Interference: A Grand Scientific Musical Theory

by Richard Merrick

Harmonic Interference Theory represents a major breakthrough in our understanding of music and perception. Triggered by a moment of insight thirty years earlier, this theory explains how harmonics combine to form coherent geometrical patterns that our auditory system recognizes as simple shapes.

Based on a personal journey through 2,500 years of occluded music history, the author finds new evidence to suggest that ancient civilizations once possessed an advanced harmonic science that integrated perception, physiology and acoustics. Banned for hundreds of years by anti-pagan religious doctrine, only remnants of this ancient knowledge have survived in mythological allegory, esoteric symbolisms and the secret fraternaties. It is from these clues that the mystery of music perception begins to unravel.

Using a spectral analysis of harmonic interference over an octave, the author shows how reflective patterns on vibrated surfaces can be found in the growth patterns of the human anatomy, particularly our ears and brain. From this simple correspondence, perception of music is then explained as the natural process of anticipating and matching harmonic interference patterns against identical structures in our auditory system. When represented visually, music becomes organic geometries floating inside a harmonically structured space - exactly as our ears and brain understand it.

But this is only the beginning. The author goes much further to show how everything in nature can be described as crystallized harmonics. Drawing on the latest scientific research and cutting-edge theories in the fields of genetics, quantum physics and cosmology, a unified harmonic matrix is proposed for the study of coherence on both a micro and macro scale. Out of this emerges a grand scientific musical theory that reintegrates ancient knowledge systems with quantum physics to tackle the deeper mysteries neither can answer alone.

Genres: Music

408 pages, Paperback

Reviews

[Effie Saxioni · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love music, deep in your heart,if you see music in everything, if you feel life's heartbeat everywhere around you and in every single being,then this is the book you should definitely read. It's not easy,it's surely demanding and full of information that was collected through meticulous work and research, but it definitely worths every single minute you spend reading it.

[Stuart · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been looking for a book like this for years. A music theory that can explain all music that also ties into cosmology, evolution and the Theory of Everything in physics.

5 stars for the ambition and analytic work that went into this decades long project. When Merrick goes into music history and the theory of tuning systems and scales, I’m right there with him. When he gets into higher level mathematics, I start to lose the thread. Even though some of his conclusions sound a bit new-agey, the bulk of this nearly 400 page book is mathematical formulas, examples and most helpfully color graphs and charts.

The author proposes to bring back the musica universalis of ancient Greece and Rome, the Music of the Spheres, but with a scientific evidence-based foundation. Merrick does refer to a handful of scientific studies in the beginning of the book, but for the remainder his arguments rely mostly on mathematics.

I had always assumed that the equal temperament tuning system that came about in the Baroque era was a compromise made to allow increasingly larger groups of musicians to all play together in tune, and to allow newly recognized composers of the time to modulate to more distant keys.
The author argues that the 12 tones to the octave equal temperament system (which I’ll refer to as 12 ET) developed because it is the most coherent to our ears. That the Golden Ratio, phi or Φ in the form of the Fibonacci sequence (found within nature as a growth algorithm for plants and animals) runs up and down the mutli-octave scale, “dampening” or cancelling out inharmonics and amplifying intervals most pleasing to our ears (3rds and 6ths for example).

So whereas the ancient Greeks abhorred intervals that might bring out the Pythagorean comma, a flaw in the system of all music (and the cosmos) ringing together in a harmony of perfect ratios, and the medieval church actively suppressed the tritone (the Devil’s interval), since the time of Bach we’ve used the tritone function to create tension and resolution. But Merrick argues that it’s less so because we think of the tritone as dissonant but because it is symmetrically situated over the “harmonic center” of the scale (which would be D in a C Major scale). The interplay of the unstable tritone and stable tonic and intermediary chords, is the interplay of colors by mapping the ratios of the musical intervals to the frequencies of colors on the electromagnetic spectrum. And mapping the ratios of those musical intervals to the 5 solids of the ancient world.

Merrick references studies that show that people can see colors and shapes that they associate with music. But I wonder, it can’t really always be the same colors and shapes hearing the same musical intervals, can it? I think of the composer Olivier Messiaen who had synesthesia. Surely, he didn’t see the same colors hearing certain timbres as anyone else?

Then we get into the Golden Ratio, Fibonacci series and fractals in architecture and within the timbre of musical sound and beyond. That these formulae create “harmonic lattices” for things to grow in, everything from plants and animals to the structure of the atom and the formation of our ears, brains and the solar system.

I can’t dispute the math, so I’m just going to accept that it checks out. But again, I wonder, is Merrick asking the theory to do too much? Is it true for all animals? All solar systems no matter how distant? All living beings on distant planets? If you are off in your calculations, does it all fall apart or is all of nature an approximation? It’s a series of kludges all the way down.

Merrick does say that harmonic theory doesn’t replace physics and evolution but is an additional insight to explain what we know because scientists tend to keep their heads down and do the work within their discipline, rarely trying to create a larger meaning that might be considered philosophy. And philosophers also work in their fiefdoms, fighting over syntax and definitions.

Bringing it back music, I’m thinking about the exceptions, the outliers.

Claude Debussy used the 12 ET system, but broke all the rules of voice leading and chord resolution. The author says he was still utilizing the tritone function as part of the 2 mirrored whole tone scales resolving to pentatonic scales.

Olivier Messiaen used the same 12 ET system, but instead of major and minor scales, used modes of limited transposition like the octatonic scale. The author mentions he himself wrote a piece using the octatonic scale so I guess that still fits within the theory.

So then what about composers like Arnold Schoenberg whose early atonal music disregarded consonance and dissonance altogether as structural device and whose 12-Tone system guaranteed the cancelling out of tension and resolution?

I find the just intonation piano works of La Monte Young and Terry Riley to be incredibly beautiful and a lot of that has to do with the interplay of pure ratios ringing out, but it forgoes ideas of tension and release.

And again, composers and musicians who create experimental, ambient or drone music that not only does away with tension and release but also with scales, key centers and even notes?
I think Merrick’s answer might be that these musicians are doomed to having only a small following, not able to attract a larger audience of listeners because they are defying how humans hear music. Because the 12 ET system came about as the most coherent tuning system based on the evolution of the human ear and the natural harmonic series.

OK, so if Merrick’s theory covers Western tonal and modal music (which is the vast majority of what those of us in the West listen to), then what about Non-western tuning systems from for example China, India or Indonesia that have evolved over thousands of years?
If the 12 ET tuning system that uses the tritone function, Dominant to Tonic relationships, and ideas of tension and release is the most coherent system, does that make these non-Western systems outmoded and archaic? And what does that say for the millions of people that enjoyed this music in the past and still do to this day?

Just as Western culture is spreading across the globe and English has become the language of commerce, it does seem that 12 ET tonal/modal music is also overtaking the world. Soundtrack composers will write music for orchestra with 12 ET tuning and tonal/modal harmony, and then pepper in local flavor according to where the film is set. Techno and other forms of electronic dance and Pop music can be found in every country using 12 ET instruments plus traditional instruments from the locale and singers who bend notes to blend in their style and scales with that of Western Pop.

That’s just how cultures borrow from each other, adapt and evolve but it makes me question that the 12 ET tonal/modal system is or will always be the dominant system.
Merrick hopes that educating people on harmonic theory would help bring us together and cure the division we see so much in our world. While it’s true that music can bring people together, I don’t share his same optimism. Just as I think tritone suppression was just one tool the medieval church used to control people (not the primary tool as Merrick insinuates), music and a common world view can only be part of the solution.

I think that musical evolution, cultural evolution means change (and not always for the better). If Richard Merrick’s Interference harmonic theory did become the dominant paradigm in the world, would that not become a target for artists and activists across the globe? Artists by their very nature want the freedom to explore realms never seen nor heard. Contrarian activists would declare any global society to be stifling and oppressive.

I very much applaud Richard Merrick for this book. I’ve also been thinking about a theory for all music and how that relates to society for some time now, but Merrick puts in the hard work with mathematical proofs and deep thinking. Most other books I’ve read on the subject make the same connections but as similarities or analogs. Richard Merrick is the first author I’ve found who puts it all together into one coherent science-based theory.