Reveals that the Fibonacci ring demonstrates specific musical intervals, suggesting unique implications for music theory.
On the Fibonacci 60-ring, two equal circles can be made to cross at an integer setting k, placing their two crossing points a fixed number of divisions apart. Read those two points as musical pitches — the ring carries five octaves of twelve chromatic notes — and a striking pattern appears: the interval between them is always an even number of semitones. The dial can sound a major second, a major third, a tritone, a minor sixth, a minor seventh, or an octave, and nothing else. It plays the whole-tone scale and is deaf to every odd interval, including the perfect fifth and perfect fourth. Within this whole-tone instrument one interval is special: the octave, where the two voices fuse into one. It occurs at exactly two of the fourteen settings — and both are the golden ratio, d = R·φ and d = R/φ. The interval vanishes precisely, and only, at φ. This paper proves why, using nothing past elementary trigonometry, and notes the consequences for the wider system.
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Neal Strassner (2026) studied this question.
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