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See the original image at telegraph.co.uk

Scientists make music into mathematical shapes

telegraph.co.uk — In the wake of centuries of effort to seek deep connections between music and mathematics, a team today concludes that music does have geometry.

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  • maheshee11, on 04/18/2008, -1/+3From Sound of Music to Mathematics of Music
  • goerg, on 04/18/2008, -4/+10sound or it didn't happen
  • slvrbullet87, on 04/18/2008, -3/+18So every techno and rap song is just a short loop? who knew
  • SquareHipster, on 04/18/2008, -0/+13Any idea where we can find the paper and get some idea what our favourite songs look like.

    I mean a two-chord mobius strip is cool and all, but it doesn't really show us anything.
    • alexforcefive, on 04/18/2008, -0/+7Yeah, that's the problem with traditional news sources. Links plz, telegraph :(
      • rootneg2, on 04/18/2008, -0/+3no kidding.

        I'm always appalled by the lack of linking, even in major "good" news sources like BBC or CNN and the like. They will often reference a site explicitly without providing a link. Even something as simple as writing "blah blah blah digg.com blah blah" without linkifying the URL. How hard can it be?
    • rootneg2, on 04/18/2008, -0/+7http://www.music.princeton.edu/~dmitri/ watch out, uses flash :o(
      http://music.princeton.edu/~dmitri/ChordGeometries ... the visualization program
      http://music.princeton.edu/%7Edmitri/sciencearticl ... the original paper
      http://www.music.princeton.edu/%7Edmitri/geometry. ... preprint of the collaboration with Ian Quinn and Clifton Callender (pending pub.)

      brought to you by Links for the Lazy™
    • rootneg2, on 04/18/2008, -0/+1....and about that mobius visualization: The (compact, w/ bdry) Mobius strip is topologically equivalent to an embedding with the edges tracing out *any* (2,2n+1) torus knot (for n a natural number). This includes the un-knot (just a regular old loop) which is usually considered to be the "standard embedding", rather than the one pictured. Is there anything special about that specific embedding/parametrization? I'm guessing that the "whose boundary is the trefoil" is just for journalistic flair.

      (sorry for possible comment abuse, but it just now dawned on me)
    • MadHarvey, on 04/18/2008, -0/+1Is this the beginning of the holophonor?
  • aladrin, on 04/18/2008, -6/+18People have been making visualizations of music for years. This is nothing new.

    Music doesn't 'have geometry', but it's possible to force a representation of music in geometry. There's no innate law that says it -has- to look as they've made it look, so it's not the shape of the music... It's a shape they've made and with music as part of the data.
  • babydick, on 04/18/2008, -7/+1I wanted to read the article but I'm stuck on Busted tees ad...
    • billbugger, on 04/18/2008, -0/+1i got the orek vacuum... hey, free iron with purchase!
    • RubineBoy, on 04/18/2008, -0/+1A shame they dugg you for that!
    • JuanBay, on 04/18/2008, -0/+0ads? i don't recall what those are..
  • vtgorilla, on 04/18/2008, -5/+1worthless
  • heartcoldfusion, on 04/18/2008, -1/+24Anyone who is interested in math and music should check out Lateralus by Tool in relation to Fibonacci numbers. Check out this youtube link:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FQdEVd-99o
    • BikerDude69, on 04/18/2008, -1/+1Wow! that is amazing. I always knew most Tool songs had messages in them, but never knew to this extent! Amazing!
  • howardcross, on 04/18/2008, -2/+1Do it with Lateralus! Do it! DO IT!
  • DefaultGen, on 04/18/2008, -0/+4Reminds me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rf3rfTMvyHQ

    Perhaps it's related?
  • kaniz, on 04/18/2008, -2/+3in other news, Scientists studying music have recently tried experimenting with psychedelics. Discover certain sounds produce certain geometric patterns. Who knew.


  • Harabeck, on 04/18/2008, -0/+6So what if someone tried to go backwards in the musical-visualtion process? I want to know what certain shapes and patterns would sound like.
    • SquareHipster, on 04/18/2008, -0/+2Unless absolutely all the data in a piece of sound is accounted for in these graphs, it would be impossible to go back from graph/image to sound. These graphs strike me as lossy, and just a way of visualizing certain aspects of the music graphically.
    • robbiemuffin, on 04/18/2008, -0/+1well it might be lossy but at the same time simple shapes should be able to drive complex MIDI music .. I want one too
  • DanInAUSTRALIA, on 04/18/2008, -2/+1I'd rather not complicate music with maths but then again i've been doing maths for quite a few years now so maybe I'm just bitter :)
  • DeFex, on 04/18/2008, -2/+1OMG they invented a color Lissajous figure.
    I hope they got millions and millions of dollars to "discover" this.
  • scott12087, on 04/18/2008, -1/+17Bah! Amateurs! I've been doing this for years with Winamp!
  • hifidelity1, on 04/18/2008, -2/+5dugg for the fact that an article like this is on here. BUT!!! I find the article shallow, in the sense that... of course John Lennon's music is more "rock" than Paul McCartney's (whatever that means) YOU CAN HEAR THAT! you don't need a geometrical shape to tell you that. Secondly, this may work for music in the middle ages, and perhaps Mozart... but Beethoven and beyond this concepts falls apart... it would... there is a point where music stops following rules...JUST LISTEN!!!
    • crushtheenemy, on 04/18/2008, -2/+3no. music ALWAYS follows rules. there is always certain order. even in the most chaotic music, there is still order.
      just because it sounds like it's the most insane thing you've ever heard, it still follows some sort of pattern, some mathematical equation.
      • TomMcStephenson, on 04/18/2008, -0/+2You haven't listened to early Arnold Shoenburg, aletoric music, or pieces by John Cage, have you?

        There's music out there you've never heard of that is written with the intent of music being created merely by chance.

        Like HiFidelity said, just listen!
        • dinkleberry, on 04/18/2008, -0/+1Music is organised sound. By definition, chaos is not random, and underlying trends can be discovered, and analysed. Always rules. crushtheenemy is right.
    • Dystisis, on 04/18/2008, -1/+0If you think that music ever doesn't follow rules, you clearly haven't tried making music.
  • Mysrt, on 04/18/2008, -1/+2sounds like a great visualizer in the making.
  • crushtheenemy, on 04/18/2008, -3/+1of course music is related to math!
    all art is a mathematical equation.
  • Witchbaby, on 04/18/2008, -1/+1Watch. They are going to code the human genome with music someday. Ever read "Children of God"? She's predicted it already.
  • greenflyhigh, on 04/18/2008, -1/+0excellent article! makes you think about the science of music too, as in listening to mozart improves mathematical skills etc. to the guy / gal who said is does not apply to todays music or some music, i disagree! rock music has a completely different effect on the brain to, say, rave. i think it is all connected, just my opinion though!
  • MLisa, on 04/18/2008, -2/+1It has been known for years that music has a mathematical correlation. It has also been observed that babies who grow up listening to classical music, especially Bach, develop better math skills. I believe this to be true. That is a major part of the 'Baby Einstein' music sales campaign. As far as the geometric shapes they claim...not so sure.
  • CMfly, on 04/18/2008, -1/+4Not sure on the article but I'm pretty sure that's a screen shot from Guitar Hero IV..
  • BenO169, on 04/18/2008, -1/+2That Scientist looks like Jared the Subway guy.
  • BobOrleans, on 04/18/2008, -0/+1Music is math
  • HissingPixie, on 04/18/2008, -2/+0Did they seriously just figure this out? We learned that in grade school. And I'm all for the geometry of math... If everything in the world can be broken down to binary codes, why not geometrical shapes?
  • KineticShampoo, on 04/18/2008, -2/+1duh!
  • EricSancho, on 04/18/2008, -1/+1Interesting article... but as a musician, it sort of makes me feel depressed. Sure I like to experience music in all possible ways, but when you translate a song into numbers and physical shapes you take away what makes music be music: emotion.
    And yes, everything is this world down to the bone is an equation.
  • novenator, on 04/18/2008, -1/+4Pythagoras was a genius. Too bad he didn't have access to computer technology.
  • jonnypajamas, on 04/18/2008, -0/+0check out the pioneer in the field of geomusic, jimi furia. http://members.aol.com/johnkeely/scale.html His music wheel allows you to take a shape and rotate it through the scale, and definitely goes hand in hand with this discovery.
  • BikerDude69, on 04/18/2008, -0/+2Some beieve the symbols of Rosslyn Chapel contain a musical sequence. - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy2Dg-ncWoY
  • tehowe, on 04/18/2008, -0/+4Now this is just cool... Those of you who don't know, should check out Pythagoras. He's a towering figure. Pythagoras was to math as an alchemist is to a modern chemist - but he discovered some cool things in the natural world, like the fundamental numerical relationships between consonant notes in a scale.... which led to a lot of mysticism and numerology as you can imagine. His mystery school took the pentagram as their symbol, it's said, because of the unique mathematical properties of the proportions of the star - notice how it's one of the most recurrent symbols in Western culture and elsewhere. There's something to it other than mysticism, though - music and math and their interrelations are such a beautifully integrated thing that I wouldn't be surprised if the fundamental laws of matter and energy in some way followed the same fundamental patterns. Perhaps we'll never know.

    That's alright i still got my guitar...
  • dstz, on 04/18/2008, -1/+1Quick, someone, tell this to Pythagoras.
  • dinkleberry, on 04/18/2008, -1/+2At last.
    The scientists have conquered music with their math,
    Using algorithms and algorithms they beat their path
    Through Beethoven, Mozart, probably Jonny Cash.
    Big deal I say, as I reach for my stash,
    Roll a fattie and make my guitar thrash.

  • Gemfinder, on 04/19/2008, -0/+1Beautiful. A Mœbius triskelion.
    Music is the only art that can be completely quantified by science. Music, I think, will be humanity's salient and quintessential legacy. Those who can't make it, hear and complete it.
  • benjholla, on 04/19/2008, -0/+1I've heard that if they play the music backwards and look at the image of it, they will see a portal to hell.
  • Bassplaya68, on 05/05/2008, -0/+0gives a whole new meaning to "math metal"
  •  

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