From Mars to the stage: JPL Choir explores math and music

Some of the greatest minds in science work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena. This weekend a group of them will turn their attention from exploring space to exploring their artsy side.

The JPL Choir will perform a free concert at the Pasadena Symphony's Ambassador Auditorium Saturday night. 

The choir is made up of about 50 staff members, many of them scientists and engineers. It formed about two and a half years ago. The group meets once a week to focus on heavenly voices instead of heavenly bodies.

“It’s rare that I’ve stayed up all night for fun doing mathematics but many times I’ve pulled all-nighters just playing music with friends,” said Todd Barber, a propulsion engineer at JPL. He studied both engineering and music at MIT and he said the two disciplines have a natural affinity.

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“They definitely feed off each other. I probably have been able to bring more to music because of the math and science background.”

It’s a connection that has been noted for centuries. Of course numbers are important to time and rhythm. Music composition has long relied on principles like the Golden Ratio to organize beats, harmonies and song structure, and one of the earliest mathematicians in Ancient Greece was also a musical theorist.

"We use a tuning scale based on Pythagoras by adjusting the notes by perfect fifths and we’re singing several songs that are dedicated to that particular principle of tuning,” said conductor Donald Brinegar.

He has lots of experience working with professional musicians but he says this group brings a special aptitude for picking out complex rhythms and analyzing musical phrases.

But there are limits to this rational approach. 

"The notes have to go beyond just time and counting they have to go to meaningful inflection," said Brinegar. "Sometimes notes bind us up in a way that makes it harder to understand that."

Singer Charley Noecker concurs. He engineers the optics JPL uses to look into space. Though he likes to analyze wave frequencies and harmonics, he turns that off when he’s trying to get in tune.

"If I try to think about the physics of something it doesn’t work as well. I have to stop controlling it and just let it go."

There may be no one approach, no single answer to the math in music equation. But this Saturday when the choir takes the stage it will be a rare opportunity for a group so familiar with interstellar space to be the stars of their own show.