Numbers in music

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Music and mathematics have always been known to have a relation. From antique Greek and antient Eastern scales (which are related to symbolic values of numbers and represent the relationship between heaven and earth and as such have to reflect the celestial influence) to modern day software developed for the purpose of converting numbers such as that of Pi and Phi into musical notation, there has always been a connection between music and mathematics.

[edit] Pythagoras/Music

The numbers that impressed the Pythagoreans the most were those found in the musical ratios. This is something which also intrugued Plato, whereby he inserted the harmonic and arithmetic means respectively between each of the two geometric progressions, 1, 2, 4, 8 and 1, 3, 9, 27 demonstrating mathematicaly what Pythagoras discovered on the strings of his monochord. Pythagoras also believed that the distance between the celestial bodies of our solar system were to have the same ratios as the harmonious sounds produced by the plucking of a string. It is believed by the Pythagoreans that the planets make sounds like the whistling of a projectile with the frequency reletive to the distance to the sun, with the closest being of the lowest frequency. All of these sounds together were to be a beautiful harmony, the music of the spheres

[edit] India/Music

India's Modal scale consists of 22 intervals with 7 notes which can be presented as an early representation of Pi (22/7=3.14) which is used in relation to a circle to it's diameter. The circle being the most perfect shape.

[edit] China/Music

The Pentatonic scale (the first five primary sounds of the fiths) are used by the Chinese to represent the perceptible world(the five elements). The elements and the notes they represent are as follows,

Wood = jué (mi) Fire = zhǐ (so) Earth = gōng (do) Metal = shāng (re) Water = yǔ (la)

Also used by the Chinese is the circle of fiths (the first twelve fiths) representing the twelve signs of the Zodiac.

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