Scott Rickard: The beautiful math behind the world's ugliest music
Scott Rickard: The beautiful math behind the ugliest music
Scott Rickard is passionate about mathematics, music -- and educating the next generation of scientists and mathematicians. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
los musicólogos dirían
aspecto clave de la belleza.
a motif, a musical idea,
un motivo, una idea musical,
the expectation for repetition,
de la repetición,
or we break the repetition.
o detener la repetición.
are key to beauty,
son claves para la belleza,
of patterns sound like,
el sonido sin patrones
that had no repetition whatsoever in it?
sin repetición alguna?
mathematical question.
matemático interesante.
que no tenga repetición alguna?
that has no repetition whatsoever?
eso es fácil.
evitar la repetición
out, is extremely difficult,
that we can actually do it
who was hunting for submarines.
to develop the world's perfect sonar ping
el impulso sonoro perfecto para sonares
pattern-free music.
componer música sin patrones.
of the talk is today.
out some sound in the water,
una señal acústica en el agua
back, it goes down, echoes back.
produce un eco que regresa.
nos indica cuán lejos está.
tells you how far away it is:
es porque el objeto se acerca.
is moving toward you;
es porque el objeto se aleja de nosotros.
it's moving away from you.
sonoro perfecto para sonares?
a perfect sonar ping?
un hombre llamado John Costas
by the name of John Costas
expensive sonar system.
sistema sonar de la Marina de EE.UU.
they were using was inappropriate.
impulso sonoro que usaban no era adecuado.
like the following here.
and this is time.
y esto es el tiempo.
they were using, a down chirp.
un chirrido descendente.
like shifts of itself.
una variación de sí mismo.
two notes is the same as the second two,
es la misma de las dos siguientes
kind of sonar ping,
de impulso sonoro:
aleatorios, pero no lo es.
of dots, but they're not.
the relationship between each pair of dots
entre cada par de puntos
y todos los pares de notas
and every other pair of notes
about these patterns is unusual.
es por algo inusual.
of these patterns.
de estos patrones.
poco antes de su muerte.
shortly before his death.
en sonares para la Marina.
working for the Navy.
up with them to size 12 --
hasta el tamaño 12;
and thought maybe they don't exist
que tal vez no existía
al matemático del medio,
to the mathematician in the middle,
de California, Solomon Golomb.
at the time, Solomon Golomb.
discreta más talentosos de nuestro tiempo.
mathematicians of our time.
si podía darle la referencia correcta
the right reference
about a repetition,
en una repetición,
thinking about the problem.
pensando en el problema.
of this gentleman here,
de este caballero,
famous mathematician.
a whole branch of mathematics
de las matemáticas,
called Galois field theory.
de campos de Galois.
because of the way that he died.
por la forma en que murió.
for the honor of a young woman.
el honor de una joven.
and he accepted.
of his mathematical ideas,
saying "Please, please" --
se publiquen en algún momento".
get published eventually."
was shot and died at age 20.
y murió a los 20 años.
your cell phones, the internet,
teléfonos móviles, Internet,
of Évariste Galois,
a los 20 años.
the legacy that you leave ...
even anticipated
sus matemáticas.
would be used.
sus teorías se publicaron.
was eventually published.
matemáticas eran lo que necesitaba
exactly the mathematics needed
a pattern-free structure.
de una estructura sin patrones.
usando la teoría de los números primos".
these patterns using prime number theory."
del sonar de la Marina de EE.UU.
the sonar problem for the Navy.
tienen estos patrones?
de dimensión 88 por 88.
is sufficient to solve this problem.
suficientes para resolver este problema.
multiplying by the number three:
repetidamente por el número tres:
than 89 which happens to be prime,
ese número resulta ser primo,
until I get back below.
the entire grid, 88 by 88.
toda la cuadrícula de 88 por 88.
the world premiere
el estreno mundial
pattern-free piano sonata.
más bellas de la historia,
beautiful pieces ever written,
y el famoso motivo "¡da, na, na, naa!"
and the famous "da na na na!" motif.
of times in the symphony --
de veces en la sinfonía,
en el primer movimiento,
in the first movement alone
movements as well.
es muy importante para su belleza.
is so important for beauty.
como una serie de notas al azar, aquí,
as being just random notes here,
de Beethoven es un tipo de patrón,
in some kind of pattern,
completamente libre de patrones,
podría ser esta estructura sin patrones.
would be these pattern-free structures.
those stars on the grid,
las estrellas en la cuadrícula,
of Arnold Schoenberg --
llamado Arnold Schönberg--
'40s and '50s.
from tonal structure.
de la disonancia".
of the dissonance."
called "tone rows."
before Costas solved the problem
de que Costas resolviera el problema
create these structures.
estas estructuras.
premiere of the perfect ping.
del pulso sonoro perfecto.
de tamaño 88 por 88,
llamada regla de Golomb para el ritmo,
a Golomb ruler for the rhythm,
de inicio de cada par de notas
time of each pair of notes
computacional, imposible de crear.
it would be impossible to create.
that was developed 200 years ago,
se desarrollaron hace 200 años
recently and an engineer,
matemático y un ingeniero--
this, or construct this,
más fea del mundo de la música.
the world's ugliest piece of music.
that only a mathematician could write.
un matemático puede escribir.
piece of music, I implore you:
that you won't find it.
at the New World Symphony,
de la Sinfónica del Nuevo Mundo
of the perfect ping.
del impulso sonoro perfecto.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Scott Rickard - MathematicianScott Rickard is passionate about mathematics, music -- and educating the next generation of scientists and mathematicians.
Why you should listen
Scott Rickard is a professor at University College Dublin. His interest in both music and math led him to try and solve an interesting math problem: a musical score with no pattern. He has degrees in Mathematics, Computer Science, and Electrical Engineering from MIT, and MA and PhD degrees in Applied and Computational Mathematics from Princeton.
At University College Dublin, he founded the Complex & Adaptive Systems Laboratory, where biologists, geologists, mathematicians, computer scientists, social scientists and economists work on problems that matter to people. He is also the founder of ScienceWithMe!, an online community dedicated to engaging youth through science and math.
Scott Rickard | Speaker | TED.com