Music and Mathematical Patterns

In this blog entry I will basically be continuing what I was talking about from my first blog entry. Without reading further in the book until Wednesday night I stated that " It makes me think about other patterns that may be occurring within other aspects of our natural world." It made me happy to know that I was on the correct path and also on the same page as Hofstadter.

In the most recent section we were assigned to read Hofstadter talked about how he had stretched his love of patterns into the realm of music. This struck me by surprise. I've been involved with music since a young age and have known that many patterns had existed in music, but I had never even thought to look there for patterns. When I was thinking about the natural world and patterns that could be involved I seemed to have skipped over music all together. To add even more to this I was even listening to music while doing some of my reading and thinking.

Music is made up of patterns, which really makes music unique. Hofstadter points out that music can be put into a hierarchical system, where the notes are split into chunks. Reading about this made me really think about music in its entirety. How amazing and mysterious music can be, and how it too can be just as complicated as mathematical patterns.

I look forward to reading more of this book. Not only because we are merely "told" to read, but because Hofstadter takes a difficult and interesting topic and makes it so you can really understand what he is talking about in such a simple way.