discord, discordance, discordant

The inability of the two notes in an interval or the many notes in a chord to blend or fuse into a sound that seems to be 'at rest'.

It is one pole of the continuum of musical accordance, the other pole being that of concordance.

A conglomeration of pitches can be said to be a discord based strictly on psychoacoustic phenomena, and regardless of any use of that particular conglomeration in a musical context. For the latter, see sonance.

see also

sonance
accordance,
concord,
dissonance.

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