Idolator

If, like me, you are a repeat viewer of Donald in Mathmagic Land, you will be familiar with the idea that Western music has some correspondence to physical reality. (You will also think you are much better at making bank shots in pool than you actually are. Curse you, Disney!) The twelve-note scale results from regular division of a plucked string, and is thus in some sense "natural." Musicians will tell you that it doesn't stop there—that when writing a song or playing a solo, there's some sense of where it "naturally" wants to go, and though some of this is ear training, there's some research into the way fundamental aspects of music inherently sound pleasing to our brains. But it's always been hard to explain how this naturalism works to non-musicians. String theory to the rescue! More »