From a sleepless infant being consoled by singing a lullaby to a person under depression seeking therapy, Music has always played a prominent role in the history of mankind. Studies reveal that the origin of music dates back to the period when the Neanderthals existed. But how did music develop over the years? And most of all, how are music and science interrelated?
Brief History of Music
The music we enjoy today probably evolved from the most natural form of expression, the voice. Prehistoric men and women started making music to imitate the sounds in nature or for recreational purposes. But humans had no way to preserve sound until 1877 when Edison invented the phonograph.
World Music
Greece is said to be the roots where music developed from. The famous Greek mathematician Pythagoras identified music as a science and laid a foundation for music by developing the octave scale. Another milestone in the evolution of music was marked by Boethius when he brought the Greek system of notation to Western Europe in 521 C.E. This allowed the musicians to create folk songs of their land. Boethius was also the first to pen down the idea of opera.
The first ever written piece of music dates back to some 3400 years and is found in Syria. It is presented in the form of a ‘cuneiform’ (a system of writing used in the Middle East) Ancient Music also flourished within the Persian Empire and Egypt. Religious Music was most popular during the Middle Age. The most important development in music during the time was the invention of ‘polyphony’ (the simultaneous combination of two or more tones or melodic lines).
Indian Music
Indian Classical Music is the ancient form of music in India though it is evolving even today. The two mainstreams of Indian music are Carnatic Music and Hindustani Music. Along with these mainstreams are the others such as folk music. The most prolific composers of Carnatic Music were the Shyama Shasthri, Thyagaraja and Muthuswamy Dikshithar known as ‘the trinity’ all hailing from different parts of South India.
Hindustani music took its shape in the northern part of India during the 13th and 14th centuries. The exceptional musician from the Sultanate of Delhi Amir Khusrau is said to be the Father of Hindustani Music. He is credited for systematizing many aspects of Hindustani Music. There are many other legendary musicians whose contributions to Indian Music have also been of great significance.
We have been going through the history of music for all this while but what exactly is music? Any random sound produced cannot be accounted as music. Well, then how is music made? Let’s start from scratch.
Physics of Sound
Try playing with this tool from Geogebra.
Sound is basically all about vibration. For a sound to be generated, something has to vibrate. In the case of humans, the larynx or the voice box vibrates. The sound thus produced due to these vibrations then travel through a medium in the form of a wave termed as an acoustic wave in physics or simply a sound wave.
Talking about waves, there are two types of waves in general. There are waves that move perpendicular to its flow direction, we call them the ‘transverse waves’. You would have probably seen this phenomenon if you have ever played with paper boats during the monsoon season. You can see the boat moving up and down perpendicular to the flow of water.
The second type of wave that moves parallel to its flow direction is termed as a longitudinal wave. Acoustic or sound waves fall under this category. Next time you attend a concert try standing near the speakers, you can feel your heartbeat synchronising with the sound coming out of the speakers. This is due to the parallel motion of the waves through the medium.
Whenever we imagine a sound wave, we tend to bring in the picture of a water wave. But in reality sound waves do not travel like water waves. Instead, the particles of a sound wave move back and forth. This movement creates areas where the particles bunch up which we call compressions and areas where the particles spread out known as rarefactions.
Image Credits: FutureLearn
The wave-like graph is obtained through a process called quantization so as to make the calculations simpler. From this, we extract two important features, amplitude, and frequency that decide how we perceive sound. Amplitude is the height of the wave (shown above) or we can also say that it determines the volume of a particular sound. The higher the amplitude louder we perceive the sound. Similarly, the frequency of a sound wave is the number of vibrations per second or we can say that it determines the pitch of the sound. A sound with a higher frequency has a higher pitch. Another term that is of great significance here is the ‘wavelength’ which is the distance between the two high points (crest) of the wave. A vibration that produces a short wavelength has a high frequency and a vibration that produces a long wavelength has a lower frequency.
From Sound to Music
“Science is the music of the intellect and Music is the science of the heart”
To understand the difference between what we had discussed in the earlier section, try humming in the base tone of your voice and then in a slightly higher tone. You can feel the change in the vibrations of your vocal cord. Well, we say that music is both art and science. Music can also be defined as the sound produced in an organized pattern. But voice isn’t the only tool used to produce music, there are several other instruments that produce sound and seem to please the human ears.
Physics behind Musical Instruments
Well, historians are not sure of when or how exactly the first musical instrument was invented. But many of them believe the flute made from animal bones to be the earliest known musical instrument and it dates back to some 37,000 years.
Apart from flute, there are several other instruments that we know today. In general, musical instruments produce music by generating standing waves. For example, in a guitar standing waves are created when the strings are plucked. Similarly, standing waves are created when a drummer beats the skinhead of the drum. The same happens while blowing a trumpet or playing the flute.
Well, standing waves are nothing but a combination of two waves moving in opposite directions having the same amplitude and frequency. This phenomenon takes place when two waves are superimposed. This simple concept of standing waves plays a key role in understanding the physics behind musical instruments.
Now, these musical instruments can be classified into 3 classes.
(i) Chordophones: They are musical instruments in which standing waves are initially created using strings. Instruments like guitar, violin and piano fall under this category.
(ii) Aerophones: They are musical instruments in which standing waves are created by the vibrations in the air column. Instruments like flute and trumpet fall under this category.
(iii) Idiophones: They are musical instruments in which standing waves are created due to their physical structure.
In order to understand the concept of standing waves, it is also important to understand the term ‘wave impedance’. Impedance is the measure of the force to be applied by the wave to move the medium by a given amount. In case of the standing waves produced by musical instruments, the impedance changes periodically which eventually produces reflections. You might have observed this phenomenon if you have ever plucked the strings of a guitar.
As you play guitar or any other musical instrument or sing the desired note, you might have noticed some additional notes being produced along with it. The desired note is said to be the fundamental frequency which is caused by what is known as the first mode of vibration and the additional notes or higher modes of vibration that occur simultaneously are known as overtones. Understanding the modes of vibration is vital to understand the principles for the development of consonant music. Two notes are said to be consonant if they seem pleasing to the human ear when played together.
When the overtones of a musical instrument are said to be harmonic, it simply means that they share a very simple relationship with the fundamental frequency. Harmonics as we know is the simple integer multiples of the fundamental frequency. A musical instrument’s fundamental frequency and its overtones combine together to produce the sound spectrum or also known as the power spectrum of the musical instrument.
Now, imagine that you are just listening to a song with your eyes closed. What you are hearing is just the sound of the person singing it and the sound of various other instruments played in between. And, with no doubt, you would be able to distinguish the different instruments being played. Have you ever thought of the reason behind it? Well, it’s the difference in the intensities of every overtone produced that defines the sound quality or timbre of each instrument. This is evidently why people are able to distinguish the sounds even between musical instruments that are quite similar like a ukulele and a guitar.
Technological Advancements in Music
Digital platforms are now playing an integral role in the field of music. Rather than playing different instruments separately to compose a piece of music, one can use a piece of software that has inbuilt sounds of various musical instruments. Let’s take a glimpse of the technological advancements in the field of music.
Music and Artificial Intelligence
The world has witnessed revolutions in every field ever since the advent of artificial intelligence and that includes the field of music too. Progress in AI music is increasing rapidly. And, this all began with David Cope a musician and composer creating a program EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence) in 1982. His algorithms have now created a large number of compositions in different genres. Today, we can see many AI platforms being popular. One such AI platform owned by Tiktok is Jukedeck. In order to create a new piece of music in the platform, the user just selects the desired genre (folk, rock, ambient or electronic) the mood (upbeat or melancholic), the tempo (beats per minute) and sets the desired duration. Within a few seconds, the AI provides a preview to be downloaded. Another similar platform is Lo-Fi Player a tool created by Google’s Magenta. It is a virtual room where people can create and mix lo-fi and hip-hop tracks for free.
The only drawback to the arising technologies being used in music is that it tends to replace the creative thinking of the artists.
Impact on Brain
Music has got a unique ability to awaken one’s emotions and trigger memories. It has soothed several souls. This is evidently why we can see widespread interest in music for people. It engages several parts distributed throughout the brain. Several studies have majorly shown the involvement of the right hemisphere of the brain while listening to or playing music. Music activates the auditory cortex in the temporal lobes that are close to our ears.
Most interestingly, music also activates the motor system of the brain contained mostly in the frontal lobes. Since music can activate almost all the regions in the brain, it can help in keeping up the quality of one’s life. Music is also increasingly being used as a tool in therapy for brain-related injuries and diseases.
Though science can explain music and its impact on people to an extent, numerous questions are still left unanswered. Probably with time we’ll be able to witness more mysteries in this field being unraveled.
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