OK, to explain the cryptic thread title: when I was a kid and attending Catholic school back in the early 80s, one of our music teachers (who was a nun) mentioned something about a time when the Catholic church had declared that a certain combination of notes or chords were diabolical or evil or something to that effect, and that they were not to be played by good Catholic people. Does anyone know what I’m talking about here? Anyone remember what note or chord combination it was?
It’s the tritone, a/k/a the augmented fourth or dimished fifth, called the diabolus in musica (the devil in music) in the olden days. It’s the interval consisting of three whole tones, for example, from C to F sharp. This interval occurs in the dominant seventh chord (D7 = D, F sharp, A, C), the diminished triad (F#dim = F sharp, A flat, C), and so on.
I’m guessing you’re probably referring to an augmented 4th or diminished fifth (they’re the same thing), also known as a tritone, or occasionally, “the Devil’s interval.” It’s the interval from “do” to “fi”, i.e., a half-step about “fa”, the semitone between a perfect fourth and a perfect fifth; C to F#, for example. It’s difficult to describe the sound of a tritone… when played melodically (one note to the other), it’s kind of eerie and unexpected, and just not tonal. When played harmonically (both notes at the same time) it’s dissonant and… weird, I guess.
I honestly can’t remember from my Music History classes what time period, but I’m pretty sure there was a period when composers stringently avoided that combination of notes. Hell, people avoid it today, it sounds weird. I don’t recall it being officially banned by the church or anything, but then again, I spent most of my time in Music History doodling in my notebooks.
And on preview, the first paragraph is mostly what Biffy said. :o
Oops. That’s diminished fifth.
According to a couple of web sites, the diminished Fifth is the “devil in music” (http://www.eastfield.demon.co.uk/chord_functions_1.htm) because it sounds so creepy.
Good examples of tritones in popular music can be found in the introductions of “Purple Haze” by Jimi Hendrix and “Black Sabbath” by Black Sabbath.
In our logarithmic scale, it appears that there’s a ratio of 1:square root of 2 between the two notes of a tritone. I don’t know what the ratio is in just intonation, though.
This site has an interesting explanation of its name “Diabolus in Musica,” but I don’t get what they mean about how it’s three pure tones put together, since it’s just an interval between two notes.
The reason it’s so weird is because it’s directly between the fourth and the fifth as mentioned earlier. And a note “wants” to resolve to either a fourth or a fifth, so the tritone sounds broken.
An example of a Tritone is the first two notes in “the Simpsons” (or same as Ava Maria). The notes “The Simp-” are a tritone, and they quickly resolve to the fifth on “sons”. Try singing just “The Simp-”, and you’ll see it feels awkward to just stop there.
By the way, the reason things want to resolve to the fourth or the fifth is that one is exactly one-third of the frequency, and the other is 3 times the frequency. (one half and double are an octave which is the best resolution).
I disagree. Tritones are used quite often, especially in the traditional standard (jazz) voicing of dominant seven chords. In those chords, root-5 is played by the left hand, and third-dominant seventh (your tritone) with the right. There is nothing weird sounding about it.
(I’m going to get technical, so please forgive me.)
So in the context of a dominant chord, a tritone is not weird at all. Now, if your root is the first note of the tritone, then it can sound a bit odd, and in terms of traditional Western harmony, the tritone typically sounds out of place. In the key of C, then, with C as the root, the tritone is F sharp, as stated before. This is an odd sounding note in a traditional major or minor scale. However, in the Lydian mode, which replaces the fourth with an augmented fourth, once you get used to new scale, the tritone doesn’t sound so odd. Witness the main Simpsons melody (the instrumental.) The third note is a tritone from the first (root) of the melody. There is no perfect fourth in the melody. And the tritone doesn’t resolve to the fifth in the melody line, but rather the sixth. Does it sound weird? I don’t think so.
You are correct, pulykamell. Sorry. If I could clarify, I was thinking melodically, and my background in mostly in pop/folk music (with classical training), and vocal music. I should have specified - in most popular vocal music today, it’s unusual to find a tritone in the melody. This may be because popular/folk music is generally very tonal, where the tritone just doesn’t fit in the melody, or because tritones can be a pain in the ass to sing. They are much more common harmonically (because of dominant 7ths and the like), and in jazz and instrumental music.
Better? Sorry.
And personally, I always thought the Simpsons intro does sound a little weird. But that’s just my opinion.
And “The Beautiful People” by Marylin Manson, and my favorite, the chant of the Wicked Witch of the West’s guards in The Wizard of Oz
It’s called a tritone because in terms of distance, the notes are three whole tones apart. In the intonation of the time, a note is a whole tone above another when its frequency is 9/8ths of the lower tone’s frequency. So the tritone would be that ratio cubed: 729/512.
The phrase comes from the harmony composer’s mnemonic of the time:
“Mi contra Fa
Diabolus est in musica”
The music system was still based on what were called hexachords, the first six notes of a major scale, named with the familiar “do re mi” system.
You could cover the entire range of notes (which at that time covered the untrained human vocal range from G below low C to high E) by combining hexachords starting on G, C and F. The ‘mi’ of the G hexachord (B) creates a tritone against the ‘fa’ of the C hexachord (F), as does the ‘mi’ of C (E) with the ‘fa’ of F (B flat). Hence the usefuleness of the generalized mnemonic.
Music theory was only learned by people writing for vocal performance. We have grown used to more dissonant intervals in the centuries following this practice (as mentioned in previous posts in comments about jazz, etc.), but when you hear two solo voices hit a tritone in the middle of an otherwise flowing passage, it still sound pretty weird even today.
Do you suspect these bands like Sabbath and Marilyn Manson used these tritones specifically BECAUSE they’re called the Devil in Music? Or did it just happen to fit the song? Seems like something Manson would do for a shock tactic. (although it’s about as shocking as seeing a lady’s ankle)
I believe you’re thinking of the opening phrase of “Maria” from West Side Story, not “Ave Maria.”
That chant is a tritone? I could’ve sworn that was a fifth.
Dammit, I think you’re right, now that you mention it.
Yeah, you are right. Perfect fifth. Well, fooey.
Tritones are fairly common in heavy music because of their evocotive dissonance. Metallica used to do it a lot (in fact, the open E, B-flat combination is something of a cliche in heavy metal). I’ve read interviews with Kirk Hammet where he discusses the band’s later attempts to move awy from tritones because they were becoming trite (no pun intended) within the genre. A lot of metal musicians (including Metallica) are musically literate enough to know about the “Devil’s scale” appellation, but that’s not the reason they use it. They use it because they like the way it sounds.
The intro to “Enter Sandman” is another good example of the interval.
The witche’s chant uses a flatted fifth.