Topic: Harmonics, octaves, and vibrations
Recently I've been studying music theory, and while reading other forums and searching Google I've found all sorts of interesting things related to harmonics and octaves.
First of all, I discovered that Pythagoras, the famous Greek mathematician, did a lot of work studying sound and music theory. I've been lead to believe that the ancient mystery schools must have taught much about the nature of vibrations, harmonics, and octaves, since they're so prevalent in the universe. And prevalent might not even be the best word, because these concepts are literally everywhere you look!
Harmonics ARE the nature of the universe, because they explain why certain musical notes sound good together, why certain colors look good together, and even why certain people get along with each other and some don't. And everywhere there's harmonics, you'll find octaves. We have octaves of musical notes, an octave of visible colors, an octave of dimensions as described by several channels, etc.
By the way here's something interesting to think about. The human range of hearing is from 20 to 20,000 Hz. Within this range there's several octaves, which allows us to make music that has overtones. Overtones are notes from two different octaves played at the same time. This is heard very commonly in classical music and gives the music layers and a sort of texture in addition to the texture created by the different timbres of intruments. Our eyesight range, on the other hand, includes only one octave of colors (red through violet). If we were able to see more than octave of color, we'd be able to see overtones of light. This would make our visual sense even more spectacular. However, I believe I read that our eyes are limited to one octave because that is all that can be reflected and/or absorbed in the water that makes up most of visual organs.
Another thing. I stumbled upon this web site, which has all sorts of research done on harmonics at the atomic level. It's basically devoted to John Keely's work. I think that montalk has mentioned Keely before in passing but he hasn't been discussed on NR in any detail. Keely was a 19th century scientist who researched harmonics, sound, atomic resonance, and even free energy. There's some material on that web site that's, how say I shall... questionable, but if nothing else I recommend a look at the page titled "It really is a musical universe" here, the chart of matter and energy octaves here, and Keely's Forty Laws of Sympathetic Vibratory Physics here.
Very very interesting stuff. Keely surmised that the relationships in physics and chemistry between atoms that we know as modern day science depend on the harmonics of the atoms, with each type of atom having a distinct tone or vibration. For example, certain molecules are likely to form from those ions that are most harmonic, much like the musical chords that sound the best are the most harmonious.
There's a periodic table on that site also that matches wave numbers of elements with musical tones, but I found it a bit confusing. So right now I'm trying to find out the basis of how one is supposed to assign tones to the different elements. Maybe someone with a better understanding of physics/chemistry can help me there. I'm also trying to figure out how all the elements would fit into a complete octave, because there seems to be a problem of where the octave would end seeing as the elements seem to go on quite a bit past the last current element that scientists have stabilized enough to observe. I'm thinking that, if all the elements fit into one octave, then there are occurances of, say, hydrogen at higher octaves where it retains its characteristic of "hydrogenness" but has a different pitch. I could be totally off here though. It could be simply that each element in itself is contained within an octave. Not sure. Anyway, please feel free to share your input and opinions.
