Is it any wonder that when we shot out a spacecraft to reach potential extraterrestrials that we put a disc of music to convey what it is to be human? With classical, rock, pop, and blues accompanying nature sounds and different dialects of earth people, it is only fitting that if an alien from out of this world would intercept our message that they could only get a more accurate picture of the human experience by hearing music that we have created.
Music has a way to welcome a listener to someone else's heart and mind. Just like an astronaut exploring unknown frontiers, music can only allow us to observe and admire the experience. “For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him?” - 1 Corinthians 2:11
And the more I understand about music, the more I appreciate the math hidden in our natural world and universe.
Our duty as composers is to understand the patterns in sound so we can convey a story or play that hypnotic beat. Speak to a Mathematician and they would tell you that they thrive in seeing patterns in numbers. According to some Physicists, math makes up the universe. So it is logical to assume that as we come up with a technique to create music that the most pleasing music to our ears best follow mathematical formulas found in the environment that we live in.
The Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci numbers found in nature have been inspirational to humanity in proportion to their music and in the creation of the instruments that make the music.
Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 – c. 495 BC), best remembered for the Pathagoras’ Theorem, discovered harmonic musical intervals by seeing its pattern through whole number ratios. He believed that the universe itself makes music, and oddly enough NASA may agree.
The theme of my piece is that humans are destined to look beyond themselves. Despite current affairs and how bleak a situation may seem, it is in the spirit of humanity that keeps us from constantly looking down and strive by looking up into the stars. It is the imagery of space that I used to describe our journeys here. I even added a sound from Saturn’s radio emissions for one of the musical breakdowns. And in case you're not already familiar with this concept, NASA records sounds from our galaxy through devices designed to transfer electromagnetic vibrations to audible frequencies for our ears.
"Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend." - Luwig van Beethoven
But even more fascinating than life itself, is the mystery of love, and thus why I dedicated this piece to my wife. Call me a hopeless romantic if you want, but it is love that makes this continual study worthwhile. And if Math makes up the universe, then it is only fair to say that music shall transcend the stars… figuratively and literally.
Stay inspired, romanticize the opportunity, and love one another.
Daru925
Take care not to put some skrillex or any generic popstar (annoying screaming dancing like monkeys radio type). Otherwise aliens surely will fire their lasers of wisdom and pop the earth^^
Phonometrologist
That would be hilarious and frightful, but I imagine that if there were some kind of alien listening to our music, it would probably have an effect like the following picture written by Oliver Sacks:
“What an odd thing it is to see an entire species–billions of people–playing with, listening to, meaningless tonal patterns, occupied and preoccupied for much of their time by what they call “music.” This, at least, was one of the things about human beings that puzzled the highly cerebral alien beings, the Overlords, in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel Childhood’s End. Curiosity brings them down to the Earth’s surface to attend a concert, they listen politely, and at the end, congratulate the composer on his “great ingenuity” –while still finding the entire business unintelligible. They cannot think what goes on in human beings when they make or listen to music, because nothing goes on with them. They themselves, as species, lack music. We may imagine the Overlords ruminating further, back in their spaceships. This thing called “music,” they would have to concede, is in some way efficacious to humans, central to human life. Yet is has no concepts, makes no propositions; it lacks images, symbols, the stuff of language. It has no power of representation. It has no necessary relation to the world. There are rare humans who, like the Overlords, may lack the neural apparatus for appreciating tones or melodies. But for virtually all of us, music has great power, whether or not we seek it out or think of ourselves as particularly “musical.” This propensity to music shows itself in infancy, is manifest and central in every culture, and probably goes back to the very beginnings of our species. Such “musicophilia” is a given in human nature. It may be developed or shaped by the cultures we live in, by the circumstances of life, or by the particular gifts or weaknesses we have as individuals– but it lies so deep in human nature that one must think of it as innate, music as E. O. Wilson regards “biophilia,” our feeling for living things.
... Much that occurs during the perception of music can also occur when music is “played in the mind.” The imagining of music, even in relatively nonmusical people, tends to be remarkably faithful not only to the tune and feeling of the original but to its pitch and tempo. Underlying this is the extraordinary tenacity of musical memory, so that much of what is heard during one’s early years may be “engraved” on the brain for the rest of one’s life. Our auditory systems, our nervous systems, are indeed exquisitely tuned for music. How much this is due to the intrinsic characteristics of music itself–its complex sonic patterns woven in time, its logic, its momentum, its unbreakable sequences, its insistent rhythms and repetitions, the mysterious way in which it embodies emotion and “will”– and how much to special resonances, synchronizations, oscillations, mutual excitations, or feedbacks in the immensely complex, multi-level neural circuitry that underlies musical perceptions and replay, we do not know yet.”