Creating Posibilities out of $700bn

By Nancy Benac

What else could the US government do with a $700 billion blank check? There are, well, billions of possibilities.

It could ensure universal health care coverage for six years, for example, or upgrade the country’s most deficient bridges four times over. All the work to upgrade coastal levees that’s been done since Hurricane Katrina? It’s a mere drop in the proverbial $700 billion bucket — $7 billion, or just 1 percent.

You could build 1,750 bridges to nowhere.

Or run an entire country. Seven hundred billion dollars is more than twice the size of the economy of Denmark, which had a gross domestic product of $312 billion in 2007.

Seven hundred billion dollars would buy 70 Hubble-type space telescopes. Or about seven international space stations. It would finance the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s premier medical research institute, for two decades. Or pay the U.S. national intelligence budget for 15 years.

According to the Wall Street Journal, half the money F.D.Roosevelt spent on his New Deal program in 1933 to lift the country out of the Depression and banking crisis was for public works projects. For $250 billion in today’s dollars, the nation got 8,000 parks, 40,000 public buildings and 72,000 schools.

But that’s thinking small.

Why sad and angry children become accountants

Ewen Callaway

Did you live a coddled childhood filled with unbridled playtime and few reminders of the harsh real world? You might have been dumber as a result.

Children coaxed into a jovial mood performed worse on a simple test of geometric shape recognition than kids put in a dourer mood, report Simone Schnall, of the University of Plymouth, UK and colleagues in a recent issue of Developmental Science.

You may wonder whether these psychologists hate happy kids or just fun, but their conclusion is supported by other research. For instance, adults in good spirits do worse than sad adults on similar tests.

To uncover the same effect in children, the researchers, thankfully, didn’t resort to insults or mind-altering drugs.

Instead they played one of two classical tunes to 10- and 11-year olds. Fifteen kids heard Mozart’s jolly ditty Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, while the other 15 had to suffer through Mahler’s doleful Adagietto. Previous research suggested these songs put kids in happy and sad moods, respectively, and Schnall’s team confirmed that by surveying the kids.

While listening to the tunes the children played a game where they hunted for a specific geometric shape – a triangle joined to a rectangle, for instance – within a picture. The merry Mozart kids took noticeably longer finding the shapes than the children who were forced to listen to Mahler.

Not content with proving that happy pre-teens are daft, the researchers aimed their hypothesis at 61 six and seven-year olds. Instead of hearing classical music, the kids watched three movie scenes.

One, from Disney’s Jungle Book, features the singing and dancing of an ebullient bear. A neutral scene from The Last Unicorn shows a knight reaching a castle. The sad scene comes from The Lion King, another Disney cartoon. Even this reporter, who watched the movie as a teen, shed a tear when Simba mourns his father’s death.

Noam Bar – Mixing creativity and business

Every now and again the worlds of business and the holy creative (in this case food), blend to strip out the extreme and especially the ugly side of business. I came across this CV of Noam bar, a senior partner in Ottolenghi, the London based foodie experience.

Noam Bar

Having oscillated between a job in the City and time in a Buddhist monastery, Noam shrugged off the urge to choose between the two worlds, and is now both a homeopath and the strategic thinker of Ottolenghi.

As the former, he practices in London and in Africa. As the latter, he knows enough about the business to understand it perfectly, but not enough to be drawn into the day to day details.

Any business, Ottolenghi included, can be viewed as an organism, just like the human body. And the same ideas of health and disease are applicable to both: it is necessary to listen carefully, to identify the core of the imbalance, and to apply a minimal intervention that would help the organism repair itself.

Noam, like the other managers of Ottolenghi, believes that people are happy, creative, and inspiring when they are in their naturally balanced state. Consequently, much management time is dedicated to ensuring that our staff is fulfilled, satisfied and content; that they are empowered enough to deal with the challenges life brings them. Amazing food, customer satisfaction, and a positive Profit and Loss account are simply by-products of this constant effort.

Miguel Zenón – 2008 MacArthur Fellows

Miguel Zenón is a young jazz musician who is expanding the boundaries of Latin and jazz music through his elegant and innovative musical collages. As both a saxophonist and a composer, Zenón demonstrates an astonishing mastery of old and new jazz idioms, from Afro-Caribbean and Latin American rhythmical concepts to free and avant-garde jazz. Beginning with his 2001 recording Looking Forward, Zenón has exhibited a high degree of daring and sophistication in the manipulation of conventional jazz forms. His third album, Jíbaro (2005), illuminates his intense engagement with the indigenous music of his native Puerto Rico. Forgoing the Afro-Caribbean sound that characterizes most Latin jazz, Zenón was inspired by la música jíbara – string-based folkloric music popular in the Puerto Rican countryside. Unlike other attempts to fuse jazz and jíbaro, which have retained the traditional instrumentation with little harmonic variation, in Zenón’s hands the essential elements of jíbaro serve as the compositional and rhythmic underpinning of his contemporary jazz arrangements. The result is a complex yet accessible sound that is overflowing with feeling and passion and maintains the integrity of the island’s music. This young musician and composer is at once reestablishing the artistic, cultural, and social tradition of jazz while creating an entirely new jazz language for the 21st century.

Miguel Zenón received a B.A. (1998) from the Berklee College of Music and an M.A. (2001) from the Manhattan School of Music. His additional recordings include Ceremonial (2004) and Awake (2008). He has performed at venues and in festivals throughout the United States and abroad, including the Jazz Standard, the Village Vanguard, and Carnegie Hall.

Twenty websites to spark your creativity

Gino Cosme

Every now and again I find myself low on creativity and in need of some inspiration. The thing with creativity though is that you can’t force it on. Instead, you need to feed it with “creative fuel” (random stimuli) and eventually your AHA! moment takes place.

I’ve listed below some websites that I often visit to spark some of my own right brain activity. Which ones do you go to?

• Digg and Del.icio.us Popular: Let’s agree on one thing — the Digg and del.icio.us community are genius when it comes to finding the most interesting, creative news on the internet. These sites should be visited, if only for a few minutes, each day to see what people are talking about.
• Flickr Interesting: I love photography. So much can be captured and most importantly interpreted from one single moment. It’s a no wonder then that I like Flickr’s collection of best images. If you too find inspiration from photography be sure to also check out FFFFound.
• Kottke.org: One of my favourite full-time bloggers Jason Kottke celebrated ten years on the blog scene in March and continues to post interesting, creative content.
• StumbleUpon: StumbleUpon is a powerful community-driven tool that lets you discover new websites and should therefore be used on a daily basis for sparking your creative juices. I’m amazed at how many websites I find that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. Be warned; it’s addictive!
• Computerlove: Part blog part social network, Computerlove features the work of talented designers and artists that will definitely rouse your creativity. Also check out Bauldoff and Swissmiss.
• How to Change the World: If, like me, you’re a marketer at heart then Guy Kawaski’s blog is a must. Full of super ideas and advice, it’s a daily must read. So is Seth Godin’s blog.
• SpringWise: As an entrepreneur and consultant I’m always on the lookout for the latest trends and ideas that I can share with myself and/or my clients. With 8 000 spotters across the globe, SpringWise delivers inspiring and practical business ideas that we can all learn from.
• Twitter: I follow a variety of people on Twitter and am often on the receiving end of inspiring tweets from across the globe. The more I use Twitter the more uses I find for it.
• 43 Things: To be successful, you need to set goals. 43 Things helps you out by allowing you to view other people’s goals and dreams. If you’re feeling stuck, be sure to give this website a visit.
• Behance: This website is all about making things happen using creative means. It features interviews and tips across a number of fields to help make creative leaders out of all of us. I also quite like their creative showcase.
• Webupon: Webupon is a good resource of some of the best articles related to the internet, most of which are packed with great ideas. Great resource.
• Moleskin Project: I love this brand of notebook. While I don’t use them to doodle, I do like their website which promotes artists’ work and ideas. Some incredible stuff.
• Gaping Void: Sometimes art, or in this case doodles behind business cards, has a way of stimulating creativity, and Hugh McLeod is a genius at what he does. Be sure to also read his post on How to be Creative.
• 43 Folders: I’ve been following Merlin Mann for years now. Through 43 Folders Merlin shares tricks to help improve our personal productivity and subsequently do our best creative work in its various forms.
• Drawn: Dubbed the Illustration and Cartooning blog, Drawn’s group of professional illustrators, designers and cartoonists do a good job of inspiring creativity through their content. Visiting this site is like taking a mini vacation.

Happy bookmarking.

Leila Josefowicz – 2008 MacArthur Fellows

Leila Josefowicz is a young violinist who is captivating audiences with her technically precise and emotionally resonant performances of both traditional and contemporary works. Since her Carnegie Hall debut at the age of sixteen, Josefowicz has blossomed into one of today’s preeminent soloists, performing around the globe with the world’s most prestigious orchestras and conductors. Her recent recording of Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 1 and Violin Sonata (2006) features eloquent interpretations of these haunting and sorrowful pieces, written in Stalinist Russia. Not content to simply master the standard repertoire of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky, Josefowicz is stretching the mold of the classical violinist in her passionate advocacy of contemporary composers and their work. She is a close and regular collaborator with the leading composers of the day, often premiering their new compositions. Through her performances, recordings, and recital programs, she introduces traditional, classical music audiences to noteworthy new works, illustrating the excitement and beauty that emanates from the juxtaposition of the avant-garde and eclectic with the more traditional. Josefowicz’s genuine commitment to the music of today, coupled with her keen musical intelligence and virtuosity, is inspiring new compositions for the violin and significantly broadening the instrument’s repertoire.

Leila Josefowicz received a B.Mus. (1997) from the Curtis Institute of Music. She has performed with orchestras throughout the United States and internationally, including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the London Symphony.

Tara Donovan – 2008 MacArthur Fellows

Tara Donovan is an inventive young sculptor whose installations bring wonder to the most common objects of everyday life. Donovan’s site-specific, sculptural works transform ordinary accumulated materials into intriguing visual and physical installations. Choosing a single object – such as a transparent drinking straw, scotch tape, a Styrofoam cup, or a paper clip – Donovan experiments with assembling it in different ways. Sensitive to the specific needs of her materials and the nature of her exhibit spaces, her installations are often arranged in ways reminiscent of geological or biological forms. For her 2003 installation entitled “Haze,” Donovan stacked over two million clear plastic drinking straws against a 42-foot-long gallery wall. The resulting effect, with its shifts in color, form, light, and surface, was that of a fog bank or a diaphanous cloud, providing the viewer with a compelling, perceptually transformative experience. In a 2007 untitled work, Donovan created a 50×60-foot installation using over three million seven-ounce plastic drinking cups in rows of different heights, resembling a serene, iridescent ice field. This singular artist is creating a dazzling body of work that will enrich the fields of contemporary sculpture and installation art for years to come.

Tara Donovan received a B.F.A. (1991) from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and an M.F.A. (1999) from Virginia Commonwealth University. Her work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions at such venues as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the UCLA Hammer Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.

Walter Kitundu – 2008 MacArthur Fellows

Walter Kitundu is a young sound artist and inventor of original musical instruments that navigate the boundary between live and recorded performance. Inspired by hip-hop, other modern musical forms, and traditional Asian and African instruments, Kitundu’s phonoharps are hybrids of turntables and stringed instruments. At once highly sculptural art objects and functional instruments, the phonoharps offer a wide range of melodic possibilities and are surprisingly versatile in performance. The turntable’s pickup collects and amplifies any sound transmitted to it, allowing the performer to employ percussion and string resonance as well as digital manipulation, or sampling, of prerecorded material. Kitundu takes full advantage of the phonoharp’s flexibility in electro-acoustic compositions that seamlessly incorporate experimental, jazz, and pop music influences. Many of Kitundu’s artistic pursuits, including ambitious proposals for public installations of his instruments, reflect his ongoing interest in the interaction between technology and the natural world. His elemental phonoharps, for example, draw on natural forces such as wind, waves, light, and the movement of birds to produce unique sound sculptures. An experimental instrument builder, composer, and musician, Kitundu’s interdisciplinary approach to music-making and performance is inspiring a wide range of musicians and audiences.

Walter Kitundu has been affiliated with the Exploratorium Museum of Science, Art, and Human Perception since 2003, where he is currently a multimedia artist. In 2008, he is the Wornick Distinguished Visiting Professor of Wood Arts at the California College of the Arts and artist-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. His work has been exhibited and performed at such national and international venues as the Singapore Arts Centre, the Gunnar Gunnarsson Institute, Iceland, the Walker Art Center, and the Museum of Craft and Folk Art. He has also created instruments for and performed with the Kronos Quartet at several venues across the U.S.

Alex Ross – 2008 MacArthur Fellows

Alex Ross is a critic whose
writing captures the often-elusive aesthetic and technical aspects of
classical and contemporary music with clarity, grace, and wit. A staff
writer for the New Yorker, his frequent essays display an
expansive knowledge of music and a facility for guiding his readers,
who range from professional musicians to scholars to the general public
alike, to a richer experience of the complex pieces and artists he
explores. With a finely tuned grasp of a full spectrum of styles, he
places works by a broad variety of artists – from Mozart to Schoenberg
to Bob Dylan – within a continuum and sets aside categories and
classifications that impede the appreciation of works on their own
terms. In each article, Ross strives to demonstrate how a specific
piece of music, be it centuries or months old, conveys meaning and
feeling in the present. In addition to his work in essay form, he
recently published the book The Rest Is Noise (2007), a
cultural history of 20th-century music that journeys through pre-World
War I Vienna, Paris of the 1920s, Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia,
and New York of the 1960s and 1970s. Through a widely read blog of the
same title (www.therestisnoise.com),
he further expands the reach of his interpretive skills and enthusiasm
for championing overlooked composers and out-of-the-way ensembles. In
an era when many proclaim the imminent demise of concert halls due to
waning attendance, Ross offers both highly specialized and casual
readers new ways of thinking about the music of the past and its place
in our future.

Alex Ross received a B.A. (1990) from Harvard University. He has been the music critic for the New Yorker since 1996 and served previously as a music critic for the New York Times (1992-1996). His writing has also appeared in the New Republic, Slate, Lingua Franca, and the London Review of Books.

Out of the blue – $500,000 – No strings for creativity

CHICAGO, Sept. 23

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation today named 25 new MacArthur Fellows for 2008. This past week, the recipients learned in a single phone call from the Foundation that they will each receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over the next five years. All were selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future.

“The MacArthur Fellows Program celebrates extraordinarily creative individuals who inspire new heights in human achievement,” said MacArthur President Jonathan Fanton. “With their boldness, courage and uncommon energy, this new group of Fellows — men and women of all ages in diverse fields — exemplifies the boundless nature of the human mind and spirit.”  Recipients this year include: — an astronomer designing experiments and devices to advance understanding of the geometry of the universe and the story of both its beginning and its end (Adam Riess); — a neuroscientist tracing the natural interactions of differentiating neurons, bringing us closer to developing effective methods for treating central nervous system damage (Sally Temple); — a novelist inspired by events in her native Nigeria, exploring the circumstances that lead to ethnic conflict (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie); — an inventor of new musical instruments that transform and transcend the musical experience and navigate the boundaries between live and recorded sound (Walter Kitundu); — an urban farmer bringing low-cost technology to the cultivation, production and delivery of healthy foods to underserved urban populations here and abroad (Will Allen); — a geriatrician transforming treatment for millions suffering from painful life-threatening and end-of-life illness into more humane and effective care (Diane Meier); — an optical physicist demonstrating that power can be transmitted wirelessly, opening the door to the possibility of a range of devices operating free of traditional power sources (Marin Soljacic); — a saxophonist drawing from a variety of jazz idioms and the music of his native Puerto Rico to create complex, accessible sounds overflowing with passion (Miguel Zenon); — a critical care physician devising life-saving, clinical practices to improve patient safety in hospitals and to spare countless lives from deadly human error (Peter Pronovost); — a structural engineer restoring cathedrals and castles of the distant past and identifying ancient technologies for use in contemporary construction (John Ochsendorf); — a stage lighting designer pushing the visible boundaries of her art form with painterly lighting evoking mood and sculpting movement in dance, drama and opera (Jennifer Tipton); — an anthropologist illuminating the intellectual and emotional life of ancient Mesoamerican peoples through insightful interpretations of hieroglyphic inscriptions and figural art (Stephen Houston).

Einstein on creativity…… on Sunday

One of the most famous quotes of Einstein is when he said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Einstein was putting value on creativity here. His theories and ideas were all about creativity. When he made a working boxcar for his son out of shoestring and some boxes, that was creativity. When he was down and out and needed money and posted an ad for tutoring lessons; that was creativity in making money.

Since Einstein accomplished some of the greatest thoughts of our time, an argument could be made that he was one of the most creative people of all time. You can know more about your product than anyone and have more degrees than anyone you know, but if you don’t have a little bit of creativity to take advantage of what you have, then it is useless.

Credentials and knowledge will do you little good if you lack the creativity to take advantage of them. Einstein once said, “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” I think he was being a little humble and a lot humorous here, but he was once again acknowledging the importance of being creative!

So you may ask yourself, “What is creativity?”

That is an excellent question — let’s go straight to the source to answer it. Einstein said, “CREATIVITY is seeing what other see and THINKING what no one else has thought.”

Bobby McFerrin and Jacques Loussier play Bach

Its late Friday night and I’m trawling through videos of songs I grew up with as a teenager. Wishbone Ash, Pat Methany, Led Zepplin, Pink Floyd and the amazing John Mayall doing Room to Move on the harmonica. Strange to put images to music one knew so well! And then as I got into the 80’s I came accross Jacques Loussier playing with Bobby Mc Ferrin. Its classic Bach yet how many of us would recognise it…  Try this by clicking the title above to better centre the video.

What is creativity?

Tate Linden

(Click on the title of the blog to get the video correctly sized)

Mozart refreshes part of the brain others composers cannot

Rachel Thomas
The connection between mathematics and music has always found fertile ground in the work of Mozart. Many scholars have analysed the mathematical nature of his music, for example investigating if he used formulae like the golden ratio to decide how to section his movements. It has even been suggested that there is a “Mozart effect” – that listening to pieces by this composer can help students concentrate or even improve their test scores!

This effect has been a subject of much debate in the scientific community, but regardless of whether the theory can be proved, students at Windhill Primary School in Southern Yorkshire appear to be benefitting from the Mozart treatment.

The school is part of a one-year pilot program to investigate the effect of listening to music on the students’ overall educational experience. And it is not just Mozart that is on the play list. Chopin and Brahms are used for assemblies, Beethoven is played for its calming effects and even pop music such as the Mission Impossible theme or a tune from Kylie are suitable for more active moments.

However it is Mozart that seems to be particularly suitable for accompanying maths lessons. In one experiment, the pupils from a Year 6 class which listened to the composer performed 10% better than those taught without. “We have found that Mozart symphonies which have complicated note patterns stimulate mathematical thinking,” the head teacher Doulla Simon said. “The music reaches certain parts of the brain which other composers do not.”

So perhaps Mozart is music to a maths student’s ears after all!

A mathematician’s guide to mating

by John Billingham

When you were small, you probably heard the fairytale The Frog Prince. The original version of the story is rather more complicated.

The Frog Prince: original version

Once upon a time, a princess was walking through a forest and stumbled across a pond. Out of the pond rose a witch, who cackled, “Stop! I have turned a handsome prince into a frog and cast him into my pond to live with 99 other frogs. Each frog has a different number on his back. The prince has the largest number on his back, and this is your only way of spotting him. You must find him and kiss him if you want to leave my enchanted forest. The frogs will jump from the pond one by one. When each frog appears, you must decide whether to kiss him or throw him back in, never to be seen again. If you kiss a real frog, or don’t kiss any of the 100 frogs, you will never leave the forest, and the prince will remain in the pond.” And with a suitably evil laugh, the witch sank back into her murky pond. Fortunately, the princess was very good at maths, and knew the best strategy for deciding which frog to kiss.
Frog 1 hopped out of the pond with the number 2 on its back. The princess kicked it back into the pond. Frog 2 had the number 12 on its back. Better, but it received the same treatment from the princess. Frog 3 was number −6 (Did I say the numbers had to be positive?) and was duly dispatched by the princess. She repeated this for the first 37 frogs, and noted that the highest number she had seen so far was 23.2 (Did I say they had to be whole numbers?). She then waited until she saw a frog numbered higher than 23.2 and kissed it. (Of course the frog numbered 23.2 might have been the prince, and she’d then have missed him.) The frog disappeared in a puff of smoke to be replaced by a handsome prince, and they lived happily ever after (or, if you prefer unhappy endings: the witch rose from the pond laughing as the frog remained unmoved by the princess’s attentions. Oh dear! There was a higher numbered frog still to come).

All dressed up in creativity

Bryan Eaton

You’ve just made a salad of mango and shrimp on Boston lettuce with avocado, red pepper and cilantro. But what do you dress it with? How about a salad of Romaine lettuce with almonds, carrots and strawberries?

No worries. Doug Morris knows just what it takes to dress up an inventive salad.

Morris, the owner of Old Town Bakery in Rowley, led a workshop on salad dressings recently at Pettengill Farm in Salisbury. The farm hosts several events throughout the year, including a few food demonstrations led by Morris that are designed to be educational, inventive and fun.

Last month’s Potluck Salad Night was no exception. The 30 attendees were asked to bring a salad of their own choice, for which Morris would create a complementary dressing. With a counter stocked with various oils, vinegars, spices and condiments, plus a bunch of potted fresh herbs, he was ready for the challenge.

The magical mathematics of music

by Jeffrey S. Rosenthal

The astronomer Galileo Galilei observed in 1623 that the entire universe “is written in the language of mathematics”, and indeed it is remarkable the extent to which science and society are governed by mathematical ideas. It is perhaps even more surprising that music, with all its passion and emotion, is also based upon mathematical relationships. Such musical notions as octaves, chords, scales, and keys can all be demystified and understood logically using simple mathematics.

Can we make music from a mathematical formula?

Daniel White

With chess, one could get a computer to analyse a particular position for the best possible move/s. There isn’t any ‘easy’ formula – it has to laboriously go through every single possible move branch to see which the best possible continuation is, so it’s (more or less) effectively doing what a human does, but faster.
Now music, is a million times more complex than this – because each new section that is ‘calculated’ (if such a thing could be done), would have to be cross-checked with every part of the tune that has just gone by.
Any possible program to create good music would probably be made up of many sub formulas (one dedicated to the melody, one for the harmony, rhythm etc. etc.) – each eventually combining and ‘growing’ music in some way to create the final piece. I believe if you start off with even a slightly different ’seed’ of music, the best possible continuation would continue vastly different and unexpectedly.

Is Zander taking advantage of Beethoven’s deafness?

PRIVATE PASSIONS OF BENJAMIN ZANDER

World Link

The magazine of the World Economic Forum

For the past 30 years, Ben Zander, Conductor, Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, has been waging a one man war against the Romantic treatment of Beethoven. Here he tells Charles Darwent what has driven his approach to the German maestro

The guests at the London Radisson have never seen anything like it. An elegant, bushy-haired man is dancing around the breakfast bar shouting, “This is what a marche funèbre is like! Half steps! Half steps! Like this! So the one in the Eroica should go da-da-DEE-da, da-da-DEE-da, not DEE-da-da-da, DEE-da-da-da.” Fellow diners avoid his eye and call pleadingly for their bills.

Where Math meets Music – Joseph Heimiller

Where Math meets Music

Ever wonder why some note combinations sound pleasing to our ears, while others make us cringe? To understand the answer to this question, you’ll first need to understand the wave patterns created by a musical instrument. When you pluck a string on a guitar, it vibrates back and forth. This causes mechanical energy to travel through the air, in waves. The number of times per second these waves hit our ear is called the ‘frequency’. This is measured in Hertz (abbreviated Hz). The more waves per second the higher the pitch. For instance, the A note below middle C is at 220 Hz. Middle C is at about 262 Hz.

Now, to understand why some note combinations sound better, let’s first look at the wave patterns of 2 notes that sound good together. Let’s use middle C and the G just above it as an example:

Now let’s look at two notes that sound terrible together, C and F#:

Do you notice the difference between these two? Why is the first ‘consonant’ and the second ‘dissonant’? Notice how in the first graphic there is a repeating pattern: every 3^rd wave of the G matches up with every 2^nd wave of the C (and in the second graphic how there is no pattern). This is the secret for creating pleasing sounding note combinations: Frequencies that match up at regular intervals