[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

I like listening to Waylon even without the science.

[thoughtomator]

Consonance and dissonance are literally on the first page of your standard music theory textbook. I guess when you add the flowery language of mysticism that passes for physics these days, reciting something a first-day music student would learn now gets you grant money and press coverage.

[VietVet876]

I usually prefer to listen to Miles Davis’ “Tribute to Jack Johnson” instead of Coltrane’s “Interstellar Space”. Or sometimes to McLaughlin’s “Extrapolation”.

[real saxophonist]

In college, I took an Acoustics class taught by a physicist.

Broke my brain.

[Steely Tom]

His research, published May 17 in the journal Science Advances, "aims to explain why basic ordered patterns emerge in music, using the same statistical mechanics framework that describes emergent order across phase transitions in physical systems."

Lots of pleasant and useful things involve a balance between opposites.

Coke and Pepsi are a mixture of something sweet (sugar) with something pungent (carbonated water).

So is a Martini. And Worcestershire Sauce.

Many desserts combine something crunchy with something chewy.

A Japanese sword is a balance between hard/brittle and soft/supple.

A photon is stable balance between an electric field and a magnetic field, each locking the other in a little cage.

A negative-feedback loop is a balance between something that produces an action, and something that opposes that action.

The ancient yin-yang symbol captures this concept in a picture.

Certain aspects of love involve the interaction of opposites, both physical and psychological.

'How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.'

— Niels Bohr

[Rebelbase]

"He believes that could mean a whole new way of looking at music of the past, present and future."

For some it becomes the basis of their entire civilzation.

[dhs12345]

An observation while playing with pure sine wave tones — a simple G cord doesn't sound all that great. Actually, it sounds fake and fabricated.

There is a subtly that we all take for granted and enjoy are the very complex sounds that an instrument makes. Especially a nonelectric type — an acoustic instrument.

For example: the frequency distribution of a guitar is very broad and complex. It is the broad spectrum and complexity that makes it appealing.

[Pride in the USA]

I though you might have something to say about the singer named Dimash in reference to this article.

[Mrs. Don-o]

My knowledge about music theory is scant (read: vanishingly little) but I often wonder about the types of music I like which have a bluesy sound, with the voices sliding up or down, not hitting the standard pitches.

I'm thinking of Amos Lee or Darrell Scott or even Liam O Maonlai doing this bluesy number called "Work Song" (funny to hear these Irish/Scottish singers sounding like they were on Beale Street!)

Very much worth the clicks.

Or anything with a slide guitar/dobro.

What is it that makes it sound --- I don't know. It melts my soul or something.

It sure can't be autotuned, can it!??

[DoodleBob]

While I like the article, it is worth noting that some of the more influential and powerful songs in Rock don't have this battle between consonance and dissonance.

I'm not a huge Beatles fan, but the song Tomorrow Never Knows gives you an indication of just how powerful one note can be. Further, the last 4/9 of Yes' Starship Trooper is basically the same chords over and over again but delivers one of the most powerful outtro in the history of rock (perhaps comparable to Green Grass and High Tides Forever, which interestingly clocks in at 9+ mins like Starship Trooper, and which also has an outtro lasting about 4 mins though with Green Grass there is a slight changup at the 9:04 mark).

I think the broader problem we may be facing as a society, is the advent of robotic-driven music. Labels are investing in 'artificial intelligence' that has taken advanced courses in music theory and what sells and doesn't sell, and this AI is cranking out new music. Will we not only become a society of humans using technology to help clean our kitchens, wake us up, and make our coffee, but also produce our entertainment? Will our favorite songwriter become Collective 0-0009?

[Blueflag]

Baroque music had strong links to mathmatics.

[Kommodor]

I think Wagner figured this out a while back. Dream Theater, Rush & Kamelot may have improved on it. Depending on your own tastes, of course.

[blueunicorn6]

All is energy.

All is vibrating.

[nothingnew]

Good post.

4 later

FMCDH(BITS)

[sparklite2]

octaves and other arrangements [are] a foregone conclusion, not an arbitrary invention by humans.

---

I hate when Creationists get outside their sandbox.

[M Kehoe]

Hi.

I wonder how Mick Jagger Is doing?

5.56mm

[Freedom_Is_Not_Free]

The ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras found that music followed mathematical principals. It only took us 2500 years to rediscover that connection. It is amazing how much knowledge the ancient Greeks and Egyptians and others knew that are lost to antiquity that we do not know today.

You can thank the Muslims for burning down the Library at Alexandria. It would have held a bounty of ancient knowledge lost to us today.

[Skooz]

bfl

[Intolerant in NJ]

Instead, he says the mathematical structure is actually the fundamental underpinning of music itself, making the resultant octaves and other arrangements a foregone conclusion, not an arbitrary invention by humans...back in the day when I was attending the university in Philly I had a few courses to kill and decided I'd try one being offered on musical composition - I can't tell a B flat from a glissando, but I love music and thought this would be a chance to find out more about the "technical" side of the artistic work I knew - the mentor for the course was George Rochberg, a composer of considerable repute, and twice a week for two semesters he would tell the five or six of us who were taking the course about the fine points of codas, crescendos, and counterpoints and we would go home to "compose" appropriate "music" using the various points we had heard about - there was no way I could actually "hear" the music in my head and then get it down on paper, but by then I had had twelve credits or so of calculus and analytic geometry, and it soon became obvious somehow that there were clear mathematical relationships between the various notes we were dealing with which would make them sound "good" - I guess harmonious - and "bad" - in various combinations - so I went through most of the year counting the thirds and fifths and all and producing my little ditties - kind Dr. Rochberg would gather us around the piano and play our tunes each week, offering as much encouragement as he could - "That's an interesting melody" or "That has some possibilities" - I ended up with two "A"'s - surely out of sympathy rather than for my totally lacking musical genius - and an awe to this day of how a bunch of notes that can so rile our imagination and emotions depends at base on the demands and precision of mathematics - Olga Kern and the finale of Rachmaninoff's Third Concerto.....