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Like the Beast, it goes by many names: Diabolus in musica (devil in music), the devil’s interval, the tritone, the triad and the flatted fifth. As its Latin moniker suggests, it’s an evil sounding combination of notes that’s designed to create a chilling or foreboding atmosphere.
- Jon Wiederhorn
What is the Evil Chord? In the wide universe of music, the ‘evil chord,’ also known as the ‘devil’s interval’ or ‘diabolus in musica,’ refers to the tritone. This unsettling interval, spanning three whole tones, has been associated with feelings of tension and fear for centuries.
Oct 25, 2018 · Like the devil himself, this musical sequence goes by many names: tritone, triad, flatted fifth, “the devil’s interval,” or “the devil’s chord.”
Apr 26, 2020 · The musical interval of a tritone or diminished fifth was referred to as The Devil’s Chord (or the Devil In Music) and subsequently banned by the Roman Catholic Church.
- What Is A Tritone?
- The Devil’s Music
- Why Does The Tritone Sound So horrible?
- Was It Actually Banned by The Church?
- Where Can I Hear It?
A tritone is an interval made up of three tones, or six semitones. In each diatonic scale (or the most basic scale of a key) there is only one tritone, and it occurs between the fourth and seventh degrees of the scale, so in a C major scale this would be between F and B. Or in G major it would be between C and F sharp: Before the invention of keybo...
In times past, music was organised into modes rather than keys. The modes only used the white keys on a keyboard, so the only way you could play a different scale, or a different pattern of tones and semitones, was to start on a different note. Read more: Musical modes – what are they and how do we use them? Each mode had its own recognisable flavo...
John Sloboda, a professor of music psychology at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, explained that the tritone is particularly unnerving because the human brain is hardwired to find harmony and symmetry in music: “When we hear something dissonant, it gives you a little bit of an emotional frisson, because it's strange and unexpected. The emot...
Rumours abound that music featuring the tritone was banned from churches because of its association with the devil. But as juicy as this gossip about the tritone might be, there is no evidence that this ever happened. It’s more likely that the strict rules of harmony observed by those composing for the church forbade the use of the augmented fourth...
The jarring nature of the tritone makes for instantly recognisable hooks in hit songs and catchy theme tunes. Here are a couple of our favourites: Maria from Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story Jimi Hendrix's Purple Haze
- Victoria Longdon
Mar 29, 2016 · According to Gardner, an independent chord is one that can happily conclude a composition. Meanwhile, a dependent chord contains “dissonant” or tense intervals—such as the tritone.
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Oct 31, 2017 · In music theory, the tritone came to be known as the devil's interval. Everyone knows the sounds of Halloween: creaky floorboards, howling winds, the amplified sound of a beating heart. But...
