Music: A Discovery or an Invention?

A painting by Wassily Kandinsky, depicting the colors he saw when listening to music (synesthesia).

Let me begin by saying this – I believe music is more of a discovery than an invention.

Playing music is an act of organizing pitch and rhythm–its two fundamental elements–into various patterns. Listening to music is an act of deciphering meaningful information from these patterns. This process seems to be a natural phenomenon, emerging from the intersection of physical laws and cognition.

In this grand orchestration, human ingenuity plays only a small part.

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Pitch

We know that pitch is a perceptual property of sound that helps us identify the nature of its frequencies. This also helps us assess the harmonic content or the quality of a sound (timbre), along with the size of the space it’s travelling in and the distance of the source (spatial awareness).

For instance, sounds coming from a distance have fewer high frequencies as mid and low frequencies are able to propagate better through longer distances, thus giving a muted/muffled effect that we associate with distant sounds. It gives us an idea of the space–as the same sound will reverberate more or less in different spaces, and size–as a tiny insect is unlikely to produce the roar of a lion. Our ability to discern between different human voices and animal sounds is a testament to how strong our perception of pitch is.

With that being said, the difference between a random pitch and a musical one is that the latter vibrates at a stable frequency and can be organized into a language. Which begs the question – why do we perceive it as musical and how do we end up with multiple musical pitches starting from one?

Harmonic Series

An object, let's say a string, vibrates not only as a whole but also in segments of halves, thirds, fourths, and so on, producing different frequencies that are quieter than the fundamental (called harmonics).

For our experiment, let's take a string vibrating at a fundamental frequency of 65.5hz and find out the harmonics it will produce. Let’s also find out if we can find these pitches on a piano. Here is a piano keyboard for reference:

1st harmonic (1:1) – 65.5Hz, this is the note C2 on the piano (fundamental frequency)

2nd harmonic (2:1) – 131Hz, the note C3 (octave above fundamental)

3rd harmonic (3:2) – 196Hz, the note G3 (perfect fifth)

4th harmonic (4:2) – 262Hz, the note C4 (two octaves above the fundamental)

5th harmonic (5:4) – 330Hz, the note E4 (major third)

By now you must be getting the drift. If we continue with this process for long enough, we end up with the 12 discrete pitches that are used to play music across the entire world. They remain somewhat consistent irrespective of cultural differences and are brought to life by the laws of physics. Our role is limited to the fact that different cultures have used these pitches to create remarkably distinct kinds of music, leading to diversity that’s worthy of celebration and preservation.

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Rhythm

From the pulse of our hearts to the patter of rain and the ebb and flow of ocean waves, we owe our daily existence to rhythm. We live on a planet that rhythmically orbits a star, which itself orbits the center of a galaxy. The electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom and energy itself propagates in rhythmic waves.

If we consider how a drum works, we can draw a parallel to our walking gait which is rhythmic in nature, generating frequencies that arise from impact and the friction between material interactions. Chimpanzees drum rhythmically on tree roots while different groups drum with different styles. Woodpeckers drum rapid rhythmic patterns, setting them apart from the slower more deliberate pecking sounds produced when excavating for food. Crickets provide steady rhythmic accompaniment to summer evenings, with their chirping rates so consistent that they can be used to estimate ambient temperature. The palm cockatoo is known to craft its own drumsticks for courtship displays by snipping branches or seed pods into sticks approximately 20 cm long.

Time Signatures

Music is generally played in simple or complex cycles of beats called time signatures. Would that have anything to do with nature?

The basic heartbeat, with its "lub–dub" rhythm, naturally lends itself to a triple meter which follows the cycle |strong–weak–weak| or |lub–dub–rest|. Musicians count this as 3/4 or |1–2–3|.

The walking gait can be characterized by a duple meter (2/4), following the cycle |strong–weak| or |stance–swing| or |1–2|.

If we dive a bit deeper, a beat, generally described as a quarter note in musical terms, can be subdivided further. So |1–2| (quarter notes) can be split into – |1&–2&| or |Taka–taka| (8th notes)

|1e&a–2e&a| or |Takadimi–Takadimi| (16th Notes)

Now think of the sound made by a galloping horse, dagada–dagada. This naturally lends itself to a specific 16th note rhythm where the a/mi at the end is not verbalized –

|1e&–2e&|1e&–2e&| or |Takadi–Takadi|Takadi–Takadi|.

Meter in Language

There are branches within zoology that are dedicated to the study of pitch and meter of animal calls, so as to decipher what they mean. In fact, most languages are loaded with rhythmic meters. Look up any word in a dictionary and you’ll find that one syllable has an accent mark on it. This is the strong syllable when the word is pronounced correctly. When misplaced, the word sounds silly and wrong. For instance, the word “apple” must have a strong first syllable and a weak second syllable and is a great illustration of the duple meter: |ap–ple| |strong–weak| |1–2|. The word “pineapple” also must have a strong first syllable, followed by two weak ones, making it a great illustration of the triple meter: |pine–ap–ple| |strong–weak–weak| |1–2–3|.

The more we look, the more we see a widespread occurrence of percussive behavior across diverse species, suggesting that rhythm represents a fundamental aspect of animal cognition.

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Synthesis

Research in neuroscience reveals that our brains are remarkably well-suited for musical processing, and the capacity for rhythm, melody, and harmony appears to be deeply embedded in our neural architecture. These abilities emerge early in human development, often before formal language skills fully develop, suggesting that our musical capacities may have been shaped by evolutionary pressures over hundreds of thousands of years.

The evidence points to music being more than a mere cultural invention. Our brains contain specialized circuits for musical processing that show remarkable consistency across cultures and individuals. This biological foundation suggests we may have "discovered" certain musical principles that were already latent in our evolved cognitive architecture.

Perhaps the most honest answer to whether music was invented or discovered is that it emerges from the complex interplay between the physics of sound (discovery), our cognitive capacity (evolution), cultural and technological innovation (invention).

In music, we hear both an echo of our past and a preview of our potential. It is ancient yet ever-new, universal yet culturally specific, discovered yet invented.  In it we find ourselves as creative agents operating within strict constraints.

Music represents a fundamental aspect of our existence, and perhaps this is why it moves us so deeply.

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P.S. cool to see Charlie Puth touch upon this topic in one of his shorts/reels: https://www.instagram.com/charlieputh/reel/DQXfGSAE1W5/?hl=en

Sources

1. Harmonic Series – Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic

2. Music and the brain: the neuroscience of music and musical appreciation –

   PMC: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5618809/

3. Chimpanzee drumming: a spontaneous performance with characteristics of human musical drumming: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep11320

4. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution – Evolutionary and Biomechanical Basis of Drumming Behavior in Woodpeckers: tps://www.frontiersin.org/journals/ecology-and-evolution/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.649146/full

5. The evolution of music and human social capability – Frontiers in Neuroscience: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnins.2014.00292/full

6. Phylogenic evolution of beat perception and synchronization: a comparative neuroscience – Frontiers in Neuroscience: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/systems-neuroscience/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2023.1169918/full

7. The MIT Press Reader – The Extraordinary Ways Rhythm Shapes Our Lives: https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-extraordinary-ways-rhythm-shapes-our-lives/