This thought-provoker appeared in the Boston Globe Ideas section. I was recently writing about octaves being a natural, virtually inevitable organizing principle for harmony. It is certainly the bedrock subdivision of the music we in the West know and sing. Chop octaves into 12 equal tones and you have our tempered scale, and how that scale was arrived at is an amazing tale you should dive into one day.
But what about this?
The unusual scale she played ended on a high note that was triple, not double, the frequency of the low note, and the interval was divided into 13 equal steps. This new system, called Bohlen-Pierce, was independently invented in the 1970s and 1980s by two engineers and a computer scientist as an alternative to the traditional musical system. Initially a mixture of math, music, and theory, Bohlen-Pierce has now grown into a living art, as people around the world have begun building instruments, composing pieces, and developing a music theory, all using notes that most people have never heard.There's also good video at the story itself.
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