You Are Reading the First 6 FREE Chapters (470 pages)
4.2.3 Pythagoras' Music: Pythagorean Scales
You may wonder who first figured out the relationship between lovely-sounding overtones, simple frequency ratios, and their application to scale building.
People usually credit the Greek philosopher, mathematician, and comedian, Monty Pythagor. As you know, Mr. Pythagor also formulated the Pythagorean Theorem about the square hide of the hippopotamus and the sum of the other square hides, which apparently revolutionized the footwear industry.
Mr. Pythagor (570 BC - 495 BC) may have figured out the mathematics of overtones and scales 2,500 years ago but he certainly was not the first to discover musically-pleasing scales. As discussed in Chapter 1, Neanderthals had bone flutes with diatonic scale notes tens of thousands of years ago.
As for Mr. Pythagor, it seems he realized that if you kept adding tones in consecutive frequency ratios of 3:2 (perfect fifths), you would get a pleasing-sounding musical scale. Next time you’re near a keyboard, try this: