Name: The beautiful math behind the world's ugliest music
Uploaded: 2012-01-20T16:41:22Z
Duration: 9 min 34 s
Description: Scott Rickard set out to engineer the ugliest possible piece of music, devoid of repetition, using a mathematical concept known as the Costas Array. In this surprisingly entertaining talk, he shares the math behind musical beauty ... and its opposite.

Scott Rickard set out to engineer the ugliest possible piece of music, devoid of repetition, using a mathematical concept known as the Costas Array. In this surprisingly entertaining talk, he shares the math behind musical beauty ... and its opposite.

The beautiful math behind the world's ugliest music

Beauty in music often stems from repetition, but creating a piece with absolutely no repeating patterns is a formidable mathematical challenge. Inspired by sonar engineers searching for the perfect, non-repeating signal, mathematicians drew on prime number theory to design the Costas Array. This pattern allowed for the world’s first pattern-free piano sonata, where every note and rhythm relationship is unique. The result is music that defies expectation, sounding strikingly unfamiliar and intentionally devoid of beauty as we know it.