Disharmony in music

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Anybody else find it "painful" to listen to disharmonies in music? It makes me cringe every time. One reason why I can't listen to freestyle jazz even though I admire the creativity of it.

Its like
Harmony = calm
Disharmony = anxiety

I dont really know, but jazz sounds like... chainsaws to me. I like fluent rythms, sort of patterns in the music i listen to.

That's funny I don't like disharmony either but I do like the 1920-30s version and then of course some forms of swing compared to the jazzes from the 50s and up.

I think the 1920s-30s are melodious. Because I could never understand this myself of how I could like that jazz compared to jazz in general. I'm also not real into screaming music.

Some modern forms of jazz do seem to wander off into a sort of self-indulgence that only vaguely resembles what I consider music. I do love the jazz of the twenties, thirties and forties, though. There's something about swing music that's kind of hypnotic and relaxing, without putting one immediately to sleep. Maybe it's just the quality of the older recordings that creates a time-travel illusion.

Nah. I'm fine with Jazz.

In fact... the stranger and less repetitive the music, the better I feel listening to it. I listen to TOOL primarily because of the deliberately awkward beats and fascination with mathematical pattern.


I actually own Arnold Schoenberg's "Pierrot Lunaire" opera on CD.... and I warn you now: From what you're saying, most of you would go into instant anxiety-attack just listening to it. It took me WEEKS to attune myself to the sounds of Atonal Music.


Put pop-music on though, and I will go absolutely apeshit trying to turn it off.

Me, I'm OK with some of it...just depends what mood I'm in. Hubby listens to jazz more because he plays sax, but he prefers the more melodic stuff anyway.

Silke, here's a question for you. Do you, or might you, have absolute pitch? That is...can you hear a note and know (without checking with a piano or other tuned instrument) what note it is?

Reason I ask is because people who have this (I'm not one of them!) seem to have real difficulty listening to stuff that isn't in tune or doesn't harmonize. The luthier I got my 'cello from is one such person, and he's gone to the length of calling the BBC before now to complain that they were playing things at the wrong speed. And I've heard of people actually feeling nauseated because what someone was playing didn't correspond to the notes on the stave.

Most people who have AP know it from an early age because they tend to be the people whose parents, for example, are getting them playing violin at age 3 or whatever. Some people think we're all born with it but lose it if we don't have this kind of early training. But, I have heard of cases where people have only found out they have it later in life, so it may be worth you looking into. Some university in CA was doing a study online that had a test for it, but I can't recall where...

Well, the first time I played strange chords on the piano, I found it painful.
Then, I got used to it, and even I like it.
And the more I play, the more disharmonic music I can bear.
I love jazz, any kind of jazz. It's like freedom in music, but at the same time very mathematical and rigourous.

I can tolerate and enjoy some dissonance... probably more than most people. The little atonal music I've heard (just Schoenberg) unsettles me greatly though, and I really have to concentrate for it to make sense.

I have some trouble identifying pitch, and tuning by ear. That's one of the reasons why I find the guitar to be much easier to play than the viola.

I happen to like slightly dissonant music. A lot of music with the typical major/minor key progression feels emotionally flat to me. I also prefer non-western scales/harmonies to western ones.

I love dissonance and atonality, but it has to be in a minimal format. If it isn't, then it has to be melodic and harmonic.