Relationship

Friends, Counterpoint, and the Diabolus in Musica!

Introduction Activity

● Make a playlist of 10 songs that tell the story of your life. Give your playlist to someone you don’t normally talk to.

Musical notes are related to each other and affect each other in different ways.

What did Pythagoras notice?

Nearly 3000 years ago, Pythagoras walked past a blacksmith where several anvils were being struck by hammers. He noticed that some anvils sounded good together and some did not.

Legend tells us, this was the start of Pythagoras’ investigation into the science of consonance (notes that sound good together) and dissonance (notes that don’t sound good together). This is the science behind how one note can affect, and be affected by, another note.

Pythagoras discovered that certain mathematical proportions equate to certain intervals (distances between notes). In the case of anvils and hammers, it was size and weight that determined the relationship between the notes that were sounded.


The Pythagoras: Music and Space website shows the Pythagorean proportions, with sound clips. When Pythagoras experimented with strings and found that:

  • A string half the length of another string will produce an interval of an octave A string the length of another string will produce an interval of a fifth

  • A string 3⁄4 the length of another string will produce an interval of a fourth.

Similarly Harmonics work according to mathematical proportions

  • When one string vibrates at it’s full length it will resonate it’s key tone.

  • If a finger is placed half way along the string, it will resonate 1 octave higher.

  • If a finger is placed at a third it will sound one octave and a fifth higher.

  • If a finger is placed at one quarter along the string, it will resonate 2 octaves higher.

Try it out! Find a Ukulele or a Guitar or any other string instrument and see if this works!

Notification of Formal Assessment Music IMYC

Journaling Questions

  1. How can one musical note be related to another?

  1. In what ways can one note or chord affect/be affected by another?

  1. What is the effect of this on the listener?

  1. How does one note affect another in each of these cases: consonance, dissonance, resolution?

  1. Can you name two types of musical cadence, and describe briefly how they sound?

  1. What would Renaissance composers have made of the opening of Adele’s Someone Like You?

  1. Would they have recognised and described the harmonic relationships between the notes in the same way we do today?

  1. Can you think of a song (not covered in this unit) that has been recorded by several different artists?

  1. What is the relationship between the cover versions and the original?

  1. Can a cover version be ‘better’ than the original song?