How Pythagoras Broke Music (and how we kind of fixed it)

How does music work? What did an Ancient Greek philosopher have to do with it? Why did he keep drowning people?

Discover the answers to these questions and more as we take a tour through musical tuning systems, examining how the power of mathematics has helped us build and rebuild our methods of creating music throughout history. Pythagorean tuning, the Pythagorean comma, equal temperament - learn what these are and how they shaped the way we make music today.

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SOURCES

Math and Music: Harmonious Connections (Seymour Dale Publications) - Trudi H. Garland and Charity Vaughan Kahn, 1994
Harmonograph (Wooden Books) - Anthony Asthon, 2005
The Elements of Music (Wooden Books) - Jason Martineau, 2008
Big Bangs: Five Musical Revolutions (Vintage) - Howard Goodall, 2001
Music: A Mathematical Offering (University of Aberdeen) - David Bensen, 2008
Pythagoras (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy) - Carl Huffman, 2005
The Death of Pythagoras (Philosophy Now) - Bruce Pennington, 2010
The Development of Musical Tuning Systems - Peter A. Frazier, 2001