mittimithai on Nostr: My guitar teacher introduced the concept of "brightness" and "darkness" of going ...

My guitar teacher introduced the concept of "brightness" and "darkness" of going clockwise/counter clockwise around the circle of fifths. I.e. going "flatter" (from C to F, say) makes a key/scale/melody sound "darker".

We were trying singing and playing in different keys, certainly fun and makes things feel different to sing/play and clearly sound different...but I didn't buy the brightness/darkness thing.

As best as I can tell, there may be some historical associations of feelings of different keys (outside of 12 tone equal temperament, 12TET), who knows...but there are no particularly strong perceptual claims that can be made about darkness/brightness today (particularly in the context of 12TET).