Re: [tuning] Why does a perfect minor triad sound worse than a major one even with pure sine waves?

Mike B>"You're going to have a hard time convincing me that minor triads sound worse than major triads."

I don't mean better as in "more usable in music"...but rather less tense sounding and, as Chris said, more "stable" sounding.

Of course, neither sound bad...and I particularly like using minor chords in my own songs (not to mentioned diminished chords and 9th chords). Then again, I'm never going to make a platinum album...and I hope to make scales/chords...that sound natural enough to be usable by people who can do that sort of thing and help spread a good word about micro-tonal to the masses.

But, for the sake of public accessibility, I usually try quite hard to start with very stable/natural sounding intervals for making scales...and only latter add more variant and dissonance ones as options for more advanced musicianship.

I think of it in the same way as diatonic vs. pentatonic scales: pentatonic sounds more "stable" and "catchy", but sounds fairly plain compared to all the extra chord and melodic options in full diatonic. One thing I've found works well to make things that sound both catchy/easily-accessible and still maintain a good degree of tonal color is to
play in one pentatonic scale and gradually transition into another to get all 7-tones of freedom with a pentatonic confidence about it.

The whole major vs. minor triad issue still fascinates me as so many people (myself included) feel a good deal more tension in the minor version even through most consonance algorithms rate them mathematically as the same. From experience, I have still found most people I've asked at random "which sounds more in-tune" or "which sounds more relaxed" and over 80% of the time they jump at the major chord without my telling them which is which.
Again, my "alternative" reasoning for this is that 1 1.25 1.5 is simply more symmetric than 1 1.2 1.5. Not to mention 1 1.25 1.5 occurs naturally in the scale formula (1 /the-2/1 octave)^x + 1 where x = 1 to 4 formula I've been experimenting with lately...and I am starting to think it is not coincidence. Or
maybe you have a reason why it wouldn't be?

I really just hope more people will chip in on the greater purpose I'm trying to create here. Which how to analyze deep patterns with scales and chords understand why tension occurs more in certain types of chords more to the point we can transform the understandings to make new scales. Scales which both mean more flexibility to the advanced often more avant-garde-classical musician and more catchy-ness to the kind of popular musician who is going to, say, help micro-tonal theory become a well respected and known buzzword among musicians. After all, Yamaha and Korg, for example, isn't likely to make keyboards catering to the about 0.02% of the music population who make (or at least try to make) harmonic micro-tonal music.

-Michael