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4.1.3 A Little Music Scale Theory: Why Random Scales Sound Bad
If you create a random scale, a scale comprised of notes having no natural, physical relationship with each other (the way you did using random chalk marks on the cello fingerboard), then try to play a tune using that scale, your brain interprets the sound as chaos, not music. Or just plain bad music.
Studies of both children and adults indicate your brain is hardwired at birth to reject random scales. Infants prefer non-random scales, as do adults. The frequencies of the notes comprising a scale have to have some kind of internal order—ordered relationships with each other—or your brain interprets the sound as noise.
But not just any ordered relationships.
Particular ordered relationships that your brain recognizes: “brain-friendly” ordered relationships of tones, as opposed to “brain-averse” chaotic non-relationships.