Musical scales, a never-ending story

Abstract: 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 we will try to give some answers to these questions.

general mathematics

Audience: general audience

Art and Math Seminar

Series comments: The scholar interdisciplinary online seminar is dedicated to visual creativity inspired by mathematical sciences. The invited speakers are mathematicians, scientists, engineers, computer scientists, art historians, architects, artists, educators. The seminar is aimed to the university level audience. To attend the talks please complete the registration form at the website of the seminar www.math.ksu.edu/research/artandmathseminar.html