Max Cooper is a London-based music producer, DJ, and theoretical geneticist. He is currently signed to Traum Schallplatten, a record label from Cologne which has had recent releases by electronic artists including Dominik Eulberg, Nathan Fake and Extrawelt. His current production sound incorporates musical styles as varied as deep techno, Chicago-house, dub-step, IDM and modern classical elements that are in keeping with Traum’s deep, cerebral, techno aesthetic. His main research interest involves the computational modelling of the evolution of gene networks, and he is currently based at the Centre for Mathematics and Physics in the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology (CoMPLEX), at University College London. Glass recently interviewed him to discuss his thoughts on the link between mathematics and music, two seemingly disparate elements that undoubtedly form his modi operandi.  

So can you tell me your understanding about the link between mathematics and music?

What we define as music is sound waves organised in patterns, generally a combination of simple and complex patterns, layered one on top of another, some repeating themselves thousands of times per second, and some repeating only once over many seconds. When we listen to music we seem to be appreciating the mathematical properties of these patterns. Symmetry, is the fundamental principle at play. By symmetry, I mean a pattern which remains unchanged in some way, when considered from a different perspective. For music this perspective is time, and because there are repeating patterns, these can be considered as symmetrical about time. The reason I use the term symmetry, rather than pattern, or periodicity, is that the idea of symmetry goes to the heart of maths and natural law.

If you look at objects in nature, such as the moon, which appears round (it has rotational symmetry), it is round for a mathematical reason, based on natural laws which are, like music, symmetrical about time. By this, I mean that the laws governing things in nature will be the same today as they are tomorrow, and can therefore be considered as symmetrical, just as a repeating melody in music can be considered symmetrical, with respect to time. Without symmetry, there can be no constants, so it seems that it is quite  fundamental. In this very loose sense, I could see music as our appreciation of this fundamental property.

That’s really interesting. OK, but how do you feel about asymmetry, especially in the context of music?

Hmm, a complete lack of any symmetry means no pattern at all, you basically have white noise.

And no one likes the sound of white noise, right?

It’s nice to have little touches of it, but if you have a track consisting of only white noise, most people wouldn’t listen to it – like Aphex Twin playing his sand-paper record. It’s not actually very pleasant to listen to, but people did I suppose, maybe it’s the way forward!

Makes sense. And how does music relate to the evolutionary aspect of your research that you have alluded to in the past?

This is just my view on the issue, but I would suggest that there may be an evolutionary aspect as to why people appreciate art and particularly music. The world around us can seem very confusing with all this information out there that we have to make sense of. But if we can make sense of this information, and predict it, then we can have control over our surroundings, and be successful as a species. A key part of us being successful as a species in competition with other species over our evolutionary history has been seeing the patterns in all this information, basically seeing the symmetries in nature. For example, understanding the seasonality of how crops grow. So, as a result, I would say there is a strong reward system that has evolved in human brains over time, for picking out symmetries.

If we listen to music and we can recognise particular symmetries such as in the chords and melodies, we are igniting that evolved mechanism encouraging the recognition of symmetries in nature, which promotes itself by causing an experience we find enjoyable. We might attribute our enjoyment to the beauty of the music. I would say that we may have evolved to define such things as beautiful, as a mechanism for our own propagation. In this sense, it seems that our appreciation of music could act as a sort of training tool for our brain’s action in a wider context. In fact, this ties in nicely with the studies about people performing better at IQ tests following listening to classical music (Rauscher et al., 1993*).

So it’s all sub-conscious?

Absolutely. And I would say that the idea of symmetry in music is common to music from all cultures.

You mean a human universal?

Only in the sense of this very basic property of music. When it comes to what makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, a lot of that is to do with nurture – what is essentially subjective and down to cultural influence and individual preference.

Although Max admits his music is clinical, he is very keen to point out that his new EP, “Stochastisch Serie”, is bringing in “non-deterministic”, or random elements to his music. In other words although the music is still heavily computational and synthesised, it is very emotive, with what Max’s describes as the “human touch”. Indeed some of the tracks on the EP include samples of Max’s voice and of organic sounds such as the popping noise of bubble wrap. This seems to sit rather nicely with Max’s description of Traum’s sound as “emotive electronica”.

There is a wonderful quote by Gottfried Leibniz, German philosopher and mathematician that seems to encapsulate Max’s comments:

“Music is the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting”

Stochastisch Serie EP is out on Traum Schallplaten on the 2nd November on vinyl and digital formats.
To find out about Max’s forthcoming tour dates, and listen to his music, go to his Myspace page. You can also download his latest live mix - “Lipse”, by clicking  here

www.myspace.com/maxcoopermax

With thanks to Gareth Williams and Nick Bugayev.

Faisal Latif


*Rauscher, F., Shaw, G., Ky, K. (1993). Music and spatial task performance. Nature, 365 611.