Cymatics: The Science of Dance

The Movement Within The Void as Source of Sound

Chapter previously titled
"How Sound Is Created"

«From whence does the flute sound come? It comes not from the bamboo or the lacquer or the material aspects of a flute but from the shape of the void within the flute. Flute sounds come directly from the void.»
SOURCE: http://www.navaching.com/shaku/utility.html

Sound Travels as
Spherical Expansions of Holographic Bursts

The following is an artistic rendition of a transversal slice through a 3-dimensional, spherical sound bubble made out of air molecules. It is not a picture of sound, because sound is formless; rather, it is a conceptual image of the effect sound has on air particles.

As sound expands spherically from its generating source, it creates spherical waves that spread simultaneously in all directions.

The intensity, or power of the initial vibration is lost in an inverelsy proportional ratio to the surface of the expansion: the perimeter of the sphere. Its value is given by the Inverse Square Law:

It is generally believed that sound is a "pressure (transversal) wave", and therefore not a part of the electro-magnetic spectrum. Those who defend this speculation have no proof of its validity, and their only argument rests on the same theory shoved up their throats by institutionalized education.

There can be no "pressure waves" in nature, because there is no movement of this type in nature. Planets and electrons do not move back and forth, but rather rotate around a center. Air molecules make no exception, and no matter the sound source, there can be no air particles moving back and forth, propagating 2-dimensional "waves" of sound.

Until someone will be able to show that "pressure waves" exist as back-and-forth rocking "longitudinal waves" by making a slow-motion recording of some sorts with air particles' precise movement, the established concept will retain its status as just another errorneous speculation.

Surface water waves are said to be "the combination of Transverse and Longitudinal Waves". When in fact all movement that can be defined through frequency, that is, any "wave", can be shown to involve molecules moving on a circular path, rotating about a center.

The tension-springs methaphor used in physics is a comparison meant to show the effect of sound on matter; such descriptions do not take into account the source and nature of movement generating the "wave".

"Transverse and Longitudinal Waves" cannot exist as such in nature, because they imply particle movement up-and-down and back-and-forth, which is never the case and cannot be demonstrated to be so. Confinement of circular motion to almost back-and-forth movement can take place in extreme cases, but this is the result of other forces, not that of the source.

Imagine the sound sphere as made out of increasingly larger circles just like in the right image above, but with the following differences:

• bottom circles are all gathered in one place: the center of the sphere, which is the source of the sound;
• air molecules transmit the sonic information by oscillating (rotating around a center) and vibrating (rotating around their own axis) at the same time;
• the rotation on the circular path happens from one row to the other, like in the picture below, and not like depicted above with all red dots moving in phase, nor like further down below with all yellow dots spinning in phase.

Now all we have to do is integrate the above dynamics into those from the pictures below, which are but a 2D slice of a 3D Sound Sphere, by squeezing all bottom particles into one point from which the rest expand radially, adding another dimension to the oscillation by integrating vibration, and finally adjusting the phase of each spin so as to carry the central information in a vortex-like pattern to the outter edges of the sphere.

Where Sound Waves Come From

Sound, just like gravity and wind, can be experienced but cannot be seen. Since ancient times, humans have been fascinated by the unseen manifestations of sound and tried to understand them.

The tuning fork is caused to write the story of its own motion.

«To study these vibrations in detail, we may attach a stiff bristle or a light gramophone needle to the end of one prong of the fork, and while the fork is in vibration, run a piece of smoked glass under it as shewn in fig. 6, taking care that it moves in a perfectly straight line and at a perfectly steady speed.»²

In the mid-nineteenth century, Jules Lissajous, a French mathematician, found that if he placed a small mirror at the tip of a tuning fork while aiming a light beam at it, the vibration could be thrown onto a dark screen. When the tuning fork was struck, a small vertical line was produced, and if quickly cast sideways with another mirror it produced a “sine wave”. TO DO: reformulate. he didn't just found, he experimented exactly with that. check tynddall page 86

Lissajous' experiment is just an elegant form of transcribing motion into a mathematical graphic, the sine wave, without having the vibrating medium touching the paper.

These representations were confirmed in the early 20^th century with the invention of the Oscilloscope. It has been commonly believed ever since, that audible sounds are wave-like in nature. The fact is, the sine wave is an accurate representation of the movement that the vibrating object makes in time, and not how sound actually moves through space as energy.

 

Form Is The Shape of Frequency

Sound sets matter into motion. Rhythmic motion to the music is called dance. Matter dances to sound just like our bodies dance to music.

The science of movement and patterns created by sound frequencies on physical surfaces and inside mediums, that is, the science of dancing matter, is called Cymatics.

Cymatics is in no way "sound made visible", but the effects sound has on different material bodies having different physical properties. The same frequency applied to a plate with sand will create a totally different pattern for every variation in the plate's shape, size, thickness, material, as well as variations of the oscillating medium (sand, salt, etc.) and will look completely different in different liquids like water, oil, corn starch, etc.

Last updated: 04 june 2015 

References (TO DO):

¹ Sound. A course of eight lectures delivered at The Royal Institution of Great Britain
By John Tyndall, LL.D. F.R.S. (1820—1893)
London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1867.
Lecture II, Optical expression of the Vibrations of a Tuning-fork, Fig. 20., page 61
Copy of book availanle online here

² Science & Music by Sir James Hopwood Jeans (1877—1946)
New York: The Macmillan Company
Cambridge, England: At The University Press
1937
Copyright, 1937, by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Chapter II Tuning-Forks and Pure Tones, Fig. 6., page 18
Copy of book available online here

 

• CONTENTS
• Intro
• Source
• Physics
• Cymatics
• Math
• Harmonics
• Ratios
• Tuning
• Examples
• Advanced