Musical Intervals

A musical interval is the ratio or space between two musical notes.

Pythagorous of Samos (c.582 - c.507 B.C.) is credited with the idea of tuning an instrument up and down by fifths to create a complete musical scale that sounded harmonious. By tuning each successive note in turn by the ratio of a fifth in the pattern of the Circle of Fifths, Pythagoras realized that eventually he returned to almost an exact higher octave of the note he started with. There is, however, a slight error between the octave harmonic relationships and the tuning by fifths that occurs when you tune using this method. The error is today still called the Pythagorean comma and represents a ratio of about 74/73.

You can click on these links to learn a lot more about the Circle of Fifths or the Pythagoran comma.

If you would like hear these sound ratios at length, BioWaves has produced several meditation CD's that use some of the above intervals. The Perfect Fifth is comfortable to listen to, the Tri-Tone Drone is for balancing and increasing consciousness, while the experimental Phi-Tone Drone uses the Golden Mean Ratio.

These note relationships, or intervals, are used in creating a musical scale. But the error from the Pythagorian Comma means that a scale cannot be truly harmonic.