If not, then who does? I challenge everyone to personally relive this discovery themselves.
2006-09-11 09:53:54 · 2 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Chemistry
You must really like U2 and applications of esoteric music theory in their music.
To my knowledge, only Larry Mullen Jr. had any formal musical education, and that wasn't even very much. Whatever technical prowess The Edge has demonstrated in his guitar playing is probably happenstance.
2006-09-11 11:50:17 · answer #1 · answered by Gumdrop Girl 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Chinese mathematicians had been aware of the Pythagorean comma as early as 122 BC (its calculation is detalied in the Huainanzi), and circa 50 BC, Ching Fang discovered that if the cycle of perfect fifths were continued beyond 12 all the way to 53, the difference between this 53rd pitch and the starting pitch would be much smaller than the Pythagorean comma, which was later named Mercator's comma.
Since an octave is 1200 cents and a perfect 5th is 702 cents, carried out to 117 octaves or 200 perfect fifths (in theory) would yield a match. Of course, at a frequency of roughly 5.4332194 e+36 Hz, this would be far beyond the range of human hearing.
2006-09-15 00:22:22 · answer #2 · answered by L96vette 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋