HackerTubewatch
Surprise me
Frame from Which key is the saddest? Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Which key is the saddest?

6 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
3 HN users recommended this explainer3 months2018–2020 score 3
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN commenters recommend it for its historical context on tuning systems and for how instruments influence what music gets composed.

Musician Adam Neely examines whether certain keys sound sadder than others, looking at the history of tuning systems and temperaments and at how instrument timbre shapes the emotional character we hear. It draws on historical aesthetics writing and audio examples.

“lots of historical context about tuning systems, but also raising the issue of timbre of specific instruments” (HN, 2020)

3 recommendations · Explainers

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@abakker Apr 2018 Recommends
on HN thread Where I started might not be useful to you
Read more
Re #2, I'm not a programmer, but as a writer I find the same thing to be true. I work better with a pen and legal pad than a keyboard. I've got this feeling that we have neural pathways built for typing and, subconsciously, we favor phrases, words, and sentences that are easy to type. I know I even have a tic where if I pause to think I'll insert extraneous commas. It's kind of like how musicians tend to improvise around licks and scales that they have practiced a lot. There's something to thinking about the idea of a song on paper that is more creative than unintentionally falling back on chords/forms that are easy to play. (Adam Neely discusses this very well here: [this video] )
Adam Neely on how instruments shape what we compose
@viraptor May 2020 Recommends
on HN thread Guitar Decomposed: 5. Mutating the Third
If you're into that, check out Adam Neely's channel. There's been a few videos on that and related topics: [this video] (Spoiler: lots of historical context about tuning systems, but also raising the issue of timbre of specific instruments)
Tuning systems history and instrument timbre

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Search
j k
Next / previous video
r
Surprise me
l
Like (video page)
w
Watch later (video page)
?
This help
Esc
Close