A Glass Bead Game

Visualize the interactions of two musical tones and a drone over the range of an octave using just intonation. See: https://sohl.com/maptone/ for more details.

What makes two or more musical notes sound good (or bad) when sounded together? A music teacher can tell you how notes can be combined in conventional music to sound good- that is what music theory is all about. It is harder to talk about why we perceive those combinations to be satisfying, but that discussion can lead to new and innovative methods for composition and performance. This particular way of visualizing consonance in just intonation is described in detail in the article "Mapping Tonality", which is found at: https://sohl.com/maptone/