Washington: Music and mathematics share an intimate and universal relationship which might be the reason that most of the great mathematicians were also music lovers.
More than 200 years ago Pythagoras reportedly discovered that pleasing musical intervals could be described using simple mathematical ratios, Science Daily reported.
And the so-called musica universalis or ''music of the spheres'' emerged in the Middle Ages as the philosophical idea that the proportions in the movements of the celestial bodies -- the sun, moon and planets -- could be viewed as a form of music, inaudible but perfectly harmonious.
Experts have devised ''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 categorise 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 algebra, corresponding to points on a two-dimensional plane.
Different types of categorisation produce different geometrical spaces, and reflect the different ways in which musicians over the centuries have understood music.
The researchers feel that this experiment will allow researchers to analyse and understand music in much deeper and more satisfying ways.
Once musical notes are translated into numbers and then again translated into the language of geometry the result is a rich menagerie of geometrical spaces.
More summaries about the The Geometry of Music!