The Greek mathematician, scientist, and philosopher, Pythagoras (570 – c. 495 BC), and bane of modern high school geometry students (rule for right triangles: the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides—reminds me of a horrible joke, but I'll put it on the joke thread….) was convinced that the universe was made up of, and could be described by, numbers—various ratios and such.   Considering that he was essential right, I'd say that's not bad for a guy wearing a bedsheet and sandals and kicking around some 25 centuries ago.

Fascinated by the sound of the humming of plucked strings, he experimented with a thing called a "monochord," finding the harmonics of the string by touching the string at various points along its length. He recognized that the note produced by touching the string at its halfway point and plucking it produced a note that was higher, but, somehow recognizably the same note (the octave). But when he touched a point at one-third the length, he got a distinctly different note.

So he tuned another string to that note, and repeated the experiment with the new string. He kept repeating this until he had twelve strings, each tune to a different note—before he began getting repeated notes.

He had discovered the overtone series—and the 12 tone scale.

Music written using all twelve notes was what some modern composers call "atonal" and lacks a "musical center." It took experiments over the centuries, using selected notes from the twelve tones that Pythagoras had discovered to come up with a whole family of scales (modes), eventually settling on the scales (major, and three variations of the minor) that are most commonly used today.

Pythagoras was convinced that the whole cosmos resonated to these notes. Now, if he could only figure out what all this meant….

Of course the question remains. What note was his original string tuned to?

And does it really have any significance? Or is it purely arbitrary?

Note: Owners of fine stringed instruments get a bit perturbed and understandably upset when the edict comes out that "we're cranking our standard pitch up another notch." That sickening splintering wood sound you just heard is someone's $3,000,000 Stradivarius pulling apart….

Music of the Spheres? Chakras? Gerald McBoing-Boing sneezing? Dunno….

Don Firth