ristmas melodies thus represent the gateway to childhood. But year after year, adults also experience the holidays as a highly emotionally-charged time, which through recurring sensory impressions such as smells, tastes, visual characteristics and certain sounds form a complex and multi-layered experience.
The story of the Christmas chord
If this mixture of experience and emotions is one of the keys to unlock this festive feeling, then another is the lessons of culture and tradition. These conventions play an important role in music. Hence in Western culture, major and minor scales are perceived as melodious and in other cultures completely different scales are preferred. And so tonal conventions have developed through a shared cultural understanding that work as a sort of Christmas lever in people's heads. Strictly speaking, one can even say that there is a kind of Christmas chord. If we start from a song in C major, it is the Dm7b5 chord that seems incredibly successful at tickling the Christmas nerve.
We could dive deep into music theory to reveal what makes this chord seem so Christmassy, but much more powerful is our cultural programming. "White Christmas" is the best-selling song in the world. On the song line "may your days be merry and bright", the aforementioned Christmas chord appears on "bright" and creates there the greatest musical tension of the melody. After 73 years and countless Christmas carols that have taken Bing Crosby's megahit as their template, this harmonic twist has taken on a very Christmassy feel to our ears. For some years now, Mariah Carey has dominated numerous streaming portals and radio stations with "All I Want for Christmas Is You". And of course, here we find Dm7b5, the Christmas chord in full effect. If the bells and, of course, the lyrics themselves didn't already give it away, then you would certainly recognize this to be a Christmas song when you heard the harmonic twist on the line "underneath the Christmas tree".
Sennheiser turns up the holiday spirit
So the question of what makes a song a Christmas song has many answers. And there are also many reasons why they have that magical quality that puts us in a very specific emotional state. As an audio expert, Sennheiser can clearly bring his expertise to bear and turn up the dial a little more on the holiday spirit. Because the more intense the impressions we experience, the more tangible the feelings and emotions associated with them become. So whether a holiday movie classic is played via the integrated speakers of a TV or the immersive 3D sound experience of an AMBEO Soundbar, for example, draws the viewer right into the middle of the action, makes all the difference. Whether you are enjoying your favorite Christmas hits on a winter walk with the MOMENTUM True Wireless 2, or discovering completely new details in legendary music productions with the audiophile HD 560S headphones - the sound can make all the difference to how far into your own Winter Wonderland you go.