In locomotion, the heartbeat expresses itself as skipping. Children love to skip, and like myself, often can’t help tapping beats out on their environment.

Our love of 60 b/p/m iambic shuffle music and poetry is shaped during our time in the womb, while listening to the constant pulse of our mothers’ biomusic. The loudest sounds a fetus hears are her heartbeat – the four sounds of the heart (in waltzes and gallops) – the bruits of the blood, nerve noise, and all the sounds of the social environment filtered in through the subwoofer of her womb. This intrauterine soundtrack is like listening to riddim underwater – big bassy waves and strong pulsing rhythms.

So what to play for your newborn’s First Sound? We know babies like Major, bass and drum music, at Moderate rock tempos. Should the First Sound include the froufrou of a scrub’s shoes? The syncopated applause of family? Or a 4/4 Lamaze beat – a natural extension of mom’s 60 bpm heartbeat – jammed out upon delivery by the Hospital House Band? Or should, as William Burroughs suggests, the newborn be treated to silence as her First Sound?

Of course, it you want to sever the child’s sonic umbilicus right away, have the doctors play your newborn some Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Comments are always welcome. It’s easy and anonymous.
Love, Homey

♥ These are my Heart Sounds…

The first harmonic is a higher C, the octave. The second harmonic is a G, the fifth, followed by another octave C. The fourth harmonic is the Major/Minor Third E.

Together, C, E and G form a C Major chord.

Thus, there is a natural basis to tonality. Scales and Chords came pre-packaged inside every Tone. So it’s no wonder why babies prefer Major keys.

The Harmonic Series is also know as the Lydian Dominant scale. It is an obscure key. I can’t think of one sing-song that uses it.

However, Alexander Scriabin, the Russian tone poet, uses this scale extensively in his Poem of Fire. Below is Scriabin’s favorite chord, The Mystic Chord, which is created from the Lydian Dominant scale.

Thus Spake Zarathrusta by Richard Strauss reveals the origins of music in the harmonic series. The song begins with the Fundamental, C, and adds the other harmonics – the Fifth, Octave, and Thirds.

Musicologist Robert Fink has a beautiful anaylsis of Zarathrusta. His Origins of Music site has great articles on the natural basis of music.

Well that’s it for this Bloggy! Here’s what we learned today:

1) Every tone is a chord that contains a scale.
2) This scale is called the Harmonic Series, or Lydian Dominant.
3) The Series shows there is a natural basis to pop tonalities.
4) Thus, babies prefer Major keys.
5) Scriabin was obsessed with Lydian Dominant.
6) Richard Strauss is awesome and babies love him.

“Up a Whole Tone, down a Major Third, down an Octave, up a Perfect Fifth.”

In “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, grey aliens play these 5 Tones on their mothership’s synthesizer. Hollywood composer John Williams wrote the lick, and fashioned it after the 5 letter word “Hello”. Two of the tones are the same, just like the double L’s.

The 5 Tones belong to the Ab Major Pentatonic Scale

The Major Pentatonic scale is a happy floaty dream – ‘Playground’ tonality.
There is little tension. The intervals are widely spaced; there are no semitones.
This is because the Pentatonic scale omits two very important notes from the Diatonic (7-note) Scale.

These 2 notes form a Tritone, or “Devil’s Interval”. Sounded together, they are the most dissonant interval known to man. In studies done on babies, tritones produce a negative response. In the middle ages, this interval was banned by the church for being so awesomely evil.

When added to the Pentatonic scale, the tritone creates two semitones, between the III and IV, and the VII and VIII. The semitone produces the most tension in harmony, as it is the smallest interval in Equal Temperament.

It makes sense that greys would come at us with a Pentatonic scale. A nice, neutral scale, that wouldn’t offend Earth’s babies.

You wouldn’t want to encounter this:

Here’s the best scene ever from any movie.

There is just about every time signature in this song – 4, 5, 6, and 7 too. Who would’ve thought the music of ancient Syria was so progressive!?

I used the only recorded version I know of, transcribed by Prof. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, from a CD called “Sounds from Silence”. She studied the clay tablets for 15 years and came up with this masterpiece.

Oldest Song by Prof. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer.

It is pretty cheesy sounding, but I felt it could be cheesier still. So I covered it. Also, if you notice her time signatures are even more ridiculous. I smoothed it out and at least made the eighth notes even, so that a drum and bass could throw down.

The Oldest Song shows us how little pop music has changed over the course of four centuries. The Song is in diatonic C Major, harmonized mostly in thirds, and contains a simple I IV V Progression – The ‘Three Golden Tones’ found in every musical culture at any time on the planet. For god’s sake, the first measure of the Oldest Song is almost identical to Beethoven’s Ode to Joy!

It’s no secret that babies like Major Chords above all others. There’s a simple explanation really. Major chords make us happy because every musical tone is a major chord!

Behold the Harmonic Series!

The first tone on the left (the low C) is known as the ‘fundamental.’ If you played this tone on a piano, it would resonate with all the other tones of the series, called ‘overtones’, or ‘harmonics’. The fundamental is the pitch that you hear, while the overtones define the timbre of the instrument – what distinguishes a piano from say, a flute.

Thus, every tone is actually a chord made up of infinite tones. Add up the dominant overtones in the series, and you’ve got yourself a Major Chord.

Mommies, be sure to coo your children to sleep in Major keys, and remain absolutely silent at the moment of their birth.

Here’s a little guitar diddy I made of the Harmonic Series. The scale name is known as ‘Lydian Dominant’. Enjoy my friends!

There’s also a great Article by musicologist Bob Fink, all about the Oldest Song.

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