ArticlePloS one2023
Convergent evolution in a large cross-cultural database of musical scales.
Article in PloS one, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- The role of musical pitch in long-distance defensive signaling.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2025Review
- The Neural Reality of Pitch Chroma in Early Infancy.Developmental science · 2025Article
- Sequence Generation and Evaluation: A Novel Assessment of Musical Creativity.Creativity research journal · 2024Article
- Timbral effects on consonance disentangle psychoacoustic mechanisms and suggest perceptual origins for musical scales.Nature communications · 2024Article
- The (Co)Evolution of Language and Music Under Human Self-Domestication.Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.) · 2023Article
- Vocal imprecision as a universal constraint on the structure of musical scales.Scientific reports · 2022Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
Scales, sets of discrete pitches that form the basis of melodies, are thought to be one of the most universal hallmarks of music. But we know relatively little about cross-cultural diversity of scales or how they evolved. To remedy this, we assemble a cross-cultural database (Database of Musical Scales: DaMuSc) of scale data, collected over the past century by various ethnomusicologists. Statistical analyses of the data highlight that certain intervals (e.g., the octave, fifth, second) are used frequently across cultures. Despite some diversity among scales, it is the similarities across societies which are most striking: step intervals are restricted to 100-400 cents; most scales are found close to equidistant 5- and 7-note scales. We discuss potential mechanisms of variation and selection in the evolution of scales, and how the assembled data may be used to examine the root causes of convergent evolution.
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