Evidently, Bb IS where it's at, after all!

John McGann · From: Boston, Massachusetts, USA * R.I.P.

Reverberations: The Speculative Case for the Cosmic B Flat

January 30, 2004
By JOHN ROCKWELL

Who knew? All those philosophers and scientists and
theoreticians and composers who believed in the ancient
notion of a Music of the Spheres were onto something. There
is such a music, and it's the note of B flat.

Or so scientists told us a few months ago when they
announced that the Perseus galaxy cluster, 250 million
light years from our little planet, was emitting that note,
or a series of those notes, which "appear as pressure waves
roiling and spreading as a result of outbursts from a
supermassive black hole," in the words of Dennis Overbye, a
science reporter for The New York Times.

The notes have a period of oscillation of 10 million years,
which makes them "the lowest note in the universe." So said
Dr. Andrew Fabian, an X-ray astronomer at Cambridge
University in England and the leader of the team that
discovered the note.

Most of the commentary since has been about the
implications of this discovery for the study of black holes
and hence of the physical properties of the universe. My
interest is, to put it mildly, less scientifically informed
and more aesthetically speculative.

These B flats may be the oldest and the longest notes in
the universe, but just how universal are they? My eye was
caught by another recent article in The Times, this one
about a mysterious low hum that bedevils some people, a
kind of basso variant of tinnitus, which is a high pitch
likewise heard in the ears of sufferers. Are those sounds,
I wondered, also in B flat, suggesting an even more cosmic
implication for this once-humble pitch?

Courtesy of Mindy Sink, who wrote the article, I entered
into e-mail correspondence with Dr. James Kelly of the
University of New Mexico, who undertook studies of hum
sufferers in Taos. Dr. Kelly first clarified for me the
difference between frequency and pitch. "Frequency is a
physical measure," he wrote. "Pitch is what you perceive."
Since the black-hole B flat is 57 octaves lower than middle
C, it cannot be heard, thus only questionably qualifying as
a pitch.

As for the hum, Dr. Kelly reported that it was close to 66
hertz, two octaves below middle C. But he suggested that
other patients heard hums as low as the lowest E on a
piano. No specific correspondence with B flat, but one can
always hope.

Back to the macro picture, the black hole B flat. If that
frequency (or pitch) is now the acoustical bedrock of the
universe, perhaps our entire tuning system, centered on
middle C, needs revision. The Western harmonic system
involves keys with increasing numbers of sharps and flats
exfoliating out from middle C, or from C major, all white
keys on the piano. Now, perhaps, we have to exfoliate from
B flat. Maybe this is as big a shift in human thinking as
that from a flat-earth-centered universe to the solar
system. Or maybe not.

As a digression, I thought of the California composer Terry
Riley. Mr. Riley, always something of a cosmic mystic, won
his first fame in 1964 with his composition "In C," which
has been endlessly recorded and played, in part because
it's so beautiful and in part because it's so ingenious: a
series of simple melodic figures that any group of any kind
of instrumentalists may play according to certain simple
rules, setting up a dappled tapestry of sound.

Mr. Riley's most recent piece attests to his fascination
with the cosmos. It's called "Sun Rings," and although
lavishly praised on the West Coast (the Kronos Quartet
performs it), it hasn't yet made it to our benighted
Eastern outback. "Sun Rings" is based on "space sounds"
recorded by Dr. Don Gurnett of the University of Iowa. One
wonders idly if B flat plays any special role. To judge
from "In C," Mr. Riley is a C man.

According to the music encyclopedias, the Internet and
Jamie James's chatty book "Music of the Spheres: Music,
Science and the Natural Order of the Universe," thinkers
and artists have been less interested in what might be
designated a universal fundamental tone as in the relations
between the tones: scales and modes and keys.

Tables ascribing emotional characteristics to keys have
poured out over the centuries, back to the ancient Greeks.
The most complete compendium of these descriptions was
compiled by Dr. Rita Steblin in a book published by the
University of Rochester Press and titled "A History of Key
Characteristics in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries,"
although she ranges far earlier and later than that. Check
it out for $95 plus shipping on Amazon.com.

The descriptions were always highly subjective, but those
in Dr. Steblin's book for B flat major (let's try to keep
this reasonably simple, avoiding B flat minor) generally
call it a happy key. "Magnificent and joyful," as per one
early French source. "Noble," thought another Frenchman.
"Condescending greatness mixed with venerable seriousness,"
said a late-18th-century German. "Cheerful love, clear
conscience, hope, aspirations for a better world," wrote
another. "Tender, soft, sweet, love, charm, grace,"
according to an Italian.

If we listen to these sages, a B flat universe is not such
a bad place to be. And if we buy into August Gathy, a
Frenchman who wrote in 1835, the key relates to "noble
womanliness," too. Maybe there's something to Erda or Gaia,
after all. Check out www.gaiaconsort.com, a site devoted to
"music for freethinking pagans, humanists, psychedelics,
visionaries, wiccans, mystics." Perhaps Mr. Riley already
has.

Before we reluctantly leave the concept of keys, here is a
highly selective list of well-known compositions in B flat
major; make of them what you will: Beethoven's
"Hammerklavier" Piano Sonata and Symphony No. 4, Brahms's
Piano Concerto No. 2, Haydn's Symphonies Nos. 98 and 102,
Prokofiev's Symphony No. 5, Schubert's Symphony No. 5,
Schumann's Symphony No. 1.

But perhaps we're getting ahead of ourselves, besides
managing to annoy any serious acoustician or physicist or
musical theorist. The universe has not yet been detected as
emitting music in any key or mode. It is just steadily (and
very slowly) singing the note of B flat, over and over.
What song did the Sirens sing? What note? What key? We
await further word from our intrepid scientists, ears
cocked to the cosmos.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/30/arts/music/30REVE.html?ex=1076484504&ei=1&
en=7d20b524a5de7a25

b0b · From: Cloverdale, CA, USA

Moved to the 'Music' section of the Forum.

I wonder... The 60 cycle hum of our AC equipment is close to Bb. Is it possible that a harmonic of it leaked into the measurements made by these scientists? It wouldn't be the first time that the act of observing affected the results of a scientific experiment.

------------------

Bobby Lee
-b0b- quasar@b0b.com

System Administrator

Jim Cohen · From: Philadelphia, PA

Hey John,
We had some fun with this news a few months ago. In case you missed it: http://steelguitarforum.com/Forum4/HTML/005062.html

Love your CD with the Wayfaring Strangers, by the way!

Roy Ayres · From: Riverview, Florida, USA, R.I.P.

b0b,

You got it right. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, when applied to quantum theory, says that one cannot measure a physical phenomenon without changing it. Read about it Here

David L. Donald · From: Koh Samui Island, Thailand

Looks like Reece was more precient than he is given credit for!

So now I really want a Millenium in Bb6!

The steel most in tune with the universe!
Even if it isn't a Universal.

So would G minor be the relative minor of the universe?

[This message was edited by David L. Donald on 30 January 2004 at 11:12 AM.]

John McGann · From: Boston, Massachusetts, USA * R.I.P.

Ah, it's not really news, we knew it all along from Reece and Junior Knight, not to mention Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins!

Thanks Jim, right back at'cha, really digging Four to the Bar, I wanna play like that when I grow up!!!

Mike Perlowin · From: Los Angeles CA

COOL!. I want a black hole for my home studio to compliment the "Guitar of the future."

Donny Hinson · From: Glen Burnie, Md. U.S.A.

Interesting, but leave it to the scientists to do wholly incomplete research, and then brag to the world about it. Shuckins! Even a lowly steelplayer knows it's all meaningless unless we know whther the Bb is tuned JI or ET.

Fred Shannon · From: Rocking "S" Ranch, Comancheria, Texas, R.I.P.

[This message was edited by Fred Shannon on 06 December 2004 at 01:31 AM.]

David Doggett · Posted 30 Jan 2004 10:24 pm

I'm okay with this. My Tenor sax is a Bb instrument. You can probably go through the tenor sax repetoire and find tons of compositions and covers in the key of Bb.

Joe Drivdahl · From: Montana, USA

John,
Phew! You sound like a musicologist/philosopher/plumber I once knew. The blackhole tone, when emitted from the blackhole, starts out as an 'A' and remains a perfect 'A' through the nothingness of space, but as it approaches the earths atmosphere, it begins to speedup, causing the higher pitched Bb tone to be heard on Earth. But in outter space, its an 'A'.

jd

John McGann · From: Boston, Massachusetts, USA * R.I.P.

The doppler effect! I'm going to remember that for my next cruise on the Mars Rover- BTW you'd think Nasa could spring a few bucks to upgrade the 8 track player to a cassette or something!

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