Let's make our universe a more amazing place – Music

How do we even create music?

Music is certainly influenced by our cultural and geographical backgrounds. For instance, if someone primarily listens and dances to even time signature music (probably 99.9% of pop and rock music written in the last fifty years or so) will have a hard time trying to swing to an odd time signature song such as a walz or a more complicated one such as in “Unsquare Dance” by Dave Brubeck.

By time signature (for those who don’t know) I refer to the number of beats that can be perceived in a repeating manner throughout a song. So, if the time signature is even, one can divide the song into equal length parts and count to an even number (and repeat): 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and… If the time signature is odd one can do the same division counting to odd numbers: 1 and 2 and 3 and 1 and…

On the other hand, let’s define music as the following: a series of different sounds arranged in a specific way through time. And so, we have two big ideas: 1. different sounds, and 2. arrangement through time (rhythm). But, are these ideas two ideas distinct, or are they the same one viewed through a different magnifying glass?

Let’s think about a sound produced by a musical instrument. This sound has many parameters that can be identified by the human ear (and not only the human ear). For instance, one of these parameters is known as volume (amplitude, intensity), which can be identified as the strength of a specific sound. Another parameter is tone (pitch), that is the frequency of the sound wave or, in other words, the amount of oscillations in a certain amount of time. But, isn’t frequency an arrangement through time? Therefore, isn’t tone some sort of rhythm? Interestingly, the answer to this question is YES.

There is a way to think about frequency (what defines the pitch of sound) as a type of rhythm. The human hearing range is usually given as 20 to 20.000 Hz (vibrations per second), so waves that correspond to be in that interval will be heard (under some optimal conditions) as having a defined pitch. So, what would it be like to hear a mechanical wave oscillate at less than 20 Hz? Under the right conditions, many of us would correctly say: rhythm. Personally, I find this idea fascinating. Adam Neely demonstrates this well in his video “Harmonic Polyrhythms Explained!”.

What if an alien species came to earth and that species could hear sounds at 10 to 100 kHz, would it hear, for instance, a 100 Hz sound as a rhythm? One does not have to go that far, even in our planet we have some species with different hearing ranges. Elephants can hear sounds that vary between 14 and 19 kHz, and some marine species can hear frequencies as low as 7 Hz (would they perceive as a tone something we perceive as a rhythm?).

These are the questions I like to think about! I find this fascinating. I know this concept does not apply for any type of wave, but I still think it's awesome. Thank you for reading my first post. Sorry for my broken English, my first language is Spanish as you might have noticed from my user name "arielfromchile". I will continue to upload content on interesting stuff about our world and universe (at least what I find interesting), and what excites me the most about it.