Why am I attracted to songs with a droning chord/note at the center?

You might like this.

You'd have to read up on just intonation vs. equal temperament to really understand, but essentially in most cultures' traditional music the frequencies of notes that sound harmonious and thereby "attractive" or "satisfying" are simple ratios of one fundamental note. Playing those notes against the fundamental creates a feeling of power and oneness that is pleasing to the human ear, although it restricts you to one key since everything is based on the fundamental.

Europeans changed the game with equal temperament, spacing out the notes of the octave at equal intervals instead of using ratios in order to be able to change keys easily. This came at the cost of really tight harmony, but when you're talking about the kinds of simple chord progressions and melodies in rock music the notes are still close enough to the "natural" harmony of the ratios that you get some of the same feeling when a droning fundamental is introduced.

So, basically, when you find yourself attracted to music with a drone you're picking up on a natural phenomenon based on simple mathematical ratios that humans have found attractive for thousands of years. Pretty cool when you think about it, really. "Heroin" is a good example to bring up as prior to and in the early days of the Velvet Underground John Cale was involved in another group with La Monte Young, a composer whose music is based entirely on drones and harmony based on mathematical ratios.

http://www.melafoundation.org/lmy.htm

Also really interesting to think about: almost all rhythms in popular music and most traditional musics are based on the ratios 4:3 or 3:2.

A more detailed explanation if you're interested: http://www.kylegann.com/tuning.html

Sacred geometry, "all is number, numbers rule the universe" - Pythagoras

You may be a Wagner fan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VwBtu4r0t4

Probably because it drowns out your wife's constant nagging.

Maybe you will like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wk14D6Wkrvs

You will like this:

Arvo Part

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY9l45oqjvw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiKNUma4dY0

and definitely this one too, a real drone

dead can dance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GQuaf-_ErE

this one's a drone fest

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pWxJEIz7sSA

Question: Concerning Heroin

The playing of the instruments near the end is not drony. What do you call those notes? That's the kind that I like.

Say about 5:10 of Heroin.

M. Wetherall:

"The Viola is playing a drone in D flat for a great portion of the song, varying the attack and intensity at which he uses his bow to create slight movements in timbre and tone. When the songs intensity begins to grow, John Cale’s viola playing takes a turn and breaks from the steady drone notes and becomes very abrasive sounding with a dissonant screeching noise being played that seemed to be without any regard for keeping in rhythm and key of the song. The sound was reminiscent of someone dragging nails across a chalkboard in a random manner. This exemplifies the experimental techniques that the band was using to create particular atmospheres and moods. This style of playing was completely relevant and contextual to the subject matter and is why it has a place in the song.

“Cale himself likened the sound he made on the viola, when played loudly, to that of an airplane engine”, (SoundOnSound, 2013).

While the viola playing gets more chaotic, so does the other instruments."

I bought the album, on vinyl, just for that.

Its a cool technique called "playing traditional music"

It has nothing to do with note spacing or ratios, which is just a matter of tradition dependent on how sophisticated instruments were.

The real reason you like that droning sound is it's the original form of music, likely predating the human species itself. Barbarian peoples of the world still do it - Mongols, Native Americans - that low droning vocal sound signifies musical expression and often ritual. So when you hear it, your inner barbarian awakens and prepares to hear the shaman or dance in the firelight.

Of course none of those songs you linked have anything to do with that. Its use in modern music is just a cheap trick. Church organs play the same cheap trick. So did Pink Floyd. It's a standard way to put on spirit-like airs. It's crap.

Wonderwall - Oasis is the worst (best?)

Bad Wigins wrote:

It has nothing to do with note spacing or ratios, which is just a matter of tradition dependent on how sophisticated instruments were. Barbarian peoples of the world still do it - Mongols, Native Americans - that low droning vocal sound signifies musical expression and often ritual. So when you hear it, your inner barbarian awakens and prepares to hear the shaman or dance in the firelight..

Letsrun, where someone will argue with you no matter what you're talking about. The Mongolian music you're talking about, throat singing, involves singing overtones of a droning fundamental, overtones that are, surprise, simple ratios of the fundamental frequency. It's the most basic form of music because it is based on very simple physics.

You need to get into blues music.

fred wrote:

Question: Concerning Heroin

The playing of the instruments near the end is not drony. What do you call those notes? That's the kind that I like.

There are a couple of things going on to make that sound, including dissonance or inharminic sounds, i.e. not fundamentally related, screechy overtones, i.e. driving the strings to play their distant upper harmonics without the fundamental, distortion, etc. Which, as the thing you quoted days, is a musical expression of the content of the lyrics, the shift from blissful oneness to the xploding out if your skin and "closing in on death."

EbanizarEdmonds wrote:

You need to get into blues music.

The blue note, the "flat" seventh that gives it a lot of its musical tension, is as you can probably guess the seventh you get based on a ratio to the fundamental tone. Flat relative to the equal tempered seventh but so much more edgy and emotional.