natural music

On Wed, 26 Feb 1997, Manuel.Op.de.Coul@ezh.nl (Manuel Op de Coul)
wrote "... but music is not a natural phenomenon."

After reading this I saw a TV program about music and the Brain.
It was rather interesting and they quote Ravel as saying (in defence of
charges of writing "artificial music") that "some of us are naturally
artificial".

Anyway, although this is not perhaps what Manuel meant by his statement,
I want to argue that music is not only natural, but that nature is music
and nothing but music. Let me ramble a bit first.

In 1977 I was using computers to make economic forecasts. I found that
there were a number of reasonably regular cycles present in many of the
economic variables that I studied. To refine the cycles observed I
wrote some programs to specifically search for cycles in the data. The
result was a graph which showed how strongly a cycle was present in a
collection of 22 economic variables as a function of the period. The
result was that periods of 4.45, 5.9, 7.15 and about 9 years were found.
Each cycle had effects on different variables in the economy. These
cycles were used in the following years to make generally accurate
forecasts.

A little later I noticed that the four periods found were related in
that they were all very nearly exact fractions of 35.6 years. If 35.6
years is divided by 8, 6, 5 and 4 the results are 4.45, 5.93, 7.12 and
8.9 years.

What was so special about 35.6 years? I did not know the answer to that
question. However I found that the long cycle had been discovered
before and was called the Kondratieff cycle after its Russian
discoverer. Kondratieff said that it was 54 years long and in the
1920's predicted a major depression in the 1930's. Of course he was
absolutely right, and we have just completed the next depression after
that one, although thankfully it was not as bad as the 1930's one. I
also noticed that 108 years divided by 2 and 3 gave 54 and 36 years
respectively and so it seemed that 35.6 years was connected with the
Kondratieff cycle and was not some sort of special value.

As people interested in tuning you will no doubt immediately have
noticed something about these relationships. They are all musical. The
original 4 periods if converted to frequencies are in the proportions
4:5:6:8 and so are a major chord. The relationship of 35.6 to ~54 years
is a major 5th.

Next I found that in weekly corn prices over a 44 year period there were
an even more complicated pattern of cycle periods and that these turned
out to exactly correspond to the frequencies of all the white notes in a
just intonation scale, plus a couple of flats. These periods measured
in weeks were also in tune with the longer yearly cycles.

So to summarise, the New Zealand economy was playing a major chord on
its 22 "instruments" and in the case of corn prices it was as if someone
had sat on the corn keyboard!

I then found that there was a place called "The Foundation for the Study
of Cycles" and went there in the late 1980s. To my surprise almost all
my discoveries had been made before by Edward Dewey and others. He had
found from entirely different data to mine that commonly reported cycles
tended to be related to 17.75 years by proportions of 2 and 3. So he
listed 35.5 years and 8.88, 5.92 and 4.44 years, all quite similar to my
figures. This confirmed that my (re-)discoveries were correct and that
everything on earth and even in space was subject to the same rhythms.

Many astronomical periods also fit the pattern, e.g Jupiter's orbital
period is 11.86 years or ~35.6/3 and the moon's orbit varies over a
period of 8.85 years or ~35.6/4 years.

Eventually I formed a theory that explained these strange events and
made lots of predictions about the universe at large. Anyway, the
universe has its own "tuning systems" and I will argue that it probably
knows best and that we are just immitating it or perhaps even "tuning
in" as some great composers have claimed. Everything that I have
discovered indicates the latter.

More later.

-- Ray Tomes -- rtomes@kcbbs.gen.nz -- Harmonics Theory --
http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/rtomes/rt-home.htm

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Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 05:07:42 -0800
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