Composer reveals musical chords' hidden geometry

[icho100]

Making graphical representations of musical ideas is not itself a new idea. Even most non musicians are familiar with the five-line musical staff, on which the notes that appear physically higher represent sounds that have higher pitch. Other common representations include the circle of fifths, which illustrates the relationships between the 12 notes in the chromatic scale as though they were the 12 hours on a clock's face.

http://pawst.com/post/588785-advanced-geometry-used-to-understand-musical-structure"

 

[billiards]

Fascinating. How could this be used to find new chords? Presumably it would have to incorporate micro tones, because when you only have twelve notes in an octave all the possibilities have already been tried so there are no new chords to discover in that system.

Have they tried using familiar shapes like circles or whatever to see how they sound as melodies when remapped back to sound?

 

[glueball8]

http://research.yale.edu/ysm/article.jsp?articleID=76