Saturday 21 March 2009

The Music of Numbers

Something that I discovered a few days ago just proved that mathematics and nature are closely and inseparably entwined with each other. 
It all started when I developed an interest for a certain sequence called the Fibonacci Sequence. I'd been fiddling around with it for quite some time when on March the 7th one brilliant idea struck me as I was waking up in the morning. Why not relate the sequence to the musical notes  A B C D E F and G? I immediately grabbed a piece of paper and wrote down the first few numbers of the Fibonacci sequence and started working out their corresponding musical notes. After working out the first 5 notes, I asked my brother to play them on the keyboard for me.  Astonishingly, the sequence did not create noise as I had expected but recognizable music! You can imagine my surprise; and I don't even know anything about music other than the 7 notes.  
I then proceeded to work out the rest of the sequence and six others as well, but in all of them the notes after the first five did not sound very much like music to me. 
A few days later, I told my good friend ECYL about the music sequence just to see if the music I created had any substance in it. I had yet another surprise when she told me that the whole sequence of notes represents an entire recognisable music sequence. In other words, I had made music with math. 
The very next day I ran a few searches on Google to see whether anybody had discovered the sequence before me. I felt quite elated after 1 hour of searching revealed nothing alike. I was beginning to think I had made a really big discovery, but I was wrong. After a few well worded searches in Google Scholar, I unearthed a long lost research paper on Fibonacci Pitch Sets written by someone called Casey Mongoven. 
I was a bit disappointed at first, but then I realized the implications of what had just happened. I had actually discovered something a university scholar had all by myself! It just proves that I have the right mindset for research. 
So I am now searching for another topic to research on.  

3 comments:

Evee said...

haha, it was a shame it was discovered earlier.

but you said he discovered by pitches right?
well, the one you did was by math and sequence, so i guess it should be different?

and tiffany is spying on my screen xD

Ashwin Narayan said...

That is true, but the chances of being recognized for discovering a new method are remote.

Unknown said...

I'd like to point out that you forgot to consider the intervals between the notes.The distance between A and B is not the same as between B and C or E and F. The interval between A and B is a whole tone ( with an A # or a Bb sandwiched in between) whereas between B and C is half a tone (meaning there is no other note in between,according to western musical theory at least).
Instead of discovering a glorious new musical theory, what you actually did was,assuming that you assigned the number 1 to the letter A, was to create a PATTERN based on the Fibonacci sequence to play the A minor scale. Try assigning number 1 to the letter C and you will be playing the relative major of A minor which is the C major. Accompany the notes with the chord progression derived from the C major scale and you'll get a happy sounding tune whereas harmonising it with chords derived from the A minor scale will give you a dark feel to it.I'm sorry but it was a good attempt though.No matter how fancy an equation is, if it is based on a false premise, then it is simply wrong.
Don't give up just yet.You are way smarter than most of us including me. Science is as such that whenever one question is answered it unearths a million more mysteries waiting to be solved. Deanna Khan made me visit your blog.Tell her a crazy manic depressive says hi.;)