by Steve Rees, Ret. RN, Harpist
The fact that there is geometry in music is an interesting thought and there is science to back it up. Music has shape, form, and substance. One of the first introductions I had to this idea was an article I read about the shapes that sand would make on a metal plate when sound was projected onto the plate.
"In the late 18th century, German physicist and musician Ernst Chladni demonstrated how vibrations could create striking imagery. By spreading fine sand across the top of a metal plate and running a violin bow alongside, Chladni showed that the sand would settle into distinct patterns, depending on the frequencies of the sound waves produced by the bow.
Centuries later, in the 1960s, a Swiss physician named Hans Jenny built on Chladni's experiments to study vibrational phenomena—what he called 'cymatics."
In the following link, we can see some of the patterns that were observed.
"YouTube user Brusspup explored the intersection between art and science and released this new video featuring the Chladni plate experiment. First, a black metal plate is attached to a tone generator and then sand is poured on the plate. As the speaker cycles through various frequencies, the sand naturally gravitates to the area where the least amount of vibration occurs causing fascinating geometric patterns to emerge. There's a mathematical law that determines how each shape will form. The higher the frequency, the more complex the pattern."
One of the things that aroused my attention was the idea that sound affects physical structures and items. The matter could be influenced to do various things by exposing it to sound.
This interested me because all the work that I have been doing regarding sound healing and the effects of my harp music on human physiology, intuitively told me that there had to be a relationship between the sound and the matter, or the body in my case.
In the early days of my observations, I had begun to take my harp into play music for my patients on hemodialysis. I was not even thinking of the harp music as a therapeutic mode, I just started by thinking that it would help pass the time since the treatments lasted 3-4 hours and there was a good deal of boredom in that time.
It wasn't until I began to see definite physical and physiological changes in my patients that I began to study to find information that might explain what I was observing.
"Cymatics is the study of vibrational frequencies manifested as sound and seen as form, usually on a solid metal surface. The observations of these sound structures involved the use of some fine material, such as salt upon a flat and solid surface, to be seen. The higher the frequency, the more intricate the pattern. Highly complex patterns can also be seen on a water surface."
Image copied from:” The Ultimate Guide to Cymatics – SHIFT”