Why minor keys so sad?

[dropzone]

And not just D Minor, the saddest of all keys.

[kpm]

Don't know why they are sad. But I heard that a classical radio station once told people not to play anything in a minor key during fundraising - they thought it would depress people and lead to lower donations.

[casdave]

WAG I think it will have something to do with the way the brain interprets sound.

As a side issue, it is known that sounds in nature tend to generate odd numbered harmonics and it is known that amplifiers using valves sound 'warmer' than transistors.

Valves produce some distortion but it is always in odd harmonics but transistors produce even harmonics.(IIRC odd harmonics can be combined to produce triangle waves and even harmonics combine to produce squarewaves)

In terms of measurement valve amps do not perform as well as good quality transistor amps but they sound better.
One use of distortion which demonstrates this very well is in the electric guitar.

The electric guitar when played within the limits of the electronic amplifying equipment it is a fairly insipid instrument but when you crank everything up and overdrive it all it sounds much more interesting.
Turns out that valve amp distortion sounds better to the human ear and this has been put down to it producing a more natural distortion, as in harmonics found in nature, whereas transistors sound coarser, more hard edged and colder.

This is so well recognised that you can buy yourself a guitar pre-amp that uses valves just to generate this effect.

This is off the point somewhat but it does show that there is far more to musical processing within the brain than is obvious from the spec sheets that amp manufacturers put out.

[dropzone]

Originally posted by casdave
In terms of measurement valve amps do not perform as well as good quality transistor amps but they sound better.
One use of distortion which demonstrates this very well is in the electric guitar.
Which is a whole different Great Debate. But at the upper end, as on The Kinks' "You Really Got Me," high point of tube amp art in which the odd characteristics of valves cranked to eleven are used to further the artist's creativity, when they start to ringing it's a sound you just can't reproduce with solid state equipment.

Am I culturally biased? Are minor keys only "sad" in some cultures, such as the West, or is it universal?

[Tedster]

Heck, I read somewhere that certain key combinations were *illegal* way back when, the middle ages I suppose. Black Sabbath, of course had no qualms about playing that particular set of notes.

I think it's off of their "paranoid" lp, right before "War Pigs"; it's a sort of three note dirge that does sort of raise the hair on the back of your neck.