So you love your guitar. Strum it regularly and a listener asks you a question as you are playing, "What is the velocity of the wave on the string?"
Is big brother looking at your computer? Do you think that a mysterious hand guides sound waves to your ear through your computer?
Did you know that everything relating to math can be set to music? Try some fun things at Metamath Music Page..
The Greek mathematicians who included Pythagoras were the first to understand the interconnections of musical sound and number.
One of the most profound discoveries of the time was that a vibrating string of a certain length produces a pitch different from, but at the same time very similar to, the pitch produced by a vibrating string exactly twice as long as the first. The acoustical phenomenon which the ear recognizes is the duplication of pitch at a higher or lower level, which is called the octave. The octave is expressed as the numerical ratio of 2:1.
All musical intervals can be expressed as numerical ratios. The intervals expressed with the smallest whole numbers are called perfect intervals and are the octave, the fifth, and the fourth.
...The Octave 2:1 has a frequency of 256 vibrations per second, while C an octave higher has a frequency of 512.
...The Fifth 3:2 when going from C to G for example and
...The Fourth 4:3 when going from C to F.
Copyright: 1986-2010