Taken from Prof. Dmitri Tymoczko

 

What Makes Music Sound Good?

Intuitively, some combinations of notes sound better than others. What’s the difference between good-sounding and bad-sounding combinations? While we cannot answer this question absolutely (since there’s no accounting for taste), we can identify five different properties that are common to a very wide range of styles, from early Medieval music to contemporary popular music.

They are:

1. Conjunct melodic motion. Melodies tend to move by short distances from note to note. Large leaps sound inherently unmelodic.

2. Harmonic consistency. The chords in a passage of music, whatever they may be, tend to be structurally similar to one another.

3. Acoustic consonance. Some chords sound intrinsically good or pleasing. These are said to be consonant.

4. Scales. Over small spans of musical time (say 30 seconds or so), most musical styles tend to use just a few types of notes, between 5 to 8.

5. Centricity. Over moderate spans of musical time, one tonic note is heard as being more prominent than the others, appearing more frequently and serving as a goal of musical motion. 

 

Why do some chords sound good together?  Can you come up with an examle of a song that has a good chord progression?