What Does Phi (The Golden Ratio) Sounds Like? Listen…
The musician Michael Blake has been devoted to musically translate mathematical constants and to create melodies that come directly from the codes found everywhere in nature.
The golden ratio is found in many natural settings—we have all seen it in sunflowers, snail shells, pinecones and the veins of certain leaves. Its spiral unraveling on the surface of various natural objects have been irresistible for many artists throughout history. Painters like Dali, composers like Claude Debussy or Bela Bartok, and even some architectural constructions such as the Parthenon, have used the golden ratio to evoke the sublime. The number has even been used in the stock market as a strategic algorithm for stock-exchange analysis.
Of course, the golden ratio is closely related to the famous Fibonacci mathematical sequence. The difference between two sets of Fibonacci numbers will converge with the golden ratio in its continuity towards the infinite.
Musician Michael Blake, who has composed music based on the numbers Pi and Tau, has now composed a piece that musically translates Phi (Φ), which is the symbol for the golden ratio. The song has a tempo of 161.9 beats per minute, and its melody took from the first 39 digits of Φ, where each number corresponds to one note, except for 0, which is silent.
Blake’s musical translation of the golden ratio brings Pythagoras to mind, who thought Mathematics and music were interchangeable expressions of the same divine language.
If you would like to learn how to compose a song with the golden ratio and the Fibonacci sequence, head here.
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