Once upon a time, my sophomore year in college in fact, a new song from Deep Purple, “Smoke on the Water,” prompted me to play with its strange chord structure on the piano installed in the dormitory ...

Did you know that the devil has a chord? More than a false oath, more than the screams of victims boiling in sulfur, the diminished fifth — say, C to F-sharp — is music to Satan's ears. There's even a ...

In music theory, the tritone is an interval of three whole steps that can sound unresolved and creepy. Over time, the sound has wound up in jazz,... The Unsettling Sound Of Tritones, The Devil's ...

Music is a powerful thing: It can raise our spirits, carry us through athletic challenges, and make us weep. Its very fabric is a source of power and intrigue, too, since just a measly few tones might ...

Everyone knows the sounds of Halloween: creaky floorboards, howling winds, the amplified sound of a beating heart. But back in the day, the devil was said to exist in a particular musical tone. For ...