Knowing of my passion for music Phil Rubel, CEO at Saatchi & Saatchi Fallon Tokyo, put me on to this curious study. Did you know that there is a mathematical formula in Western music? A team of researchers from McGill and Stanford analyzed over 2,000 pieces of music by more than 40 different composers over the last 400 years and found that it’s the rhythm in the tune that people respond to and enjoy. Rhythm gets repeated in music and is the thing that babies, youth in nightclubs and people at weddings get up and move to. The study also revealed that all the composers who were studied had their own unique internal rhythmic signature but conformed to the same mathematical formula when creating their music. What is fascinating is that this ‘fractal’ rhythm also occurs in nature. Think of the repetitive patterns in snowflakes and prisms of light.
