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The standard theory of musical scales since antiquity has been based on harmony, rather than melody. While recent analyses provide mixed support for a role of melody as well as harmony, we lack a comparative analysis based on cross-cultural…

Sound · Computer Science 2025-07-03 John M McBride , Elizabeth Phillips , Patrick E Savage , Steven Brown , Tsvi Tlusty

We investigate correlations among pitches in several songs and pieces of piano music by mapping them to one-dimensional walks. Two kinds of correlations are studied, one is related to the real values of frequencies while they are treated…

adap-org · Physics 2008-02-03 Yu Shi

Why are white and black piano keys in an octave arranged as they are today? This article examines the relations between abstract algebra and key signature, scales, degrees, and keyboard configurations in general equal-temperament systems.…

History and Overview · Mathematics 2016-12-06 Brandon Tingyeh Wu

In this article we solve this ancient problem of perfect tuning in all keys and present a system were all harmonies are conserved at once. It will become clear, when we expose our solution, why this solution could not be found in the way in…

Physics and Society · Physics 2021-04-23 Diederik Aerts

In classical music and in any genre of contemporary music, the tonal elements or notes used for playing are the same. The numerous possibilities of chords for a given instance in a piece make the playing, in general, very intricate, and…

Sound · Computer Science 2022-06-14 Steve Mathew D A

This study argues that electronic tones routinely used in contemporary popular music - including 808-style bass and power chords - are structurally and perceptually equivalent to multiphonics in contemporary classical music. Using listening…

Sound · Computer Science 2026-02-23 Emmanuel Deruty , David Meredith , Yann Macé , Luc Leroy , Dima Tsypkin , Pascal Arbez-Nicolas

Both, human appreciation of music and musical genres, transcend time and space. The universality of musical genres and associated musical scales is intimately linked to the physics of sound and the special characteristics of human acoustic…

Popular Physics · Physics 2019-08-22 Sushan Konar

We define an appropriate logarithm function on time scales and present its main properties. This gives answer to a question posed by M. Bohner in [J. Difference Equ. Appl. {\bf 11} (2005), no. 15, 1305--1306].

Classical Analysis and ODEs · Mathematics 2013-11-11 Dorota Mozyrska , Delfim F. M. Torres

This paper provides a new mathematical axiom system for classical harmony, which is a prescriptive rule system for composing music, introduced in the second half of the 18th century. The clearest model of classical harmony is given by the…

History and Overview · Mathematics 2018-07-13 András József Tóbiás

The satisfactory development of Quaternionic Analysis has indicated new solutions for physical and mathematical problems. It is worth mentioning the fact that quaternions possess four dimensions, and in this way they may be considered as…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2015-08-25 J. Marão

Aims. This study suggests that the use of multiple perceived pitches arising from a single harmonic complex tone is an active and intentional feature of contemporary popular music. The phenomenon is illustrated through examples drawn from…

The musical realm is a promising area in which to expect to find nontrivial topological structures. This paper describes several kinds of metrics on musical data, and explores the implications of these metrics in two ways: via techniques of…

Algebraic Topology · Mathematics 2014-03-20 Ryan Budney , William Sethares

This study considers rational approximations of musical constant $\beta=\log_2(3/2)$, which defines perfect fifth. This constant has been the subject of the numerous studies, and this paper determines quality of rational approximations in…

General Mathematics · Mathematics 2018-02-02 Luka Milinkovic , Branko Malesevic , Dragana Pavlovic-Sumarac , Bojan Banjac , Miomir Mijic

A set of basic notes, or `scale', forms the basis of music. Scales are specific to specific genre of music. In this second article of the series we explore the development of various scales associated with western classical music, arguably…

Popular Physics · Physics 2019-09-16 Sushan Konar

We evaluated the impact of changing the observation scale over the entropy measures for text descriptions. MIDI coded Music, computer code and two human natural languages were studied at the scale of characters, words, and at the…

Information Theory · Computer Science 2017-01-13 Gerardo Febres , Klaus Jaffe

We present an automatic piano transcription system that converts polyphonic audio recordings into musical scores. This has been a long-standing problem of music information processing, and recent studies have made remarkable progress in the…

Sound · Computer Science 2021-04-06 Kentaro Shibata , Eita Nakamura , Kazuyoshi Yoshii

The human sense of hearing perceives a combination of sounds 'in tune' if the corresponding harmonic spectra are correlated, meaning that the neuronal excitation pattern in the inner ear exhibits some kind of order. Based on this…

Classical Physics · Physics 2012-04-10 Haye Hinrichsen

Western music is predominantly based on the equal temperament with a constant semitone frequency ratio of $2^{1/12}$. Although this temperament has been in use since the 19th century and in spite of its high degree of symmetry, various…

Popular Physics · Physics 2015-11-17 Haye Hinrichsen

The impossibility of a transposable 12 semitone tuning of the octave arises from the mathematical fact that $2 \times 2^{7/12} \neq 3$ i.e., the second harmonic of the fifth can not exactly match the third harmonic of the fundamental. This…

Physics and Society · Physics 2026-01-14 X. Hernandez , Luis Nasser , Pablo Garcia-Valenzuela

In the previous articles of this series, we have discussed the development of musical scales particularly that of the heptatonic scale which forms the basis of Western classical music today. In this last article, we take a look at the basic…

Sound · Computer Science 2019-10-16 Sushan Konar