Mike's Music Mystery 2

I do intend to get back to Fundamentals of Music, but I can't resist trying to respond to some of Mike's questions. If, as Oliver Sacks says, we are born with an attraction to music, maybe we also resonate with the physical law of sound which involves the overtone series.

Since the idea of the overtone series can induce near-coma in anyone but a scientist, I'll try to give a simple example. Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra (or the theme to 2001 Space Odyssey, if that's more familiar) begins with the first notes of the overtone series.

A musical tone contains more than its fundamental sound. You can prove this by silently depressing, for instance, a C on your acoustic piano so that the damper remains up and the string can vibrate. Then strike the next C up, and it will cause the original C string to vibrate. If you strike the next G, the string again will vibrate. This is because of sympathetic sound and the overtone series.

I had a kind of mad organ teacher when I was a teenager. Those of you in Piano Club have probably heard how I wasn't allowed to breathe until my hands came off the keys, and how Mr. Lee's organ playing was punctuated by audible gasps as he followed his own rule. He would always ask me "Do you hear the overtones?" And actually I never did, but I tried to look as if I believed they were there, since he said they were.

I wrote Mike:

When I tried to take a nap this afternoon, all I could think about was whether the cuckoo sound is part of a major chord or a minor chord. Then I thought of the overtone series and decided that if we're as much a part of the natural world as I think we are, it must be a the top of a major chord. I have never completely understood the overtone series, but from what I understand it would go (1) Fundamental (2) Up a fifth (3) Up a fourth (4) Up a major third, etc. Without taking it any further, you would have, for example, C, up to G, up to C, up to E, which of course would describe a major chord. I think the next note in the series is an E-flat up nearly an octave and thus a minor chord. So the children are probably taking the chord root for granted when they sing nyah nyah-nyah nyah nyah on a minor third. I picture a string vibrating its full length (the fundamental), then from center to end (octave), but I'm not very clear on where it goes from there (where the nodes are). Maybe you know, since you play guitar. Now the part in your note about God I'm going to have to read several more times before I can begin to understand it, but even without fully getting it, I think it is just wonderful.