Timbre can affect what harmony is music to our ears

Instruments’ unique voices may explain why different cultures developed their own musical scales

The bonang is a collection of small gongs played in a Javanese gamelan. In a new experiment, people preferred chords containing bonanglike notes that broke Western music theory's rules for beautiful harmony.

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The mathematical rules for creating musical harmony may be more malleable than thought.

Western music theory traditionally holds that chords sound most pleasant when they contain notes