Hi guys.I’m back after a really looooong time.Sorry for that(as if you care!).The following post includes concrete facts and a set of my own hypothesis;maybe someone has thought about these things before.But the analysis is what I intend to put forth.
It all started with a very simple question.I was listening to a coldplay song.The drums,the guitar,the piano,the voice,the lyrics;it all intermingled so beautifully.A rush of happiness fluxed through my head.It felt so good.Their music is divine to my ears.Then came the question.All human beings are instinctively and intuitively tuned to music.No matter what our background,we immediately recognise the difference between music and noise.If a singer moves “off the tune” or the background music is “not in tune” we immediately realise it;we need not be pandit Bhimsen Joshi to realise it.Moreover,what makes us happy when we hear “good” music?What is “good” music afterall?
The nature of the questions clearly suggest that the perception of music is beyond a particular country,caste,community or any other distinguishing factor between human beings;it is something that comes with human life,with human existence,or rather just existence.Music is a lot more intertwined with the basic laws of the universe than we think.It is something that can exist without human existence;we tend to connect it with the human race without giving it too much thought.Over the centuries the forms of music may have changed,but the aim behind the creation of those forms have been one;the joy that a human derives out of listening to music has been one.A keen music lover,whether he loves rock or punk or electronic or classical or any other form experiences the same “high” if I may call it.
Let’s start the analysis by first examining the dynamics of sound.Suppose we (or anything in this universe that exists in a medium)create a “disturbance” in our medium.This disturbance is basically movement of particles at the location where we strike.These particals hit other nearby partices,they hit their nearby particles and so on.Thus the disturbance that we created travels along all directions starting at the point we created the disturbance.We call this “travelling disturbance” as sound.To make it a bit more fancy we call it a sound wave.That’s all there is to sound!What were those teachers in school creating a fuss over you may think!So we created a sound wave.This wave now reaches our ears,which have ear drums(a kind of stretched piece of cloth).The waves hit the ear drums and they vibrate too.This vibration now traveles to our brain and makes us feel “high”(if the vibrations are ‘good’ that is).So a typical lecture in class goes like this:the lecturer is creating sound,the trees are creating their sound,the birds are chirping,the students are talking;all thes sound “interfere” (basically mix) and reach our ears as a single sound wave.Each of the constituent sound waves are somehow “anti-mixed” and these constituent sound waves now reach our brain;we percieve each of the sounds(neglecting some though!).So the moral of the story is that whatever we hear are vibrations,plain and simple vibrations.
Remember that what we just saw was sound,not music.All music is sound,but all sound is not music.So what transforms sound into music?Put another way,what type of vibrations sound like music?Which vibrations make us feel high?To analyse this consider the following scenario.Let’s strike a table with the right hand once every 3 seconds.Say 1.5 seconds after the right hand strikes start striking with the left hand,again with a period of 3 seconds.Now scale all the timings down to half.How does it sound?Atleast not unbearable,isn’t it?Now change the intensity of your strikes.Sounds better?Bring in your friend to join the stupidity.Let him strike the table with some other scale,preferably as multiples of your timings.Let him experiment with intensities.You will notice something;you have created music!Not time to get your hands on the grammys yet though!Now it’s easy to imagine that the same experiment done with random timings will not create music;it will be noise.So a clear conclusion that we can draw is that “music requires symmetry”or equivalently “music requires periodicity”.This clearly explains why we catch a singer “off his tune” or the background music “not in tune”.The sound reaching our ears is slightly asymmetric or it just about misses it’s period.So symmetry is all there is to music.Create symmetry in sound and you create music!
So one of the things(or perhaps the only thing)that is responsible to create a “high” when we listen to music is symmetry.Another very interesting question is that “what is it about music that creates a high?” or “what happens in the brain when we listen to music?”.My current knowledge does not allow me to venture into these domains;but no one stops me from having a feeling of sheer joy when I think of these things.It gets me closer to divinity for sure.
I have some knowledge on symmetry though.I’m sure all of us do.There’s night only because there’s day;there’s right only because there’s left;there’s good only because there’s bad.Infact the very creation of this universe is so closely related to symmetry.At the very beginning there was nothing;that is “no thing”.We cannot percieve this “no thing” because there is nothing to percieve.Don’t mistaken this “no thing” to be just vacuum and space with nothing in it;for the space would still “exist”,the time would still “exist”.At this moment there was absolute oneness;everything was super identical;no left no right,no good no bad.After a time interval physists call the “Plank’s epoch” the universe came into being.The Plank’s epoch is a decimal followed by 43 zeros and then a one,seconds.Before the Plank’s epoch amount of time elapsed, there was super symmetry,absolute oneness.From the time that the plank’s epoch elapsed till this moment there has been no absolute symmetry.All the activities and dynamics of the universe exist because of non-perfect symmetry.Cite this analogous example:equal wieghts on a weighing pan balance perfectly while unequal weights don’t and more importantly they cause motion.
Some other examples of symmetry include the most often used funtions in mathematics.Periodicity also plays a very important role in mathematics.Geometrical figures demonstrate symmetry in the most elegant way;we all grasp the notion of a circle so intuitively.We like looking at symmetrical geometrical figures.Proofs in geometry that include symmetrical objects follow so very intuitively and elegantly.All of us know about the symmetry of the human body.The list goes on and on.Symmetry is in the fabric of the universe.
Remember where it all started?We started with music!We ended up talking about symmetry being a basic element of the universe,of existence.For me this is all that matters.Everything,no matter what,needs to be filtered down to existence,to the very basic question:Why should there be anything in the universe in the first place?Whether it be music or science or math or whatever,it has to somehow give me some insight into divinity.I hope the next time a question arises in my mind,it leads me to the answer of the following question:”Who am I?”
