Writing music with the Golden Ratio/Fibonacci (CRAZY!)

the golden ratio the divine proportion phi the way the universe grows and the natural order that applies to everything no wonder galilee said mathematics is the language in which god has written the universe ever wondered how it sounds ever since i wrote a song using pi i plan on making a song using phi also called the golden ratio and today's that day i started brainstorming how could i use that ratio to make music with so let's start with understanding the golden ratio what is it exactly so i'm not trying to sound like a smart answer let's just quote wikipedia and it says two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum of the larger of the two quantities right what this basically means is that if we've got two parts a bigger and a smaller one how the big one relates to the small one is the same as how both relate to the big one so this relation is the same as this relation magic it's an amazing shape it can reproduce itself indefinitely all these shapes have exactly the same proportions and on top we can draw the magic spiral that repeats until infinity and the most remarkable thing is that we see these proportions everywhere around us in nature the way things grow from plants and trees to shells and starfish and from insects to humans to how clouds plants and even entire galaxies form the golden ratio can be found everywhere it's been seen in art and architecture ever since ancient civilizations so we can also calculate the number phi and it's roughly 1.618 but how can we implement that ratio in music well my first idea was to take two frequencies that have that so-called divine ratio and see how they would sound played together it's a two sharp minor sixth interval so not that a nice idea to make music with so that's one way of interpreting the ratio but don't worry there's many interesting ways to use fight to create heavenly soul cleansing mind healing miracle music so let's dive in so of course the first thing i did was tune my guitars to a is 4 32 [Music] because that is totally in line with the heartbeat of the earth or the schumann resonance some folks even dictate healing powers to using that frequency i'm not sure about that but there's definitely nothing wrong with tuning a little bit lower a little less tension on the strings a little mellower sound so this piece i wrote is tuned in as432 and i started to create this beautiful ethereal ambient soundscape with a buddy of mine using some of our favorite pedals so we both did our thing one is coming out of the left speaker the other one is coming off the right so the listener sits beautifully in the middle surrounded by nothing but sweet ethereal mind healing bliss [Music] sweet so next up i needed a rhythm because to me that's the backbone of music and i wanted a rhythm using the ratio that sounds logical but not really in a traditional musical way as we know it and i found just that so a very interesting fact is that we can get very close scaringly close even to the golden ratio using the fibonacci sequence and guess what sami g aka samurai guitarist is doing a video writing music with the fibonacci sequence so after you're watching this video head over to his channel and find out what he came up with anyway the sequence is the sum of the two previous numbers so it starts with zero followed by a one together becoming one one and one becomes two two and one becomes three two and three becomes five five and three becomes eight etc so the higher we go in the fibonacci sequence the more dividing two numbers that follow each other through each other represents the golden ratio i took the highest three digit value from the fibonacci sequence use it as a bpm for the first bar so this bar is played in a tempo of 987 the second bar there's a tempo change going to the digit below that which is 610. so there's again one bar of 610 the following bar is 987 again and then a bar of 610 again so what we have is that the length of the first click relates to the length as the second click in the golden ratio or phi and we repeat that over and over again constantly hearing that perfect relation throughout the entire song so this is the project and here is the metronome so it is a sort of a wonky lazy triplet feel but not really though it's it's pretty cool and what's funny as well is that the tempo of this project is 233 which is also number in the fibonacci sequence sweet so now we needed some melody and i tried sculpting a melody using the number phi 1.6180339 i treated the number as functions of the a major scale so a becomes one b becomes two c sharp is three etc etc so a nine would be the octave and then one step higher because the octave is eight zero would be a half step below a because just count back but this was a bit too easy i wanted to incorporate the fibonacci sequence too since it's basically another way of representing the golden ratio so what i did i created a pattern cycling through the golden ratio with the patterns of fibonacci if you understand what i mean first i started with playing the first note from the golden ratio so that's the one from the fibonacci sequence and then again first note and then the first two notes the two from the fibonacci sequence and then the first three notes and then the first five notes [Music] and then the first eighth notes so we follow the fibonacci sequence and then we play it back so eight five three two one and one and there we have the maddie so but we also got that rhythm right so what if we played that melody in that golden ratio rhythm we created it would sound like this [Music] and that's the thing but of course we can go further so i plug my guitar into some of those petals we use to create those soundscapes because what i wanted to do is to control the sounds or the knobs in the rhythm of the golden ratio if you understand what i mean but how can we con with midi i hook those photos up via my computer sending midi information directly from ableton live so i can control the pedal so for example here we see midi information being sent into the mood from chase bliss so it sends value 88 on number 18 then going to 95 and then back to 90 and this is all played in the rhythm of the golden ratio as you can see if we play this clip right now [Music] so [Music] so these weren't really the settings i used when recording the melody but this is how it ended up let's have a listen [Music] sounds very ethereal how does it sound together with that space recorded those ambient guitars let's have a listen very cool so it is coming together very nicely but i'm not feeling sacred enough right now not enough it needs to be better so constantly droning on it a major chord felt a bit too monotonous for me so i sculpted a chord pattern sort of going through the first numbers of phi where the numbers basically mean the chord degree so it's one a major sixes f sharp minor so we created a few minutes of ambient sounds in just one chord then did the next chord recorded everything and then i just grabbed everything and just cut it in pieces and glued it together and how it came up is like this [Music] so with the melody that sounds pretty [Music] sweet so how heavily does that sound right and the most amazing thing about this golden rhythm was that we can interpret in threes so we have to bend the time a little bit to make it work but i think that it's pretty sweet because it's a bit wonky but the other way of counting this is feeling it in a pattern of five so instead of that lazy slow laid back few and threes we can make it a little bit a little bit more vivid counting in five so it would be like [Music] this so we can play exactly the same rhythm in the melodies but fill it in a totally different way so there's a few in threes and a few in five three wait a second those are the numbers from the fibonacci sequence again mind is blown hit that like button so this track definitely needed real drums no computer can recreate that that natural and heavenly view i was looking for so i asked joe's vesseling to be part of this project i sent him over the files i told him the general idea and feel i was looking for and later that week i visited him to record the drum tracks after hearing a few different takes and ideas we settled on the following basic pattern for three sounding like this and then you feel the tension [Music] very sweet and then a little later on there's even a sort of third field going on where the rise is playing in halftime basically [Music] so and lastly there's this the tension arc so a lot of composers used or used the golden ratio determine the structure of a piece and i did exactly that so if we look at the waveform of the final piece the song is 3.14 minutes long yes that's that's fine so if we divide that the seconds to 1.618 we come out at two minutes which is over here which is exactly where the division in the waveform is between the build up and then going to the slower and outro again no way yes it is so now you've seen the approach and heard quite a few snippets if you still want to hear the full piece check it out at your favorite streaming service or here on youtube just search for paul david's song from phi p-h-i and please when you do share it on your instagram tagging me at paul david's guitar but of course do it after you and me check out samurai guitar with steak on the fibonacci sequence i just know it's going to be epic because besides he's one of the funniest and nicest guy i've ever met he's also an amazing guitar player a great songwriter so i know it's going to be catchy and a lot of fun to watch the video anyway check it out all the links are below thanks for samurai for the collab it's been a lot of fun check it out cheers [Music] so please like this video to open you [Music] paul i just finished listening to your composition and i gotta say the depth at which you incorporated the golden ratio into this song has me rather impressed it's in every facet of the music which takes some serious creativity and the fact that it also sounds really great is a testament to your musicality if i didn't know the story behind the song i would say hey that's a really cool song but knowing what actually went into it makes me say hey that's a really really cool song well done pauly d this collab has been an immensely pleasurable experience

Channel: Paul Davids

Views: 339,281

Rating: 4.9315419 out of 5

Keywords: golden ratio, guitar, writing music, phi, song from phi, paul davids, fibonacci, sequence, a=432, frequency, sacred music, ratio, music golden ratio, davids, samurai guitarist, video, guitarist, ambient, soundscape, 432, 432hz, healing music, mood, golden, fibonacci sequence, samurai, math, pi, music with the golden ratio

Id: MbEtnljYF18

Length: 14min 28sec (868 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 27 2020