The New Shape of Music: Music Has Its Own Geometry, Researchers Find

The new shape of music: Music has its own
geometry, researchers find

17 April 2008
and planets -- could be viewed as a form of music,

inaudible but perfectly harmonious.
Now, three music professors – Clifton Callender at

Florida State University, Ian Quinn at Yale
University and Dmitri Tymoczko at Princeton
University -- have devised a new way of analyzing
and categorizing music that takes advantage of the
deep, complex mathematics they see enmeshed in
its very fabric.
Writing in the April 18 issue of Science, the trio has

outlined a method called "geometrical music
theory" that translates the language of musical
theory into that of contemporary geometry. They
take sequences of notes, like chords, rhythms and
scales, and categorize them so they can be
grouped into "families." They have found a way to
assign mathematical structure to these families, so
they can then be represented by points in complex
geometrical spaces, much the way "x" and "y"
coordinates, in the simpler system of high school
The figure shows how geometrical music theory
represents four-note chord-types -- the collections of
algebra, correspond to points on a two-dimensional
notes form a tetrahedron, with the colors indicating the plane.
spacing between the individual notes in a sequence. In
the blue spheres, the notes are clustered, in the warmer Different types of categorization produce different
colors, they are farther apart. The red ball at the top of geometrical spaces, and reflect the different ways
the pyramid is the diminished seventh chord, a popular in which musicians over the centuries have
19th-century chord. Near it are all the most familiar understood music. This achievement, they expect,
chords of Western music. Credit: Dmitri Tymoczko, will allow researchers to analyze and understand
Princeton University
music in much deeper and more satisfying ways.
The work represents a significant departure from

other attempts to quantify music, according to
The connection between music and mathematics
Rachel Wells Hall of the Department of
has fascinated scholars for centuries. More than
Mathematics and Computer Science at St. Joseph's
200 years ago Pythagoras reportedly discovered
University in Philadelphia. In an accompanying
that pleasing musical intervals could be described
essay, she writes that their effort, "stands out both
using simple ratios.
for the breadth of its musical implications and the
depth of its mathematical content."
And the so-called musica universalis or "music of
the spheres" emerged in the Middle Ages as the
The method, according to its authors, allows them
philosophical idea that the proportions in the
to analyze and compare many kinds of Western
movements of the celestial bodies -- the sun, moon
(and perhaps some non-Western) music. (The
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method focuses on Western-style music because instance, what octave the notes are in, their order,
concepts like "chord" are not universal in all styles.) or how many times each note is repeated. The
It also incorporates many past schemes by music authors show that five symmetries can be
theorists to render music into mathematical form. combined with each other to produce a cornucopia
of different musical concepts, some of which are
"The music of the spheres isn't really a metaphor -- familiar and some of which are novel.
some musical spaces really are spheres," said
Tymoczko, an assistant professor of music at In this way, the musicians are able to reduce
Princeton. "The whole point of making these musical works to their mathematical essence.
geometric spaces is that, at the end of the day, it
helps you understand music better. Having a Once notes are translated into numbers and then
powerful set of tools for conceptualizing music translated again into the language of geometry the
allows you to do all sorts of things you hadn't done result is a rich menagerie of geometrical spaces,
before." each inhabited by a different species of geometrical
object. After all the mathematics is done, three-note
Like what? chords end up on a triangular donut while chord
types perch on the surface of a cone.
"You could create new kinds of musical instruments
or new kinds of toys," he said. "You could create The broad effort follows upon earlier work by
new kinds of visualization tools -- imagine going to Tymoczko in which he developed geometric models
a classical music concert where the music was for selected musical objects.
being translated visually. We could change the way
we educate musicians. There are lots of practical The method could help answer whether there are
consequences that could follow from these ideas." new scales and chords that exist but have yet to be
discovered.
"But to me," Tymoczko added, "the most satisfying
aspect of this research is that we can now see that "Have Western composers already discovered the
there is a logical structure linking many, many essential and most important musical objects?"
different musical concepts. To some extent, we can Tymoczko asked. "If so, then Western music is
represent the history of music as a long process of more than just an arbitrary set of conventions. It
exploring different symmetries and different may be that the basic objects of Western music are
geometries." fantastically special, in which case it would be quite
difficult to find alternatives to broadly traditional
Understanding music, the authors write, is a methods of musical organization."
process of discarding information. For instance,
suppose a musician plays middle "C" on a piano, The tools for analysis also offer the exciting
followed by the note "E" above that and the note possibility of investigating the differences between
"G" above that. Musicians have many different musical styles.
terms to describe this sequence of events, such as
"an ascending C major arpeggio," "a C major "Our methods are not so great at distinguishing
chord," or "a major chord." The authors provide a Aerosmith from the Rolling Stones," Tymoczko
unified mathematical framework for relating these said. "But they might allow you to visualize some of
different descriptions of the same musical event. the differences between John Lennon and Paul
McCartney. And they certainly help you understand
The trio describes five different ways of more deeply how classical music relates to rock or
categorizing collections of notes that are similar, is different from atonal music."
but not identical. They refer to these musical
resemblances as the "OPTIC symmetries," with Source: Princeton University
each letter of the word "OPTIC" representing a
different way of ignoring musical information -- for
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APA citation: The new shape of music: Music has its own geometry, researchers find (2008, April 17)
retrieved 29 May 2020 from https://phys.org/news/2008-04-music-geometry.html
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The new shape of music: Music has its own

geometry, researchers find

and planets -- could be viewed as a form of music,

Now, three music professors – Clifton Callender at

Writing in the April 18 issue of Science, the trio has

The work represents a significant departure from

Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

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