look i know i'm anti-pie when it comes
to mathematics but that doesn't mean i
don't love pie pie is a beautiful and
gentle creature and i'm happy to keep it
on as a cultural phenomenon even if it
doesn't belong in equations no today i'm
not angry about pi i'm angry about a
completely ludicrous copyright claim
pius inspired a lot of awesome things
and as a math and musician i know so
many people who have written pie that
i've begun to think of it as a sort of
rite of passage for nerdy composers just
as i expect that all singer-songwriters
have written a song about love you see
in music we've got this thing called
scale degree numbers where we write down
what a note is based on where it is in
the scale for c major c is one d is two
e is three and so on this is something
that everyone with a formal western
music education is fluent in being able
to translate instantly from numbers to
notes is useful when looking at music
theory texts and this is skill i've
employed in other areas as well such as
memorizing phone numbers for example my
google voice number one
five three oh seven eight four four two
seven
eight
memorizing digits of pi is a popular
pastime and since numbers are natural
representation of melody for every
trained musician it's pretty much a
no-brainer to make it into a melody i
didn't really mean to do it but one day
i accidentally memorized the first 97
digits this way after adding some
creative jazzy rhythms it becomes a fun
thing to sing i know a few people who
have performed or published pieces of
music using pie like this is awesome
because the point is not hearing the
digits of pi but what the composer does
with them that makes it their own
creative work
some play the melody straight and figure
out clever harmonies to go with it or
change the rhythms and compose around
that or use a less obvious mapping than
a major scale or also have lyrics with
words that have the same number of
letters as the digits i'm sure there's
many others too so if you've written a
pie piece send me an email i have some
favorites in this genre and i was very
excited at the recent what pie sounds
like video by michael blake because he
very cleverly canonizes the digits it's
creative and awesome and very well done
i was outraged to find out that his
video had been taken down because
another guy had written and copyrighted
a melody based on pi and felt that this
gave him exclusive rights to the pi
melody or at least the first 32 digits
because as he said there's plenty of
digits left for everyone else so while i
can't sing you the beginning of pi i can
sing you this one oh five
[Music]
one i understand wanting to cling to
your creative work as if it were your
own child and i realize i'm probably
being naive and optimistic and offering
all of my music and videos for free and
hoping it eventually comes back to me in
the form of ad money speaking fees and
donations still i'm gonna go right ahead
and say it this copyright claim is
ridiculous you can copyright a piece of
music that uses a c major chord but that
doesn't mean you own the c major chord
he can copyright his orchestration and
treatment of the melody but not pi
itself just like if i were to
choreograph a hand dance where the steps
my hand took were the digits of pi
converted to binary i'd feel like my
specific hand dance choreography was my
creative work but not the act of saying
pie in hand binary even though i seem to
be fighting this guy in the end i'm
actually on his side because i can all
but guarantee that many other people
wrote music based on pie before he did
and when that first person steps forward
and claims actually they did it first
and have a right to pie i don't want
this guy to have to take down his music
and fork over the money he's gotten for
it he like everyone else should be able
to creatively express his vision of the
melody of pie