math & music

yes everyone says that music is mathematical.... ok they don't, but it turns out that music is all about math. sound is vibrations in the air. vibrations at a certain frequency, we call notes. and more specifically, notes are related to each other by very specific ratios. the simplest four would be: unison, perfect octave, perfect fifth, perfect fourth, major third. or in notes this could be starting from a c: c', g, f, and e, respectively. as mathematical ratios they would be 1: 2/1, 3/2, 4/3, and 5/4. if your really interested in some of the nitty gritty, check this wiki page on intervals.

now, this makes me wonder if one could write music that is based purely on math. is it possible to describe or produce a work based solely on math? and if produced would it sound any good? i have a feeling that this might be what 'new music' is about. who knows, food for future bloggings.

so back to math-music... i think that it would be interesting to try to write some music based on mathematical series: geometric, exponential, hypergeometric... who knows maybe even Taylor series! i wonder what it would sound like? maybe music could be produced by random number generator, with notes, chords, and dynamics determined by some statistical method? i'm sure some computer science jocks have tried something like this, but it's fun to think about... maybe you could have your own background music generator that could have it's coefficients tailored to your preferences of key, tempo, style, etc.? music just for you...