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Posted by Joe The scientific reason a tri-tone is so dissonant is that it’s just plain out of tune with itself. None of the overtones of the notes line up enough for you to hear them together as a stable harmony. Now you might be able to use theory knowledge of classical music to see a tritone & assume you know where the tonal center is doesn’t mean it works both ways. In other words, just because there’s a tritone doesn’t mean there’s a tonal center. Let’s use our ears to mess around with that idea. Play a C chord on the piano, hold it & with your other hand play the following melodically, C D E F G F E D C. Try singing the tonic. I assume it’s already clear to you that you are in the key of C major. You don’t need any theory to figure that out, it’s all about your ear. So I then ask you, “where’s the tritone?” How about this: play an A minor chord & then with your right hand play A B C D E D C B A. What does it sound like to you? Sounds like A minor to me. Once again, “where’s the tritone?” You’ve just established two undisputable tonalities without using a tritone at all. Now let’s see if our ears work will work in reverse & see if your claim that a tritone is the MOST pivotal interval with respect to tonality. Play B & F at the same time. What key are you in? C major/minor you might say How do you know you aren’t in A minor? Maybe it’s part of a secondary or extended dominant chord. Could it be the tritone V7/V in F? So not only can you describe tonality without a tritone, A tritone alone doesn’t accurately describe tonality at all. :) Hey that rhymed. Maybe I should go even more radical, how do you know you aren’t playing part of the one chord in G mixolydian? I guess you might consider that modal & not tonal, but the point is that you would have yet another tonic implied by the same tritone. Harmonic movement is created in tonal music through approaching & resolving dissonance. A tri-tone isn’t used because it is related to tonality. It is used because it is the opposite of tonality. The more dissonant a chord is the stronger the movement towards resolution will sound, or, if left unresolved, the stronger that face you make when it sounds like the band just hit a wrong note.
on 4/9/2005, 10:33 pm, in reply to "Re: TRI-TONE"
192.136.22.4
Yes I suppose those are a lot of observations & true statements.
A tritone by itself actually has very little to do with the tonal center of a key. As I said before, on it’s own, it’s just a dissonance.
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