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Pythagoras’ Discovery

Dec 11, 2009 Music Theory
Posted by Mike Mora

In ancient Greece, singers would use a simple stringed instrument called the lyre.  This had many “versions” with the most common being 4-string, 7 -string and 10-string.  Pythagoras, using the 7 string lyre discovered that when tuning a lyre to “standard” tuning (let’s say it was C-D-E-F-G-A-B because it doesn’t really matter what he called the notes), discovered that the invoked mood was light.  Yet when tuning another lyre a note higher (D-E-F-G-A-B-C, probably for someone who had a higher singing register) that the mood was somewhat darker.  The main key here is that the same notes were played but the mood was different.  This inspired Pythagoras to research why that was and what he postulated was that there exist notes between these common notes – HALF-STEPS.  Therefore, the whole concept of specific musical spacing came into existence.