Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music · HackerPapers discussions

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — HN submission

Tue, 28 Jul 2026 15:20:35 GMT

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2012)

105 points; 114 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — HN submission

Sat, 30 Jul 2022 14:59:45 GMT

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music

2 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — HN submission

Thu, 23 Jul 2020 23:02:55 GMT

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music

3 points; 1 discussion reply on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — mentioned by geon

Tue, 05 May 2020 15:47:15 GMT

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music https://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12085844

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — mentioned by sctb

Fri, 16 Jun 2017 19:04:13 GMT

Thanks! We've updated the link from https://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1.

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — mentioned by michaf

Fri, 16 Jun 2017 15:12:10 GMT

There is a newer version 2 from 2014: https://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v2

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — HN submission

Thu, 15 Jun 2017 17:33:52 GMT

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music (2014)

98 points; 61 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — HN submission

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 06:28:08 GMT

Harmony Explained – A Scientific Theory of Music (2012)

3 points; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — HN submission

Wed, 26 Oct 2016 07:08:16 GMT

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music

1 point; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — mentioned by geon

Wed, 26 Oct 2016 06:03:52 GMT

The scales don't necessarily have the same notes. That only happens with equal temperament tuning (, which is it's great advantage). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament If you optimized the tuning for harmony, the notes would be largely similar, but some of them would not line up that well. Playing one scale with you instrument tuned for the other wouldn't work that well. https://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1/#sec_3_3_0 Read that whole article. Super interesting. It was posted on HN this summer.

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — mentioned by floatrock

Tue, 25 Oct 2016 23:24:21 GMT

It's very western-focused, especially when you describe the chromatic scale as "modern music". I would also lose the "from first principles" by-line. The pentatonic scale description was neat in that you talked about how frequencies that sound good together have certain clean ratios, but when you jumped to chromatic scale, there was nothing about how that was derived other than "filling in the blanks." I love the site in general, but the "from first principles" by-line implies a few things that are kinda missing. It's more accurate to call it a visual introduction to western music theory. A…

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — mentioned by monort

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 12:46:03 GMT

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music https://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1/

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — mentioned by privong

Wed, 13 Jul 2016 14:10:02 GMT

Note that the post currently links to version 1, which was uploaded in 2012 (https://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1). There is an updated version from 2014 (https://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v2). For arXiv posts, unless a specific version is under discussion, it's probably best to link to the abstract page without the version tag: https://arxiv.org/abs/1202.4212 This lets folks see if there are multiple versions of the preprints and multiple formats to view those preprints.

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — HN submission

Wed, 13 Jul 2016 13:12:45 GMT

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music

213 points; 148 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — mentioned by nirajshr

Thu, 31 Mar 2016 14:41:24 GMT

If you have time, this is an excellent article that describes where the "12" comes from and the derivation of the chromatic scale and just intonation scales. http://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — mentioned by ewoodrich

Sat, 18 Oct 2014 17:49:13 GMT

There's some discussion here: http://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1/#sec_5_1_0

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — mentioned by monort

Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:41:26 GMT

If you are interested in how music works, I recommend to read this paper about music theory from physics point of view: http://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1/

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — HN submission

Sat, 18 Oct 2014 08:06:28 GMT

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music

1 point; 0 discussion replies on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — mentioned by xaver

Sat, 18 Oct 2014 04:00:41 GMT

this perhaps? http://arxiv.org/html/1202.4212v1

Paper and discussion history. A mention is not an endorsement.

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards A Scientific Theory of Music — HN submission

Fri, 17 Oct 2014 22:38:06 GMT

Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory of Music

7 points; 1 discussion reply on HN. Paper and source history. A submission is not an endorsement.