Harmonic seventh

The natural seventh is 968.8 cents in harmony for the frequency ratio 7:4 accordingly. It is the interval between the 4th and the 7th tone of the harmonic series. The musical significance and usefulness of this interval is limited to essentially

  • Certain instruments, such as the natural horn
  • Orgelregister
  • Jazz vocals
  • Music that explicitly uses pure moods, for example, the "well tuned piano" by Lamonte Young
  • Blues, especially in the time of the first half of the 20th century

Outside of the musical context the natural seventh is perceived as weak consonant.

In harmony with purely intoned intervals that arise as a combination of simple multiples of 2.3 and 5, Naturseptimen act, according to some, within pieces, which can be assigned roughly to the European art music, fehlintoniert (see Sample ). Others, including the music theorist Martin Vogel, believe that the natural seventh in European art music has its place and its proper use many, otherwise unsolvable, can solve intonation problems.

The natural seventh differs from the diatonic minor seventh ( combination of two pure fourths, vibration ratio 16:9) to bottom, this deviation is sometimes called the Leipzig comma. Compared to the highly popular musical Equal tuning the deviation is 31.2 cents.

595390
de