Which key is the saddest?
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters recommend it for its historical context on tuning systems and for how instruments influence what music gets composed.
What it is
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.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2018 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Recommends abakker · 2018-04 · on “Where I started might not be useful to you”
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: [this video] )
Recommends mafuyu · 2018-09 · on “We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?”
I recommend checking out Adam Neely's channel, where he touches on some similar concepts: [this video] [LINK] [LINK]
Recommends viraptor · 2020-05 · on “Guitar Decomposed: 5. Mutating the Third”
If you're into that, check out Adam Neely's channel. There's been a few videos on that and related topics: [this video] (Spoiler: lots of historical context about tuning systems, but also raising the issue of timbre of specific instruments)