Music

Goethe is reputed to have said [1], “Geometry is frozen music.”

When time is included in the picture, as in Cycles, then we have
music which becomes a geometrical collection of frequencies or
Vibrations -- all of which can be shown to be a series of
trigonometric “sine” waves. Harmonies become mathematical
ratios which can occur in everything from the Harmony of the Spheres
to separate instruments or voices combining the soprano, alto,
tenor, baritone and base notes; all meshing coherently and feeling
groovy.
Every musical pulse consists of numerous sine-wave tones. Even
a “square wave” is made up of a large number of odd harmonics,
and thus by extrapolation, a truly infinite pulse (e.g. the Big Bang
or first Ommmmm... of creation) would consist of all possible pure
tones. The manner in which musicians examine a spectrum of
musical harmonies is, in fact, exactly the same procedure
mathematicians call a Fourier Transform. The sum of all musical
frequencies thus constitutes the whole of the universe.
Pythagoras and the Pythagorean Brotherhood, the members of the
philosophical school which followed his teachings, recognized circa
600 B.C.E. what modern physicists and most anyone who has
studied the subject of music soon learn, that:
1. Music is geometry, and geometry is music.
2. Music Theory is fundamentally about ratios of numbers.

3. The harmonic nature of music demonstrates the great

harmony of creation.
4. Every musical tone or pulse is made up of the sum of
many pure sine-waves.
5. Those who learn music do better at mathematics (and
vice versa).
Possible definitions of “music” and “theory” include:
“Music: 1. The art of organizing tones to produce a coherent
sequence of sounds intended to elicit an aesthetic response in a
listener. 2. Vocal or instrumental sounds having some degree of
rhythm, melody, and harmony.
“Theory: 1. A system of accepted principles and rules of procedure
devised to analyze, predict, or otherwise explain the nature or
behavior of a specified set of phenomena.”
Scientists, meanwhile, are now beginning to suspect that the
human brain is quite literally prewired for music. Sharon Begley
[2] has reported that “people can typically remember scores of
tunes, and recognize hundreds more” [but not necessarily want to
sing them aloud -- fortunately]. And yet, these same people can
recall only snatches of a few prose passages. Music, on the other
hand, can incite passion, belligerence, serenity, fear, or sadness.
It is able to do so even with people who have no experience in
such things as a particular crescendo in a movie implying the
sudden appearance of the bad guy.
A bit more controversial is the idea that music can help bridge
socioeconomic gaps. It accomplishes this feat by linking music
and mathematics. In one study, “After a year of piano, the second
graders who received twice-a-week piano training in school scored
as well as fourth graders, who did not; half of the second graders
scored as well as fifth graders.” The idea music training might
help all subjects does not appear to be true. There is something
about math and music (proportions, ratios, sequences) all of which
underlie both musical and mathematical reasoning.
According the Ms. Begley [2], “The temporal lobes of the brain,
just behind the ears, act as the music center.” For musicians, who
had begun their training before the age of 7, they actually
increased the size of their brains -- specifically the corpus
callosum (the trunk line which connects the brain’s right and left
hemispheres). This neural path increase may also explain why the
better musicians are not only technically adept (the left brain’s
partiality to cognition), but can play with emotion (the right brain’s
forte). Even more striking is the fact that mental imagery or
mental rehearsals can activate the same regions of the brain as
actual practice, and similarly affect the synapses!
This aspect of Creating Reality by mental imagery can also be
applied outside of musical performances. It also works with
sports, professional performances of most any kind, and any
anticipated (without fear) and rehearsed-in-the-mind activity.
Constantly reviewing emergency procedures in the mind can result
in extraordinary skill in an actual emergency.
The numerous references to proportion and ratio in music and
mathematics deserve a bit more consideration. In the Newsweek
article, infants were found to smile when music was played, which
consisted of perfect fourths and perfect fifths -- i.e. chords or
sequences which are separated by either five half steps (as
between C and F) or seven half steps (as between C and G),
respectively. Babies, however, did not like tritones, where two
notes were separated by six half steps (e.g. C and F sharp). In
effect, the very young music critics were already well aware of the
critical importance of Intervals.
Interval
An interval is the ratio of frequencies between a base note and
another note. A collection of notes is a scale, with tempered
scales consisting of notes which have specific sets of intervals
which are aesthetically pleasing, and equal temperament scales
consisting of notes whose frequencies are multiples of a single
ratio. The musical intervals, themselves, are named according to
the note in which the interval corresponds. A “fifth”, for example,
corresponds to the ratio of frequencies between the fifth and first
notes in the major scale -- the first note also being called the
“tonic”.
The intervals in the modern major and minor scales, together with
frequency ratios, are:
Tonic or first or unison (1:1),
Second (9:8),
Minor third (6:5),
Major third (5:4),
Fourth (4:3),
Fifth (3:2),
Minor sixth (8:5),
Major sixth (5:3),
Minor seventh (9:5),
Major seventh (15:8), and
Octave (2:1).
There is also a sub-minor seventh (7:4) and a fifteenth (4:1).
From a pleasing to the ear point of view, the fifth (where the fifth
note’s frequency is 50% greater than the first note’s frequency) is
noteworthy. For a lyre, for example, by taking C as the root note,
this ancient instrument could be tuned to the notes C, F, G, C’
(with ratios: 1, 4/3, 3/2, and 2), while the combinations C, F, and C’
(1, 4/3, and 2) and C, G, C’ (1, 3/2, and 2) would result in euphony.
According to Nicomaeus, lyres were tuned to these notes at least
until the time of Orpheus.
Scales
Scales are all about establishing certain intervals which give the
most pleasing sound, or the best euphony. Life is comparatively
simple with single instruments, but when groups of instruments
gather together in a jazz trio, a marching band, or a symphony
orchestra, it becomes a bit more complicated.
The diatonic scale is ancient, but a variation due to Ptolemy
(and dating from the second century A.D.) has been incorporated
into modern intonation. The scale was rediscovered in the late
15th century, and eventually became the basic scale used in
western music. In particular, all of the church modes (dorian,
phrygian, lydian, myxolydian, and aeolian) are rotations of the so-
called major diatonic scale.
Diatonic scales (as well as other scales) work differently for
different starting notes. Thus the introduction of the concept of
key. Music written in one intonation, for example, would have to
be re-written if the scale (or starting note) were shifted, in order to
preserve consonance. The scale used on piano and fretted
instruments is actually an approximation to the exact ratios of the
diatonic scale, because modern western music uses an equal
temperament scale, allowing music to be transposed while slightly
sacrificing the euphony of chords.
The Pythagorean scale is a particular tuning for the diatonic
scale and consists of only two intervals: 9:8 (the second) and
256:243. Pythagoras (570-504 B.C.E) is usually given credit for
discovering that vibrating strings with lengths the ratios of small
whole numbers of each other produced a pleasing harmony. The
9:8 intervals between notes were chosen and then the gaps filled
in with hemitones, where one hemitone equals a ratio 256:243. A
hemitone (1.0535) is, however, significantly less than half a
Pythagorean tone (i.e. Ö(9/8) =1.0606). The good news, however,
is that the Pythagorean scale contains four fifths and five fourths,
which is better than what can be attained from any other eight
notes. And the fourths and fifths, corresponding to the magical
numbers of 5 and 7 half steps, are just more indications of the
geometrical basis of music -- and quite possibly why 5 and 7 sided
geometry is aesthetically pleasing, as well as being musically
harmonious.
Equal Temperament
The problem with a major scale, minor scale, or any combination
of scales which have unequal intervals is that musical melodies
cannot be readily transposed to a different tonic (key). For
instance, since a major scale is defined to have exact ratios of
frequencies 9:8, 5:4, 4:3, 3:2, 5:3, 2:1, etc., changing the tonic
from a C to a D (using a C with a frequency of 264 Hertz, i.e.
cycles per second) in a major scale would result in the following:
note C D E F G A
B C’ D’
Key of C 264 297 330 352 396 440
495 528 594
Key of D &; 297 334 371 396 445
495 557 594
Obviously, while D, G, B, and D’ have the same frequency in both
keys (and E and A are close), F and C’ are significantly off. To be
able to play a given piece of music in either the key of C or D
would thus require separate keyboard keys (or frets on a fretted
instrument) in order to obtain the same note. This would cause
problems in transposition (playing a tune a fixed number of steps
lower, for example), because this would require frequencies which
the instrument was incapable of playing. The equal temperament
scale (invented by Andreas Werckmeister, in 1691) was introduced
to avoid this serious musical problem.
Equal temperament makes the ratio between each half step a
constant. This allows a song written in one key to be shifted up
any number of half steps, and still contain exactly the same
harmony (although the frequencies themselves will be altered).
Notes can then be defined by octaves -- an octave representing a
doubling in frequency -- and still produce a pleasing sound when
played simultaneously with the same note of another octave.
The number of subdivisions in each octave is, in principle,
arbitrary. For harmony’s sake, however, most notes in the scale
must have frequencies which differ from other notes by ratios of
small whole numbers. The best scale will thus contain a large
number of notes which are resonant, which is the manner in which
musical harmony developed historically.
The ear has essentially a logarithmic response (as does the eye,
explaining astronomers’ use of the magnitude system for apparent
brightness), so that the perceived difference between notes is the
same if their frequencies are spaced as a power law. For fretted
and keyboard instruments (which can access only a discrete
number of frequencies), the entire frequency range can now be
partitioned into a number of discrete notes spaced at equal
logarithmic intervals.
Music may indeed hath charms to soothe the savage beast. But
it’s all in the mathematics. Thus in the next encounter with a
savage beast -- say the drooling monsters from Aliens -- the
heroine might consider either humming a few bars of “Don’t
Worry, Be Happy,” sing a happy tune, or begin quoting Prime or
Fibonacci Numbers. Or, if you’re really clever, simply say, “The sum
of the squares of the sides of a right triangle equals the square of
the hypotenuse.” Just be sure and pronounce “hypotenuse”
correctly! And do it with a flair for the musical version.