Music Is Math

Big thanks to the Behance Network for turning me on to the amazing work of Tatiana Plakhova, whose series “Music Is Math” is a meditation on the mathematical nature of sound, expressed in exciting and complex visualizations. Her work is grounded in exploring patterns and repeated forms, but she does so with a celestial eye and encourages us to consider tiny aspects of reality as being microcosms unto themselves.

The image above could fit equally as well in a NASA photo gallery as it could in a physicist’s treatise on string theory, yet it was inspired by music. Mathematical patterns and recursive vertices weave in and out of all three topics, but it took an artist as talented as Tatiana to bring the similarities into bright focus.

You can order prints and wallpapers at Complexity Graphics: http://www.complexitygraphics.com/

Platonic… Music?

Courtesy Jay Kennedy

“Looking at Plato’s works in their original scroll form, he noticed that every 12 lines there was a passage that discussed music.” – excerpt from NPR.org:  “A Musical Message Discovered In Plato’s Works“

This article is fascinating to me, not because of the DaVinci Code-like revelation, but rather the emphasis on the number 12. It is a story that, yet again, links mathematics and music. It also dovetails nicely with a post of mine from January 2009 (“Twelve“), while referencing Pythagoras and the importance placed on ratio and proportion (also detailed here, “The Golden Page“)

There is no real conclusion drawn from the NPR feature, so we are left wondering why the preeminent thinker of 300 B.C. felt strongly enough about music to encode its defining principles into an otherwise non-musical work. The real takeaway here, and this is irrefutable: Plato felt compelled to draw connections between various arts and disciplines. Perhaps by conceptually linking disparate ideas, Plato believed he could reconcile the conflict and strife that always seem to arise when concepts appear at odds. (Science vs. religion, math vs. art, sculpture vs. painting, etc…)

These links and connections, as expressed through music, are what BlogSounds is all about.

Music Awareness

I just learned of this 2007 experiment by the Washington Post (post courtesy of The Bold Life), which can be summarized as follows:

• The Post arranged to have a man play the violin for 45 minutes in the middle of a busy DC-Metro station. The material consisted of six different works by J.S. Bach.
• Reactions from onlookers and passersby were documented, peaking at mild, short-lived interest. (Oddly enough, some of the strongest reactions seemed to come from children, whose parents were quick to scurry them along regardless…)
• In total, only six people stopped to listen and twenty gave money (grand total: $32)
• Upon completion there was no applause or acknowledgement.

The violinist was world-renowned virtuoso Joshua Bell, playing a $3.5 million Stradivarius violin (more on Bell and his extravagant instrument here). Two days prior, Bell performed a sold-out show in Boston where seats averaged $100 each.

A litany of questions and conclusions followed (“In a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?…”). But for me, it brought to mind a comment from jazz pianist Bill Evans in his biography Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings, where he laments the fact that jazz music is all too often relegated to being background music for the din of conversation in a club. Bill estimated that only a very small percentage of his listeners during a performance actually picked up on the nuances and excitement of what he and his trio were playing.

The DC experiment demonstrates the importance of the listener participation. Listening to music is not a passive act, where the notes and chords wash over your ears and into your head effortlessly. To get the most out of a piece of music, and thus putting it on par with a great novel in terms of complexity and storytelling magic, the listener needs to take an active role in the process. Literature transcends entertainment as soon as you learn to read, and music can do the same when you learn to listen.

Hearing and listening are not the same thing, as the DC Metro experiment makes clear…

Music and the Mind

Here is a link to a great New York Times conversation with Aniruddh D. Patel, author of “Music, Language, and the Brain,” fellow at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, and self-proclaimed Neuroscientist of Music. One insight, following the discovery of a parrot named Snowball who dances to the beat of a Backstreet Boys song:

“What do humans have in common with parrots? Both species are vocal learners, with the ability to imitate sounds. We share that rare skill with parrots. In that one respect, our brains are more like those of parrots than chimpanzees. Since vocal learning creates links between the hearing and movement centers of the brain, I hypothesized that this is what you need to be able to move to beat of music.”

Patel continues:

“Before Snowball, I wondered if moving to a musical beat was uniquely human. Snowball doesn’t need to dance to survive, and yet, he did. Perhaps, this was true of humans, too?”

The question, of course, remains why? Why do we, along with parrots, respond instinctively to music?

My take: it could be that music provides the same “neuro-catharsis” during daytime hours as dreaming does while we’re asleep, stimulating our brains and escaping our analytical reality. Music (and through association, dance)  may be a vestigial “sanity check,” a screensaver of the mind, to bring us out of our day-to-day and prevent our mental processes from becoming to static and habitual.

Music from a Tree

“Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.” – Rollo May

Diego Stocco is a man who once saw a tree and decided to make music with it. Armed with some microphones, a modified stethoscope, a bow, and a Pro Tools LE system, he composed an entire piece of music using only unmodified sounds formed from the tree itself. Check out the final result here: Diego Stucco’s “Music From a Tree”

[Related post: “By Any Other Name…“]

Medicinal Music

“We know music can calm, influence creativity, can energize. That’s great. But music’s role in recovering from disease is being ever more appreciated.” – Dr. Ali Rezai, director of the Center for Neurological Restoration at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic

Music as medicine is the latest notion in the long-established principle that music affects physiology. It’s  a mellifluous dance of organized vibrations in the air striking an eardrum, with the vibrations being transferred through bones and nerves into the gray matter of your brain. Listening to music, or any sound really, is the act of your body translating physical motion into aural playback in your mind.

Expanding the scope a bit, consider this:

• Music begins as a concept in a musician or composer’s mind, a purely cerebral activity.
• It is then transferred into either the physical act of playing an instrument, or composing.
• If composed, it takes the vision of a musician to read (intake) the notes and convert them to the appropriate physical movement, whether vocal or instrumental
• Once the music is performed, it makes its way into a listener’s ear and sent along to the brain, where the snapping of synapses creates playback inside the listener’s mind

It’s a circular experience, beginning and ending in the mind.

But what if that’s not where the journey ends?

This is what a recent MSNBC article attempts to answer. The thought is that the journey continues past the mind and actually influences physical behavior and recovery from injury:

“Research has already shown that if you play a piece — like Mozart — at a certain slow beat, the listener will adapt their heart beat to the beat of the music.” – Dr. Claudius Conrad, senior surgical resident at Harvard Medical School; pianist

This extra leg of the aural journey, from listening to physical response, is detailed in the article: the synaptic pulse in your brain, in addition to stimulating your auditory cortex, also hits the hypothalamus, which controls heart rate and respiration in addition to stomach and skin nerves. This is why a tune can “give you butterflies or goose bumps.”

The journey also includes the chemical, in the form of hormones. It was found that, in addition to a reduction in blood pressure and heart rate, critically ill patients can show a “50 percent spike in pituitary growth hormone” when listening to Mozart sonatas. This hormone is known to stimulate healing.

So what does that mean for the aspiring musician looking to make a living?:

“At Cleveland Clinic, Rezai and other neurosurgeons collaborate with The Cleveland Orchestra to compose classical pieces to play for patients during brain operations.”

And one of the oldest instruments, the harp, is still the go-to solution for music therapy:

The harp is the only instrument that has 20 to 50 strings and is open, unlike, say, a violin. When a harpist strikes a chord, she also opens vibrations in strings just above and below the few she plucks. Those vibes… are absorbed by the body.

The world of medicine is becoming entwined with the world of music, which is likely to result in a whole new cache of careers and job opportunities for musicians and doctors alike.

The Golden Page

This Information Age we’re living in is full of knowledge, most of which is free and entirely at our fingertips. Yet despite the litany of sites offering free downloadable copies of classics, the world at large remains largely unread. Why?

Perhaps its because the words are not on a page.

You may argue that words are words, and can be read wherever they appear. While this is true I argue that the medium matters. A lot. More than we may realize. Amazon’s Kindle is trying to address this issue, which is this: People want to read things in a format that suits one’s field of vision.

I dont think this is a conscious choice. It’s simply a more comfortable reading experience when you’re looking at something your eye is able to take in without trouble. This is why reading a novel on your computer screen, or scanning through a treatise typed on a billboard, will never be best practice. The medium matters.

So what, then, of music?

The term “medium” or “format” in music relates to the way in which the sound is recorded and listened to, and can range from LP’s to streaming mp3’s.  And the format does matter. Audiophiles who swear by the warmth of long-playing records sometimes have a hard time enjoying the experience  of listening to music on an iPod Shuffle. Similarly, Apple-philes find that the portability and interactive nature of the iPod and iPod Touch make listening to music more fun, and find LP’s antiquated, crackly, and inconvenient.

In the end it amounts to personal preference, but always remember that the way you intake certain art forms can affect your opinion more than the art itself. The subtle way that content relates to medium is an overlooked aspect of preference.

(For further reading into the mysterious nature of aesthetics, check out the Wikipedia article on The Golden Ratio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#Aesthetics )

Creating Creativity

Credit: Cauê Rangle

SEED Magazine has a great article regarding creativity—it’s an investigation into the way artists are able to utilize their creative talents on command. They probe this mystery through the use of an fMRI machine to identify which parts of the brain are utilized, and when, during an improvised jazz solo. The goal was to untangle the disparate elements of inspiration:

William James described the creative process as a “seething cauldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbing about in a state of bewildering activity.”

The findings are interesting: before the solo even begins, a pianist was found to have “deactivated” their dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which is the portion of the brain associated with planning and self-control: “In other words, they were inhibiting their inhibitions, which allowed the musicians to create without worrying about what they were creating.”

The article drives on from there, delving into other aspects of the improvisatory experience. Spikes in medial prefrontal cortex activity, for example, which is an area associated with self-expression (“it lights up, for instance, whenever people tell a story in which they’re the main character”), and premotor cortex activity which is linked to the physical execution of notes. But it’s the first point I find the most interesting: It is a musician’s lack of activity in a particular area—conscious thought—that drives a successful solo before a single note is played.

Creativity, then, may not be a result of the presence of talent, but rather the lack of inhibition. One’s supreme willingness to simply try may be the best kept secret to artistic success.

The Human Condition

“It’s part of the human condition. People like to see things grow.”

This was a line spoken at a presentation I attended recently, and it struck me as the truest thing you could say about human nature.

People like to see things grow.

Musicians want a larger fanbase. Business owners want to grow their business for eventual sale/IPO. Readers like to grow their book collection. Gamers like to get high scores. Gardeners like seeing their plants grow. Parents are proud of seeing their kids grow.

Growing is a sign of health and superiority. If something is growing, then it is usually agreed to be doing well for itself. Growth is a sign of success but, more importantly, seeing things grow is a pleasurable experience. How else can you explain the success of the Tamagotchi, The Sims, The Million Dollar Homepage, or body building? Even more, why do you think mankind’s collective unconscious is obsessed with the Tree of Life?

Consider this: creative entrepreneurs (artists, dancers, actors, writers…) and traditional business owners alike often achieve success, a comfortable living, money to support a family and hobbies, and enough socked away in savings or retirement, yet they still have the desire to grow further. Why grow for the sake of growth? Why continue to press for bigger-and-better when your present achievements are fulfilling, stress-free, and comfortable? Why grow a company to 200 employees when it is currently experiencing profound success with 50? Why buy a 3-bedroom house when your current two-bedroom is more than enough?

Because people like to see things grow.

Though this is human instinct at work, I try not to fall prey to this mindset too often. And I’m not the only one. For further reading, check out the great book by Bo Burlingham, Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big.

Twelve

In Western music there are twelve tonal centers (i.e. “keys”) and, therefore, twelve different notes:

A, B-flat, B, C, D-flat, D, E-flat, E, F, G-flat, G, A-flat

This is not a reflection of how nature actually operates. It was a very deliberate, man-made choice to equally divide an octave into twelve different parts (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_temperament).

So why Twelve?

This is not entirely clear to me. But the number 12 has a rich history in society:

• 12 months in a year
• 12-hour clocks (60 seconds, 60 minutes, and a 24-hour day all divisible by 12)
• 12 signs in the Western and Chinese zodiac (In fact, the Chinese use a 12 year cycle for time-reckoning called Earthly Branches.)
• 12 astrological signs.

… Twelve is featured prominently in religion and myth:

• 12 Apostles
• 12 days of Christmas
• The biblical Jacob had 12 sons, who were the progenitors of the Twelve Tribes of Israel
• Eastern Orthodoxy observes 12 Great Feasts.
• Greek mythology contains the 12 labors of Hercules.

… Twelve leaves its mark all over society:

• 12 Function keys on standard keyboard
• There’s also 12 buttons on a standard telephone (0-9, #, *)
• We use the number twelve so often we have special words for it: Dozen. Noon.

Still, there is no apparent reason for choosing this one number over all others. The number spans time and cultures, yet notice that the number twelve always seems to be associated with earthly amounts. Look at the lists above. Even the religious figures are men and not deities. Zodiacs and astrology are systems to describe the fortunes of human beings. The number 12 seems to be a “safe” number in society. It’s what we use to designate the rational, the earthly, the countable.

So 13 would represent the “step beyond.” It’s the first number that can’t be reached, so to speak. Going back to the 12 Apostles, Jesus would be the 13^th “transcendental” element. The song Twelve Days of Christmas came from the traditional practice of extending Yuletide celebrations over the twelve days from Christmas day to the eve of Epiphany. So the Epiphany is the 13^th “transcendental” element. 12 Zodiac signs, plus the Sun. In Judaism, 13 signifies the age of maturity (bar mitzvah) for boys. The 13^th floor on buildings supposedly doesn’t exist. And we all know to beware of Friday the 13th…

So the number 13, interestingly enough, has historically designated the spiritual, mystical, and transcendental.

Twelve represents rationality, and Thirteen represents mystery.