You see, the names have all been shuffled around since Plato’s time. As it happens, this is also detailed on wikipedia, although I agree it’s very, very far from a full survey on the subject.

Honestly, I was looking for something a little more rigorous or informative than a wikipedia article but I guess it’s a starting point.

Scales with a major third can sound downright sinister.  A good example is Miserlou, probably better known as the “Pulp Fiction theme song”.  The scale is:
E – F – G# – A – B – C – D#, so minor second and minor sixth but major third and major seventh.  It’s based on Balkan folk music.  Also, the Lydian mode is even “more major” than a major scale, but the sharp fourth is the same interval as a flatted fifth and can sound pretty dissonant as a result.  Some types of music trade on ambiguity between major and minor — blues in particular plays minor key solos over major chords and a lot of bent major seconds and minor thirds creating more ambiguity about the key. 

Interesting about getting Eastern-sounding music playing with pedal tones.  One of the big differences between western music and other musics as I understand is the prevalence of drone notes in world music and their relative rarity in western music.

I think I stand by my comments on introspective songs, though.

The cool kids love it.

Of course there are other modes and tunings, and different uses need not fit with our ideas of what major and minor feel like. Plato said the ancient Lydian mode makes people soft, and yet that’s the same as what is now called the Ionian or major scale, so common in martial music.

Saying one or the other is better in general strikes me as the sort of thing that will inevitably have so many exceptions, you might as well not bother.

You’re right about the major third, mind you.I know from noodling about with pedal tones on a guitar that a major scale can sound Eastern. I haven’t got much musical training, so perhaps the dissonances favoured in the East are not so much minor as sustained/suspended or whatever.

I’m not trying to be argumentative, incidentally, I’m honestly curious about the theoretical bases of non-western music.

And maybe the shift to more introspective songs has more to do with our modern focus on individualism and the self, which I think post-war became even more pronounced as the culture industries became more powerful in American society…  I guess page 2 of the article sort of addresses that with Globalization, but I think that tends to be more about our exports then about imports?

This is interesting research though.

(The “surly teenager” thing is apparently mostly a late-20th century USA phenomenon.  I think it’s real and I think it’s almost entirely cultural.)

I think it goes this way: Major keys sound happy. Happy music makes you smile. When you smile, the ‘cool kids’ make fun of you ’cause you probably look like an idiot to them.

Also, there’s nothing more satisfying to a teenager than to brood about nothing in particular. Nearly every teenager loves to fake emotional burden. Minor keys compliment that very well… “I feel so… deep.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMBvzpCLGHg

much of this has to do with my primary influences — neil young’s more tortured music in my teens, nirvana in my early 20′s, radiohead after that.  some of it also has to do with what i’m trying to say with my music.  with a tendency to write slightly angsty personal lyrics, minor progressions are a natural fit. even songs that i write in major keys have a tendency to be hi-jacked by minor chords (which seems to be a radiohead trick).

when i make an effort to write more political songs — or brighter traditional-style folk — the major chords come floating to the surface.

i think that many streams of popular music have turned more introspective, pondering, and, yes, darker since the 60′s.

the primal infancy of rock grew up to be a moody teenager and questioning 20-something.  there’s a reason why so much of it has been “alternative” to the classic rock of the 60′s.

it could be that, whereas the boomers lived in a world of almost infinite social and economic possibility, the musicians that came after inherited a world that was a lot bleaker and more problematic.  the major themes of modern popular music called for minor keys. 

it could also be that we’ve outgrown “silly love songs.”