The Geometry of Music

An anonymous reader notes a Time.com profile of Princeton University music theorist Dmitri Tymoczko, who has applied some string-theory math to the study of music and found that all possible chordal music can be represented in a higher-dimensional space. His research was published last year in Science — it was the first paper on music theory they ever ran. The paper and background material, including movies, can be viewed at Tymoczko's site.

Comments

Re:Actually

[Yetihehe]

Mathematical equations can be stochastic, they may have defined certain probabilities of happening. Stochastic L-Systems are good for demonstrating outcomes of some stochastic equations (I'm telling it after weekend with L-system parser for school project).

Re:Here comes the land rush

[radicalskeptic]

You can't copyright chord progressions, only melodies. Most famously, there have been dozens of jazz standards written that are based on the chord progression of Gershwin's "I've Got Rhythm". In fact, there's even a name for that form: "'Rhythm Changes".

MOD PARENT UP.

[Anne Honime]

http://aboutscotland.co.uk/harmony/prop.html

First Article on Music Theory they ever published?

[Vreejack]

This is emphatically NOT the first paper on music theory they have ever run. A cursory search turned up several other recent papers. I'm too busy reading Dmitri Tymoczko's report on "The Geometry of Musical Chords" to write any more ---Science 7 July 2006:
Vol. 313. no. 5783, pp. 72 - 74
DOI: 10.1126/science.1126287