A new way of visualizing Western music theory could inspire innovations in everything from musical instrument design to music composition techniques—even to new kinds of toys.
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A new way of visualizing Western music theory could inspire innovations in everything from musical instrument design to music composition techniques—even to new kinds of toys. So say three music professors who outlined a "geometrical music theory" for translating families of notes into geometric figures, such as this doubly twisted Mobius strip representing the space of all two-note chords. Each node in the figure stands for a different chord, and each pair of adjacent nodes differs by one note. "Imagine going to a classical music concert where the music was being translated visually," said the classification scheme's co-creator Dmitri Tymoczko, an assistant professor of music at Princeton University, in a statement. "We could change the way we educate musicians." To educate yourself on the new method, check the April 18 issue of Science.
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