Music of Roshar

[wiritospren]

The book tell us vorinism in a time used the tones of odium, honor, and cultivation as the base of their music. So music nerds out there, which intervals do you think they have between them? Would they end up with a similar scale as us? 

[Elegy]

First off, I'm not a music theory expert, so please correct me if I'm wrong or misguided, because both could very well be the case.

I believe that they would end up with a similar scale. That's because the Thaylen scale is described as having 12 tones and being "mathematically pleasing" to Navani, so the tones seem to be consistently paced, which would make the scale basically the same as the typical Western Earth music one. Since this one, the pentatonic classical Rosharan scale and the ancient three-tone scale are all refered to as "scales", I believe that means that they are not completely distinct concepts, because then they would be referred to as "temperaments" instead. Which leads me to believe that the 12-tone Thaylen scale -- the analogue to the Western scale -- includes the five tones of the classical Rosharan scale, and that scale on the other hand includes the three pure tones of the ancient scale. Which would suggest that the three pure tones can be placed on our 12-tone equal temperament system. So the answer to that would be: Yes, it seems we could define those intervals with the basics of our music theory.

As to the relation between the tones, I don't think we can determine that, but maybe my understanding of music is just too limited. In our understanding of music theory, it's difficult for a scale to feel stable without the root note's overtone, but I don't know how much that applies to non-Western definitions of music as welll. The fact that overtone singing is a tradition in many cultures all over the world makes me believe that this might be the case. Generally, as a Western music listener, of course the first thing I think of is root - third - fifth (the fifth being the overtone), but maybe Rosharan ears perceive the relations of frequency differently. Maybe they wouldn't perceive, say, a major triad as consonant? I think we would need more information to make good guesses.

I also wonder whether the tone of a Shard shifts and aligns depending on where they're Invested. Maybe Odium's tone adapted to Roshar, so it naturally formed a triad by the definition of the Yolish vessels' way of perceiving music?

[chickenperson]

I am a music major and while I would not consider myself an expert by any means, I have been thinking about this a lot. I finally finished reading the book, and I’ve spent the past four days trying to logic my way through the clues the books give us. 
If it weren’t for the fact that they used these tones for actual music, my western music brain wants to assign honor as the root of a chord, give Cultivation the octave or fifth, and really emphasize Odium’s otherworldliness with a tritone or similar dissonant interval. That wouldn’t be super useful for trying to compose complex melodies, though, and it relies on a lot of Earth history (the tritone being the devil’s interval, and all that) so I’m trying to figure out what else would work. 
I think, at least in more recent Rosharan music, overtones do play a huge role. This is especially true in any country that places an emphasis on safehands. Light eyed women play pipes and flutes, but with a safe hand covered they are limited to any notes that can be played with the right hand. There’s a medieval flute here on Earth that I’ve been trying to learn to play that extends its range through the use of overtones and the harmonic series. It’s called a tabor pipe and it only has three holes so it can be played with one hand (other hand traditionally plays a drum).  It’s the concept behind a trumpet in the shape of a recorder. So far it seems like the best option for a woman to play a flute while still being modest. That combined with the prevalence of overtone singing that Elegy mentioned suggests that we can at least count on the fifth and most likely the third to sound consonant. 
With that in mind, I think Odium’s tone is actually lower than Honor’s, since Navani at one point sings Honor’s tone and has to modulate down to snap into harmony with Odium’s tone. Earlier in the book it’s described as both tones moving towards each other so I think it’s reasonable to assume Odium’s tone is lower than Honor’s, which means Honor wouldn’t necessarily be the root of the chord. But then the note to control stormlight is the first note of the ancient scale and the voidlight tone is the last so I might be over analyzing a bit here. 
one thing I want to look more into is traditional Georgian music. It uses a “quintave” instead of an octave, and the book specifically uses that word instead of “pentatonic scale,” which is what I previously assumed would be in use based on the prevalence of 5s and 10s in the books. If it really is a quintave and not a pentatonic scale, that gives us a point of reference for which tuning system is being used and which notes harmonize within that system. 
and now this is getting really long so I’ll stop rambling and end it here