casualties caused by a brutal epidemic of typhus from 1918 to 1921 made a deep impression on the commanders of the Red Army. They recognized that disease had served as a more potent weapon than bullets or artillery shells.After the end of the Second World War, captured Japanese documents were sent to Moscow with blueprints for advanced biological warfare assembly plants.Stalin took inspiration from these documents and ordered the KGB chief to surpass what the Japanese had accomplished. In 1946 a new army biological research complex was established, following the Japanese blueprint.This program was transformed into a strategic arm of the military and developed so quickly that, merely ten years later, Moscow would be capable of deploying biological and chemical weapons in the next war. The Soviet government decided that the best agents were those for which there was no known cure.In the name of scientific research, Soviet agents purchased strains from university research laboratories and biotech firms around the world with no difficulty and—most reliably—from the KGB.Ironically, after the Soviet Union signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1972, they developed the largest and most advanced biological warfare establishment in the world. They stockpiled hundreds of tons of anthrax and dozens of tons of plague and smallpox for use against the United States and its allies.They even considered using the giant SS-18 missiles—which could carry ten five-hundred-kiloton warheads apiece over a range of six thousand miles—to deliver a biological attack. Some of the agents developed could be prepared to fill hundreds of warheads simultaneously. A single SS-18 could have wiped out a city as large as New York.In addition to animal experiments, scientists tested deadly viruses on the Gulag prisoners, and painful death was a near certainty. The work also took a huge toll on the researchers themselves. Several of them died as a result of exposure during their experiments.Many of the facilities were installed in the centers of towns and cities to keep their military connection secret. In one incident, a blocked filter led to the spread of anthrax dust all over one town. The authorities lied about the mysterious deaths and turned what began as a medical emergency into a small epidemic with over 100 people dead.In 1980, the WHO announced that smallpox had been eradicated from the planet. Soon after the WHO announcement, smallpox was included in a list of viral and bacterial weapons targeted for improvement in the USSR’s Eleventh Five-Year Plan (1981-85).Every new medical victory presented a military opportunity to Moscow. A world no longer protected from smallpox was a world newly vulnerable to the disease. Soviet researchers began to develop a better version of their smallpox weapon, as they had an annual stockpile of twenty tons of the pathogen.When the genetic revolution happened in the West, Soviet scientists rushed to apply these new techniques to produce antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. They were able to develop multi-antibiotic-resistant strains of plague with a far larger spectrum of resistance, sufficient to overcome practically all antibiotic treatments.In parallel to these programs, the Poison laboratory—a covert research and development facility of the Soviet secret police—was busy testing deadly poisons on prisoners from the Gulags. The goal was to find a tasteless, odourless chemical that could not be detected postmortem. Candidate poisons were given to the victims with a meal or drink as "medication."Unlike what happened to the Nazi experiments and Unit 731 in Japan, it is truly disturbing to think this biological weapons stockpile might not have been destroyed, and these research programs would have continued undetected today. Former Soviet weapons scientists never had to face justice, and their skills became available in the international market—silently spreading like deadly viruses that could strike and devastate humanity one day.

Not just in rock, but folk styles around the world for centuries.In a lecture (search “Norton Lectures”), Bernstein attempted to compare this phenomenon with Noam Chomsky’s idea of Universal Grammar, suggesting that humans might be hard-wired to favor the five notes of the pentatonic scale because they are derived from the overtone series. An interesting premise, but probably incomplete. We certainly do like to use it, whether in a Chinese court, an eastern European village, or a Manhattan jazz club; so there must be something about it that causes it to transcend boundaries.It’s quite likely that the reason is related to both the “avoid notes” theory presented by another answerer and the Bernstein’s purely mathematical/biological premise: It doesn’t contain half-steps, which makes the intervals in melodies created using the scale more “intuitive” for the people learning them, regardless of training.