Creating Music Using The Fibonacci Sequence

hello everyone welcome back today i'm going to attempt to make some music using the fibonacci sequence which is a series of numbers that some claim to be divine even going so far as to say that they are nature's code will this numerical pattern lead me to the most beautiful music ever heard will i open up a wormhole into another dimension or will this just be a fun little experiment that we all forget about when the next video autoplays all these questions will be answered today but before we get into it i'll quickly let you know that i'm doing a flash sale over on my course platform samurai guitar theory over there i've made two courses that start at the very beginning of music theory and work up to more advanced topics i designed these thinking of the guitarist who wants to start really understanding why music works the way it does the first 50 of you to use promo code fib 50 will save 50 off either course or you can use that same promo code on the two course bundle getting both courses for the normal price of one you can check that out over at samurai guitartheory.com i'll also put up links in the description let's get to it so first of all what is the fibonacci sequence i'm going to do my best to explain this using good math words but keep in mind i'm a musician and i haven't done any real math since 2005. the fibonacci sequence is a pattern of numbers that continues on infinitely the premise behind the series is that to get the next number in the sequence you add up the previous two numbers the series begins with zero the second number is one to find the third number we add the last two zero plus one equals one continuing on we would add the one plus the one giving us two to get the next number we would add the previous two again one plus two is three two plus three is five giving us our sixth number the seventh would be found by adding the fifth and six numbers together so that's eight we would then get 13 then 21 34 55 89 on and on this is all fine and dandy but what's the big deal with this sequence well these numbers and the relationship that they have to each other seem to appear over and over again in art music architecture and nature for example you can use the numbers as dimensions to make a bunch of boxes and then draw a spiral through them which when overlaid on top of the mona lisa kind of makes it seem like maybe all leo da vinci used the fibonacci sequence as proportions for his famous painting i came across a lot of examples like this one many of them seem to be a bit of a stretch but these numbers do appear in enough places to suggest that there is something there another interesting aspect of the sequence is that if you divide any number by the previous number you'll get a value that's surprisingly close to one point six one eight zero three three nine eight eight seven five for example eighty nine divided fifty five is about one point six one eight one eight one forty four to five eighty nine is one point six one seven nine seven what is the significance of the number one point six one eight zero three three nine eight eight seven five get ready for the big reveal one point six one eight zero three three nine eight eight seven five is the golden ratio and if that wasn't a big enough reveal for you how about this here's paul davids with a few words on the golden ratio that's right this is officially a collab the golden ratio is great it's basically where a smaller and a larger quantity usually the length of something have the same ratio to each other as the combined length relates to the bigger one and this goes on indefinitely bigger and smaller and using fancy math we can calculate that ratio called phi and as you said that's roughly 1.618 but the cool thing is just like with the fibonacci sequence we see that ratio coming back in nature like the way seeds and plants and even humans grow for example the ratio hand to forearm is in that golden ratio and also in art and architecture it's often seen super cool and i'm going to use that ratio to create some music so when you're done watching samurais vid go and check it out so the whole idea here is i'm going to make some music using the fibonacci sequence and paul's going to make a song using the golden ratio these are the only two limitations that we've set the sequence and the ratio are closely related it'll be interesting to see if there's some sort of cosmic connection between our two pieces and if not it's always just fun to work with my buddy pauly d my first thought for how i might incorporate the fib sequence into my music is use the numbers to determine the time signatures the first number is zero a bar with zero beats in it doesn't exist so we'll just do away with that then we have a one so my first bar could have one eighth note in it bar two would be the same bar three has two eighth notes then a bar three eight five eight eight eight and then thirteen eight i'm gonna stop here a bar of 21 eighth notes seems like a bit much and i gotta cut this off somewhere let's see how this sounds one one one two one two three one two three four five one two three four five six seven eight one two three four five six seven eight nine 10 11 12 13. now when working with odd time signatures it's much more musical to break up the bars and pairings of two and three beats versus say counting out five beats i might think of a bar of five as three beats followed by two which would sound like one two three one two one two three one two if i took my fibonacci time signatures and broke up the longer bars into more natural pairings this is what i would have one one one two one two three one two one two three one two three one two three one two one two three one two three one two three one two one two now that we've got a bit of a rhythm to work with we'll need some pitches i'd like to use the fibseek as my basis for this too here's how i decided to turn the sequence into musical notes i'm gonna treat each number in the sequence as a note in the c major scale c d e f g a b c the first two fibonacci numbers are one one is easy for both these numbers i'll use the first note in the scale c next number is two which becomes the second note on the scale d three becomes the third note e for the five i'll use the fifth note in the scale of g when i come to the eight i'm gonna use the first note in the scale again c there are no nines tens elevens or twelves in the sequence but if there were those would have been any of the following four scale degrees i do have a 13 though and using the same formula the 13 becomes an a really all i'm doing here is counting up seven numbers and assigning a scale tone to each when i reach the end of my scale i repeat it the first 32 numbers and the fibonacci sequence not including 0 look like this if i change these numbers into musical notes using my formula this is what i would get holy sh using my formula to change the fibonacci numbers into pitches creates a 16 note pattern that repeats itself infinitely this is a fairly intriguing piece of information could it be that i've discovered the holy grail of melodies i'm not willing to rule that out yet if i repeat the pattern of notes twice and start with a rest to replace the zero at the beginning of the fib sequence get this it actually lines up perfectly with my fibonacci rhythm here's what this sounds like get ready because this could potentially be a musical force that unites us all and solves all the world's problems so here's my biggest issue with this i don't like the way it sounds at all it's cool that the pattern ends up lining up with the rhythm but nothing about this is inspiring me to try to turn it into a full track on to plan b i'm scrapping the weird time signatures and sticking with a four beat pulse i'm going to take that 16 note sequence and see if i can make something musical out of it by changing up the note lengths how's this for a melody [Music] and here it is now with some chords [Music] [Applause] [Music] now this is starting to sound like something that i actually enjoy however i'd like to incorporate the fibonacci numbers in an additional way so in the b section of the song i'll use the fibonacci numbers to determine how many notes i play in each bar my first bar will have one note in it my second bar will also have one note in it the next fibonacci number is two so in my next bar i'll have two notes in it then three notes five notes eight notes and finally a thirteen note run check it out [Music] one of my favorite styles is that of chet atkins where he plays all the parts on one guitar i'm going to play my piece in the style of chat here is my best attempt at creating music using the fibonacci sequence [Music] do [Music] so [Music] you know i liked it i certainly didn't discover the most beautiful and divine piece of music ever to exist but i liked it now on to the last question we gotta answer if one guitarist writes a piece of music using the fibonacci sequence and another guitarist writes a piece using the golden ratio will there be any sort of inherent similarities between the two paul would you say that our two songs sounded in any way similar i really like both but probably that's where the similarity ends they sounded nothing like each other i don't think so either paul used a totally different and fairly genius method to turn the golden ratio into music you can check that out over at his channel and judge that for yourself he makes some truly amazing content he's a phenomenal guitar player and i can't recommend his videos enough i'll put up a link in the description ladies and gentlemen there you have it creating music using the fibonacci sequence remember you can get 50 off either of my two courses over at samurai guitartheory.com by using the promo code fib50 or you can use that same promo code on the two course bundle getting both courses for the normal price of one thank you all for watching if you're new here hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for a wide range of musical content if you want to check out how paul made music using the golden ratio hit that link up there and if you want to let me know what you thought about this video you can leave me a comment or hit that like button or dislike button i suppose until next time i'm samurai guitarist and i'll see you again soon

Channel: samuraiguitarist

Views: 726,756

Rating: 4.9470878 out of 5

Keywords: guitar, music, guitarist, musician, acoustic, acoustic guitar, fibonacci, fibonacci sequence, golden ratio, phi, paul davids, samurai, samurai guitarist, samuraiguitarist, gibson, gibson guitar, telecaster, songwriter, songwriting, composition, song

Id: 7bod8x0LgJs

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 27 2020