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The major key is present by nature in every note that is played. Therefore, it is interpreted as normal behavior, a happy day in our lives, 'cause that's what we expect to happen. The minor key is opposed to the major key and it's perceived by us (without being aware) as if there was something wrong, hence sadness or restlessness. Further explanation: When ...

They are not quite "universally" regarded as sad. For instance, in the Amazon jungle (particularly the part in Brazil) and some places in the Middle East, people use minor keys for happy songs of rejoicing. Basically, some experts argue it has to do with the qualities of natural speech. Here's an explanation: ...

10 Thaats (basic scales) -> Ragas is the Hindustani music concept. In Carnatic Music there are 72 Melamkarthas Ragas yielding thousands of derivative ragas. (I limit my discussion to Carnatic ragas, hoping it'll answer your question) Raga At a basic level, each raga is a distinctive kind of melody, having its own flavour. A seasoned listner can detect this ...

John Coltrane famously studied Nicolas Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns and using eastern and exotic scales in his solos. I believe this text is supposed to contain such scales, but I don't have a copy and can't verify that definitely, or that it will specify which scales come from where. Yusef Lateef's Repository of Scales and Melodic ...

It is cultural. The ancient Greeks used a few more musical scales to denote certain moods (I'm missing my Greek history and theatre books at the moment). I'd say that minor keys sound sad because you've associated them with "sad" not that they cause humans to be sad. On a meta note, do we have some way (yet?) of representing musical notation?

This has been asked a lot on the net and it's complex to answer. It's partly cultural and partly psychological. As Edgar Gonzales said in his answer, there's some explanation in the harmonics of the notes. What he said is correct, but he doesn't take into account temperament. Western music is based on Equal Temperament and as such, the perfect progressions ...

I wouldn't categorize the minor scale as "sad", and I don't think it's universally sad, I would rather call it emotional or this kind of category. It's not universal because of a convention, it's just true fact that minor songs are more touching soul than major (in most cases). The effect of the minor scale when listening to, makes you feel emotional, the ...

Well, for one, there are many more cultures in Russia than just Russians. If it's Siberian you're looking for, then search for that. And other regions nearby. There's also some musical overlap between Siberian, Mongolian, and Tuvan folk styles. "Peoples of Russia" is a good search term for general ethnographic information. There have been several books with ...

Holdrian Comma This is the famous musical interval of 22.6 cents that crops up frequently in Turkish and Arabic music. The Makam references posted here will explain how the Holdrian Comma is used. But you need an instrument capable of playing notes based on factors of this interval, which is not used in Western music. Extra frets for notes not found in ...

Major and Minor - the Strebetendenz-Theory If you want to answer the question, why major sounds happy and minor sounds sad, there is the problem, that some minor chords don't sound sad. The solution of this problem is the Strebetendenz-Theory. It says, that music is not able to transmit emotions directly. Music can just convey processes of will, but the ...

The answer is still not known. There plausible explanations but we don't know why we associate certain feelings with certain sounds in a rigorous fashion. Same holds for memory allocation for certain smells etc. So every pseudo-scientific analysis relies on certain preassumptions on the cultural habits such as Minor=sad ...