The science of music | Vidyadhar Oke | TEDxIITGandhinagar

you good afternoon everyone I'll be speaking on science of music because for over 200 years the European equity emerged scale the musical scale of Europe has invaded the music of all countries in the world with their harmonium x' pianos and now the synthesizers so whether it is Chinese music I'm in Chinese original music or whether it is Japanese music or Indian music or say Spanish music or Egyptian music all that is invaded currently by European twelve-tone equal temperament this European equity impulse kill consists of 12 nodes within an octave and these 12 nodes are placed precisely at a distance of five point nine four six three 1% increase in frequency over every note and therefore we call it as a equal tempered skill as against this is the Indian scale which is about two thousand year old and documented by people like Bharata in Natya Shastra actually consists of 22 natural shooties or natural swirls however the science of this indian scale was largely not known and therefore i decided to do some research work in this soon i realize that a lot of science is waiting to be discovered under the iceberg of music and this is because when we play a musical note on a string at what position do you play the note is mathematics the creation of sound and transmission of sound is physics and later when the sound reaches the human brain what happens in the human brain is music so you can see that even before music is created a lot is happening in mathematics and physics let us now see how is actually music created using a string we use two types of nodes when we create music on the string one is steady nodes which are called a shruti's there are 22 in number and we stay on them for a period of 20 to 40 milliseconds we have to stay because that is the time taken by human ear to be able to perceive analyze and understand the musical note and we also use the connecting nodes which connect the steady nodes which are called as nadas now let us see in an actual demonstration where we use the steady nodes and the moving or the fleeting nodes in between two fundamental tones which is in between these two searches there are innumerable frequencies or nada for example we'll play again innumerable nadas between two fundamental tones or to Sharjah you all these are innumerable frequencies and between these frequencies are sitting 22 fixed positions or 22 shooties where we can actually stay to create rather than me for example Oh I am staying at this position which makes this particular frequency and Shruti I'm against in here so this is the guitar this is the ratio and in between are the Naga so this is a shooting this is a Shruti and in between all the Lada again this is Ghana and this is still numb of them and in between again our nada so when we play a string what is actually happening is the string is giving out various natural sounds because the string is vibrating in its full length in its two parts in his three parts for parts and five parts creating a range of natural sounds if we take the frequency just for simplicity the frequency of the fundamental note or sharjah as 100 when it vibrates into two parts it gives a frequency or a sound of two hundred three parts three hundred four parts four hundred five parts five hundred and so on so the first five natural nodes which come from the nature by striking a single string give us the saw the purr and the girl so saga and purr are considered as the first three natural harmonics and they come at a frequency ratio of 100 to 125 to 150 so when we say saga whatever is the frequency of saga will be 25% higher and 50% higher supper will always be at 100 to 125 to 150 and in the equitable scale they are at 100 to 126 to one forty nine point eighty three and therefore equal tempered scale is dissonant not consonant like the Indian scale now these three shooties give rise naturally to seven shooties and how does that happen saga / mother sir bernie they so there are three trials which are placed each at a frequency ratio of 100 to 125 to 150 so three becomes seven and being natural you ask any child with a little sense of music to sing Saregama per than his other child sings sorry gamma father Nisa very easily sorry the burger is a very easily why and then you see that actually this whole spectrum is sorry gamma / denisa it is sorry gamma sorry gamma so the same pattern is repeating again and therefore in fact these four basic nodes of sorry give us the secret code for 22 Indian shruti's you simply take the frequencies of sorry gamma as shown here and take the percentage differences as shown here 12.5% 11.11 and 6.66 and then simply plot the secret code the 12.5% 11 point 11% the difference of 1 point zero one twenty five six point sixty six percent the difference again of one point zero four one six six six the same difference taken here and the fourth note is the remaining distance so we have a yellow distance the red the blue and the red yellow red blue and red take a string and simply put it on exactly the same code and you are there with twenty two shruti's coming directly from nature these shooties were called as poor - Ruthie's the yellow one pramana salty the red one and Nunez shruti the blue one by bharata muni two thousand years ago now we will actually see the position of these 22 shruti's and how they are played on the string now we shall play twenty-two shruti's and I shall show their precise positions on any string firstly at the Comal ratio is playable exactly at ninety four point ninety two percent length of the string the higher variety of combination is playable at 93 points 75 percent of the string and the difference between the two is shouldn't the ratio is playable at 90% of the length of the string and dear rishabh is playable at 88 point 88 percent of the screen and the difference between the two similarly I think home Alexander is playable at 84 point 37 percent of the screen so all the 22 natural nodes have their precise mathematical position on the string we will move quickly to the string shoot them at them at 75% of the street the higher version orator Shruthi madam at seventy four point zero seven percent of the string they were among them at 71 point 11 percent of the stream Schoop tamesha at 53 point 33 percent P will Alicia at 52 point 67% and Tonya at 50 50 percent of the length of the string so what do we see here music is nothing but mathematics played on the string and on a single string you can actually play all the three octaves one between 150 the other is compressed between 50 and 25 and the third is compressed between 25 and 12.5 no wonder that Galileo Galilei said God has written the book of nature in the language of mathematics and the wonder is the mathematics remains the same on any instrument with any player any time and any place in the world now when I reach this stage the major problem was how to transpose these 22 notes into twelve keys of harmonium because harmonium only has 12 keys and therefore we had to Lu do a lot of internal structuring and restructure the harmonium to place 22 shruti's under the 12 keys this is a 22 through the harmonium and we can see that this harmonium is provided with extra knobs in order to accommodate 22 so this I shall now demonstrate to you how we can play 20 degrees in one scale we are going to play this harmonium in the scale beginning from f - f starting from Sergio Co Malaysia has two varieties firstly the lower one or a Tico militia and frog for providing the higher variety or higher frequency of coalition all we have to do is to pull the knob just below the common ratio for example Atika Malaysia and when I pull the knob at eco militia will become co militia should the Risha the Eurasian a tacoman Gondar for Megan ah should nothin you better than now should the madam a cashew the Magnum for the higher our idea of Magnum and so on so we had a lower frequency when the knob was inside and higher frequency so the 12 keys we were able to accommodate 22 musical nodes and this way the world's only patented 22 city harmonium was created since we neo the mathematics and physics of all the frequencies of the rolls we were able to create a 22 suta metallo phone a novel musical frequency analyzer which has electronic circuits inside and with that we are able to actually analyze the sung and the played shruti's instantly which are you can actually see them here and we also produce the world's first 22 Shruti tan pura so this was our you know attempt to preserve the Indian natural scale of 22 naturally tempered notes wasabi the European equal tempered scale of 12 equal tempered nodes now whenever you do research serendipity happens and serendipity as you know is an unexpected new totally unexpected finding comes and we also got this finding and that finding was we were able to produce sound of accordion on 22 shooty harmonium and this was a God's gift we did not actually design the instrument for this but that's what happened now when the knobs are inside we get the lower should be under the now lungs are outside we get the higher Shruti to play accordion we need to play both the shruti's and therefore now this instrument is ready to produce the sound of accordion Oh ah Oh so that was accordion on 22 shruthi harmonium in the end I would only say that understanding science of music only makes us more musical more creative and more innovative thank you

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Length: 16min 45sec (1005 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 09 2014