Sonic Isolationism
Music is “pleasurable” in its capacity to handle both consonance and dissonance in the traditional sense, as well as variations in timbre and texture. We all hear a tritone as being “dissonant” or in a state of suspension that will eventually “fall” into consonance. But that’s too simplistic: since the classical era, music has been redefined and extended in more “artificial” ways, such as electronic music or remix, that has nothing to do with whether something is consonant or dissonant for the purpose of somehow “resolving” it. A tritone or a minor second can be used in isolation without resolution as they are in rock and jazz for example. Personally, I think tension-release is more universal than consonant-dissonant, as it can include other things besides harmony, such as making things sonically dense, then quickly contrasting it.
8/12/2018
[8/12/2024: I recently used an isolated tritone at the beginning of a piece about a dream I had about a tornado. The tritone is the easiest one (too easy) to use for effect, as are minor seconds in metal. They are essentially “dominant” if you put a root underneath them, but leaving them unresolved makes them more powerful at high volume levels. Purple Haze was one of the first uses in rock, which isolates the tritone as a chord derived from an E blues or Lixian scale. Mingus had done that in the 50s (Self Portrait In Three Colors). The strings soften it and make it more classical, as Beethoven might have done it].
It's also an example of "Peak Shift"--an exaggeration of a basic element for an intended or unintended effect. Using an isolated tritone is intended. Distortions of meaning on social media, further distorted by AI, is an unintended effect.
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