Music of the spheres

[michael sam wild]

In our local paper The Star there was a piece about Sheffield University physicists researching musical harmonies created by vibrations within the Sun's magnetic atmosphere. They have captured the music and revealed harmonic sounds caused by the movements of loops in the solar corona which cause huge explosions.

 

As we are all 'StarDust' and matter and energy are so intimately linked it makes you wonder how innate it all is and how much is culturally generated. What I wonder is how what was perceived as not harominic once upon a time is now acceptable.. Can we go any further with 'acceptable' chords and harmony?

 

 

Are we bound by laws of nature?

 

There's a sound recording on the web link here sounds like OMMMMM to me or someoned dropping a large beer tray

 

 

http://www.shef.ac.u.../2010/1662.html

Edited June 22, 2010 by michael sam wild

[JimLucas]

In our local paper The Star there was a piece about Sheffield University physicists researching musical harmonies created by vibrations within the Sun's magnetic atmosphere. They have captured the music and revealed harmonic sounds caused by the movements of loops in the solar corona which cause huge explosions.

Interesting sounds, and maybe even pleasant or enjoyable in moderation, but I think it's misleading to describe them as "music", much less as "harmonic" in the usual human sense.

 

As we are all 'StarDust' and matter and energy are so intimately linked it makes you wonder how innate it all is and how much is culturally generated.

Matter and energy are more than "intimately linked"; they are one and the same, just viewed from different perspectives. But that's a side issue.

 

I think you're trying to stretch the "innate" concept beyond the limits of reasonability. If there were some principle making all things made of "star dust" similar on a higher level, then one could argue that we should all be nearly spherical, because we're made of the same material as the earth, which is also composed of "star dust".

 

At a higher level, though, it seems reasonable that human-made sounds we find pleasant would be in some way similar to environmental sounds that are associated with pleasure or safety. I remember reading an article many years ago (and so I don't have the reference handy) which described certain mathematical characteristics of frequency spectra in which "pleasant" sounds differed markedly from "unpleasant" ones, with "musical" sequences having particular forms, though by a criterion far broader than simple ratios.

 

There are certainly also cultural criteria which influence our concepts of what is "musical" or "harmonic", and these -- as I think you've indicated -- can change over time.

 

What I wonder is how what was perceived as not harominic once upon a time is now acceptable.. Can we go any further with 'acceptable' chords and harmony?

Actually, it's not a one-dimensional progression from only "simple" harmonies and chords to more complex ones. Many musical traditions make use of scales, harmonies, and chords which lie outside the conventions of the formal music of Western Europe, and some have done so since before those conventions were established. Some of today's innovative "new" harmonies are really rediscoveries of styles long ago discarded by our own musical establishment.

 

As for going "further", of course we can, and we almost certainly will. Some contemporary forms of "music" already have, at least relative to the tastes of the majority.

 

Are we bound by laws of nature?

Of course we are, but are there any such laws dictating our production of music or music's evolution? I doubt it.

[michael sam wild]

i am intrigued as to how far culture can determine what is acceptable or pleasing and the fact that vubvuzela discord or cacophony is quite fun at the World Cup but would it be called 'harmonious' one day or is that purely a function of interacting waves that have to interact a set way.

 

I truly can't hazard an answer I know that in certain traditional sessions people are quite scathing about the introduction of 'jazzy' chords so not everything goes..

Edited June 29, 2010 by michael sam wild

[Anglo-Irishman]

i am intrigued as to how far culture can determine what is acceptable or pleasing and the fact that vubvuzela discord or cacophony is quite fun at the World Cup but would it be called 'harmonious' one day or is that purely a function of interacting waves that have to interact a set way.

 

I truly can't hazard an answer I know that in certain traditional sessions people are quite scathing about the introduction of 'jazzy' chords so not everything goes..

 

Mike,

The music that you or I like and the music that you or I don't like are both based on the same mathematics and physics. The universe is not good or bad, neither beautiful nor ugly. It's our conventions that prompt us to these value judgements.

 

Like Hamlet said: "There's nothing good nor bad, but thinking makes it so."

 

For me, tuning a stringed instrument is an almost spiritual affair. As I bring a string up to being in tune with the others, I feel that I am approaching an instance of that Eternal Perfection that is Harmony. A pefection that is too complex for me to understand, but which I nevertheless recognise when I reach it. And the instrument becomes the vehicle with which I can reach it.

 

If only my playing were as perfect!

 

When I listen for a while to music from another culture - African, Asian, American, Oceanian - I hear the same will to be in tune with the same Universe, although superficially the differences are considerable. And now the astronomers think that the Sun has the same attitude?

Why not!

 

Cheers,

John

[spindizzy]

The music that you or I like and the music that you or I don't like are both based on the same mathematics and physics. The universe is not good or bad, neither beautiful nor ugly. It's our conventions that prompt us to these value judgements.

 

Just to throw another sample into the discussion ... here are some of our "sounds" (We don't call them music) Try the 47TUC pulsars....

Chris

Edited July 10, 2010 by spindizzy

[shaunw]

In our local paper The Star there was a piece about Sheffield University physicists researching musical harmonies created by vibrations within the Sun's magnetic atmosphere. They have captured the music and revealed harmonic sounds caused by the movements of loops in the solar corona which cause huge explosions.

 

As we are all 'StarDust' and matter and energy are so intimately linked it makes you wonder how innate it all is and how much is culturally generated. What I wonder is how what was perceived as not harominic once upon a time is now acceptable.. Can we go any further with 'acceptable' chords and harmony?

 

 

Are we bound by laws of nature?

 

There's a sound recording on the web link here sounds like OMMMMM to me or someoned dropping a large beer tray

 

 

http://www.shef.ac.u.../2010/1662.html

 

Harmony seems to be a cultural and even a very individual thing. I know folk musicians who are unable to

stay in the same room when I put one of my Ornette Coleman Cds on they find his music distressing.

 

Some people still can't accept equal tempered tuning and there are micro-tonal composers who want to be

able to use an much larger number of notes in an octave. So I'm not sure how much of this is built in.