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Fibonacci Numbers and Music

The document discusses relationships between Fibonacci numbers and music. It notes that there are 13 notes in an octave, matching a Fibonacci number. The piano keyboard splits these notes into groups matching other Fibonacci numbers. Western music scales use 8 of these notes. Fibonacci recurrence relations also relate the frequencies of notes that make up musical triads. Beethoven's 5th Symphony structure reflects the golden ratio found in Fibonacci sequences. Overall, many fundamental aspects of music incorporate Fibonacci numbers.

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3K views1 page

Fibonacci Numbers and Music

The document discusses relationships between Fibonacci numbers and music. It notes that there are 13 notes in an octave, matching a Fibonacci number. The piano keyboard splits these notes into groups matching other Fibonacci numbers. Western music scales use 8 of these notes. Fibonacci recurrence relations also relate the frequencies of notes that make up musical triads. Beethoven's 5th Symphony structure reflects the golden ratio found in Fibonacci sequences. Overall, many fundamental aspects of music incorporate Fibonacci numbers.

Uploaded by

Charity Masters
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Nicholas Clay

Communicating Mathematics III


F IBONACCI N UMBERS AND
Supervisor: Mikhail Belolipetsky
M USIC
The Fibonacci Numbers Piano Chromatic Scale
The Fibonacci numbers are a famous series where each term is The layout of the piano keys has an obvious relation to the Fi- The chromatic scale uses all of the semitones in an octave and
the sum of the previous two: bonacci numbers. The white keys form the diatonic scale of C forms the foundation of Western music. There are thirteen
major. The thirteen notes of an octave are split into eight white notes in a chromatic scale through the octave - a Fibonacci
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ... keys and five black keys, which are then split into a group of number!
three and a group of two:
These are defined by the following recurrence relation, where
Fn is the nth Fibonacci number

Fn = Fn−2 + Fn−1 , n ≥ 2, F0 = 0, F1 = 1
All of the twelve different notes of the chromatic scale are
found by ascending in fifths and can be done from any starting
note. For example, if we start on C we obtain:

C-G-D-A-E-B-F#-C#-G#-D#-A#-F-C
Golden Ratio
which when rearranged becomes:
If we take a line and break it into two pieces in such a way
that the whole line has the same ratio to the larger segment as Beethoven C-C#-D-D#-E-F-F#-G-G#-A-A#-B-C
the larger segment has to the smaller segment, then the two
segments are said to be in the golden ratio. In his 5th Symphony, Beethoven appears to have used the a chromatic scale on C.
golden mean, although there is no evidence to suggest that
When you look at the sequence of ratios FFn+n 1 of consecu- it was intentional. The famous five bar motto from this great
tive Fibonacci numbers, it converges to 1.618033... as n → ∞, work appears at the beginning and end of the piece, but is also Triads
which is also the golden ratio, ϕ. present at bar 377, out of a total of 610 bars.
A major triad is composed of a Root, a Third, and a Fifth and
610 can be formed by using a recurrence relation similar to that of
≈ 1.618 = ϕ the Fibonacci numbers using note frequencies.
377
That is, the motto divides the piece into the golden ratio. If we start with middle C (264 Hz) we get:
Music
264 + 264 = 528 (C an octave higher)
Music has a foundation in the series of Fibonacci numbers: 264 + 528 = 792 (G)
• there are thirteen notes through an octave 528 + 729 = 1320 (E)
• the most common scales in Western music consist of These three notes, C, E and G form the triad of C major. Al-
eight notes though the frequencies of the notes obtained are from three
• the third and fifth notes of a scale form the basic foun- different octaves, it can be seen that the C, E and G families
dation of chords are related to each other by summations of frequencies.
• major scales are based on whole tone steps from one note
to another, which is two steps from the previous note
all of which are Fibonacci numbers!

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