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The Epic Online Orchestra

epiconlineorchestra.com

65 pointshenridf14 comments

It's fascinating how different sequences of chords can evoke emotional states associated with everything from sadness, love, wonder, outer space, etc. Not sure I agree with all of the examples in the app, but I could spend hours on it searching for better sequences.

That’s essentially the basis of modal studies. Learning the theory behind modes and how to play within them gets you pretty far fast.

It's still unclear whether the emotional affectives of specific intervals are socially acquired or somehow inherent.

You'd hope the musicology would be able to provide some answers by looking at musical cultures that do not use western tuning systems (particularly 12TET), but as best as I can tell, the results from such comparisons just muddy the waters even further.

Regardless of the genesis of how we discern music, specific modes have characteristics that are fairly universal.

For example, the aeolian mode is a much darker, sadder mode than the ionian mode. Why is that? I'm sure there's an intense debate there. I just study the theory, not the higher order biology/physics of why the music speaks to us the way it does. But the characteristics of modes and how they resolve are fairly established at this point.

Sorry, but this probably wrong. Labels like "darker, sadder" are not inherent to the intervallic series of a particular mode. You could make some objective observation such as "there is more dissonace in the 3rd, 7th and 9th members of the harmonic series when comparing the notes that make up the major chord". But "darker, sadder" are emotional labels that are probably but not definitely socially constructed.

I had the experience once of seeing one of the greatest Indian vocalists of the 20th century live. The audience was almost entirely people of Indian ancestry, and clearly very experienced at listening to this sort of music - I was not. Indian music doesn't use harmonic relationships very much, but does have a much more clearly developed and articulated "theory of melody" in which specific intervals in an ascending or descending of a melody have particular meanings (within the context of a given raga (scale/mode)).

The audience would gasp out loud as he did certain ascents/descents. I kept looking at the person I went with (who had grown up listening to Indian classical music) and it was clear that to him the meaning of the note sequence was completely obvious. To me, there was no meaning at all.

As I mentioned, musicology research that I'm familiar with is still a bit ambiguous about this. It is possible that people from very different musical cultures might agree with your characterization of the intervals that make up aeolian as "darker, sadder", but I'm not aware of any definitive studies that show this clearly.

Have a look at this video https://youtu.be/YSKAt3pmYBs It’s not clickbait, don’t let the title scare you.

"Outer space", Jebediah approved!

Right out of Dvorak Symphony 9!

Good ear. One of my favorite symphonies but didn't notice that.

Heart shaped box: https://epiconlineorchestra.com/E/C/A/A/E/C/A/A?autoplay

This is amazing! What is the license for the exported samples?

This is not legal advice but I do have some experience with sample banks. In the absence of more information, I would approach the exported samples as if you were using them from Sonuscore directly. The license for that is here:

https://sonuscore.com/guests/manuals/Free_Orchestra_Chords_M...

If you read that license, you'll notice that the featured website does not appear to really comply with the license of the samples they're using. Like most sample banks licences, it specifically disallows redistributing the raw samples. That is, unless they got a special license.

Seems like Sonuscore are well aware of the existence of the website, and happy with the result:

https://www.facebook.com/Sonuscore/posts/check-out-the-onlin...

I wish there were 7 chords too!

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