What do notes sound like?

Seems like a silly and stupid question, but I wanted to start a discussion on this.

Obviously all notes have a sound (the wave length/frequency/oscillation or whatever the heck you call it). But how do they resonate with the human mind or human heart?

Why is it that some notes are warmer than others? For example, A(flat) is a particularly warm note, much more so than the note B. Why is it that some notes are more aggressive than others? C# is pretty aggressive, but D# is even more so.

Now this kind of sounds like a bunch of subjective bullshit. Everyone has different opinions on which notes are different. In fact most people will not be able (or bother to) discern at all which sounds different. Who cares?

Okay, so maybe the sound of a note doesn't preclude any sort of classification, but what about scales? (or keys, rather) Why are the flat keys warmer than the sharp keys?

Why is that when you play one melody in one key, and then you transpose it exactly into another key... it ends up sounding different? True, the context has been modified, but isn't there some kind of innate sound within that?

Which leads me to my final point. From a compositional standpoint, how do the keys influence our music? Is it from a technical level (i.e. the more flats/sharps, the harder/easier it gets for us to write complicated music) Is it from a emotional level (are some minor keys sadder than others?) Is it from a empirical level (because we have heard this key/note being used in this way, we become accustomed to it, and associate it with that particular feeling/sound)

Thanks for your thoughts :)

For example, A(flat) is a particularly warm note, much more so than the note B. Why is it that some notes are more aggressive than others? C# is pretty aggressive, but D# is even more so.

Hmm, interesting. Have you tested this. Can you be blindfolded and still feel the 'aggression' or 'warmness' when someone else plays notes? And does it work between different instruments or are you talking about the piano here? Also, does it work between octaves? Essentially, I would like to put you into a lab.

Okay, so maybe the sound of a note doesn't preclude any sort of classification, but what about scales? (or keys, rather) Why are the flat keys warmer than the sharp keys?

Call me cynical but I would guess this is to do with the connotations of the word 'sharp', which procludes it from any association with warmth.

A lot of your questions are just personal connotations. I will always look warmly towards D minor because my mom used to sing to me a song in d minor when I was a kid. There's no science behind why things sound or feel different to different people. Maybe a lot of songs you liked growing up that felt warm to you where flat, so maybe for you warm is flat. I bet I can still write a "warm" sharp.

Can you tell the difference between Gb-major and F#-major?

all lowest notes in most of winds sound agressive, like the low Bb in the saxes, I'm sure that same Bb sounds warm in an Alto Trombone.

There are too many aspects that define the sharp/warmness of each sound, not just the pitch (frequency), and I said "too many" because they are indeed too many to understand and say "yes, is because of this and because of that" I would rather suggest to discover and know more each instrument so one may use a particular note due to its particular personality.

But if you really want to know, you should study the really wide world of .....waves !!!

Forum search feature is your friend. There's been already thousands of threads on this kind of thing, specially keys.

All these things depend on tuning, register and perceived timbre, articulation, tempo, room acoustics, and so on...

Also, notes does not sound at all. Tones sound.

Well i dont think certain notes (A#, C, Db, etc.) have any feeling by themselves unless you happen to be the 1 in 10,000 that has perfect pitch. Otherwise we literally can't tell the difference unless we have a reference point. Such as "how does A# sound compared to C". And then it all depends on the timbre of the tone. So because most of us can only identify notes in reference to others, i think it is safe to say that we at least need a chord or scale to have any emotional reaction that would be universal among all timbres.

I do believe that chords and scales can have an emotional perception regardless of timbre. I doubt many people will listen to a diminished chord played on its own and think happy thoughts.

I think when it comes to transposing identical intervals into different keys, it depends on whether or not you have perfect pitch, or which scale you heard first, and also the instrument which plays it. Being a guitarist i know that key can change a sound entirely. If a song uses open chords, and you have to barre them for another key, it takes away to resonance of the chords. But when heard separately, an A minor scale sounds no different than an A# minor or an E minor scale to me. However they do have slightly different emotional responses when heard in succession.

There are pretty obvious moods that can be created depending on how scales are used. A minor scale is often sadder than a major scale... unless you want it to be angry or inspirational. A major scale is usually happy... unless you want it to be comical or just plain neutral. So i guess its not the scales themselves, but how they are used.