The foundation for all musical phonology (relationships in speech sounds that constitute the fundamental components of a language) is the harmonic series, which occurs naturally in the universe. Rewind the clock several hundred thousand years to the caveman era, and pretty much the only fundamental difference in the sound of the human voice was the octave, which occurs naturally between a man and a woman’s voice. Fast forward to around the 10th century and composers discovered the use of the 5th. This interval opened all sorts of possibilities to compose music of a different sort. As time passed and the of the 4th, the third etc. came into use, musical possibilities exploded, until we reached the 20th century with a level of musical ambiguity so complex that even the most educated listener could get lost. If I had to unpack all of this, it would take several days, but to cut a very long story short, music has the power to capture the imagination in a way the most other art forms don’t. And it’s all because: it is not restricted by time or space.
Soundtrack composed by UrbanADLab’s Simon Kinney
