Related papers: 2:3:4-Harmony within the Tritave
The mathematics of musical intervals and scales has been extensively studied. Vastly simplified, our ears seem to prefer intervals whose frequency ratios have small numerator and denominator, such as 2:1 (octave), 3:2 (perfect fifth), 4:3…
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…
The aim is to explore new opportunities of the pitch organization of the musical scale. Specifically, a numerical comparison of the different musical temperaments among themselves in the degree of approximation of the Pythagorean scale is…
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…
We classify three-tone and four-tone chords based on subgroups of the symmetric group acting on chords contained within a twelve-tone scale. The actions are inversion, major-minor duality, and augmented-diminished duality. These actions…
For example, in the chromatic circle, the twelve tones are represented by twelve points on a circle, and in Tonnetz, the relationships among harmonies are represented by a triangular lattice. Recently, we have shown that several…
We will discuss how certain group theory structures are found in music theory. Western music splits the octave into 12 equal tones called half-steps. We can take this division further and split the octave into 24 equal tones by splitting…
A combination of three or more tones played together is called a chord. In the chromatic scale, chords which are consonant are of particular interest and can be divided into several groups, two main ones being the major and minor chords.…
We develop aspects of music theory related to harmony, such as scales, chord formation and improvisation from a combinatorial perspective. The goal is to provide a foundation for this subject by deriving the basic structure from a few…
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…
A new musical scale devised by the author, based on natural logarithms, is described. Most of the logarithmic pitches bear no correspondence to the twelve tones of the ancient tuning system attributed to Pythagoras, based on ratios of whole…
To many people, music is a mystery. It is uniquely human, because no other species produces elaborate, well organized sound for no particular reason. It has been part of every known civilization on earth. It has become a very part of man's…
We report an approach to obtaining complex networks with diverse topology, here called syntonets, taking into account the consonances and dissonances between notes as defined by scale temperaments. Though the fundamental frequency is…
A Pythagorean scale is a mathematical encoding of a musical scale as a finite list of numbers of the form 3^b/2^a. Previous work of the first author discussed the 2-step property as a way to measure which Pythagorean scales are the most…
The collaboration of mathematics in the two musical systems of Pythagorean sounds and of equal sounds is evident and opportune for generating the elements and managing their relationships. The only essential notion for a rational…
Relations among various musical concepts are investigated through a new concept, musical icosahedron that is the regular icosahedron each of whose vertices has one of 12 tones. First, we found that there exist four musical icosahedra that…
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…
Equal temperament, in which semitones are tuned in the irrational ratio of $2^{1/12} : 1$, is best seen as a serviceable compromise, sacrificing purity for flexibility. Just intonation, in which intervals are given by products of powers of…
In a previous submission, we established a fundamental relation between tone networks and configurations. It was shown that the Eulerian tonnetz can be represented by a $\{12_3\}$ of Daublebsky von Sterneck type D222. We also constructed a…
We propose a complex network approach to the harmonic structure underpinning western tonal music. From a database of Beethoven's string quartets, we construct a directed network whose nodes are musical chords and edges connect chords…