Which key is the saddest?

Adam Neely · 1.3M views · 2017-01-09 · 9:07

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Overview

Musician Adam Neely examines whether certain keys sound sadder than others, looking at the history of tuning systems and temperaments and at how instrument timbre shapes the emotional character we hear. It draws on historical aesthetics writing and audio examples.

On Hacker News

HN commenters recommend it for its historical context on tuning systems and for how instruments influence what music gets composed.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2018–2020

Topics

Music theory, synthesis & production

What people said

viraptor · 2020-05 · Recommendation
If you're into that, check out Adam Neely's channel. There's been a few videos on that and related topics: [VIDEO] (Spoiler: lots of historical context about tuning systems, but also raising the issue of timbre of specific instruments)
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mafuyu · 2018-09 · Recommendation
I recommend checking out Adam Neely's channel, where he touches on some similar concepts: [VIDEO] [LINK] [LINK]
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abakker · 2018-04 · Recommendation
Re #2, I'm not a programmer, but as a writer I find the same thing to be true. I work better with a pen and legal pad than a keyboard. I've got this feeling that we have neural pathways built for typing and, subconsciously, we favor phrases, words, and sentences that are easy to type. I know I even have a tic where if I pause to think I'll insert extraneous commas. It's kind of like how musicians tend to improvise around licks and scales that they have practiced a lot. There's something to thinking about the idea of a song on paper that is more creative than unintentionally falling back on chords/forms that are easy to play. (Adam Neely discusses this very well here: [VIDEO] )
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Sources

Video by Adam Neely, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

Data and selection notes

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