April 22, 2024
Mathematics of musics to be featured at online Art and Math Seminar
Submitted by Natalia Rozhkovskaya
Xavier Gràcia from the Technical University of Catalonia, Spain, will present "Musical scales, a never-ending story" at the online Art and Math Seminar at noon Thursday, April 25.
The theory of musical scales is at least 26 centuries old, when the Pythagoreans noticed that two similar strings sounding together are more pleasant when their lengths are in small integer ratios. Many years later it was discovered that the harmonic spectrum of a sounding string explains that consonance. How can we construct a musical scale with enough pleasant intervals? What happens if the spectrum is not harmonic? In this talk Gràcia, will give answers to these questions.