“One of the really important things about modal music is that you have a set of frequency relationships that are repeated over and over, and because of the emphasis on intonation in Indian Classical music this set of frequency relationships is very much in exactly the same place so that each frequency comes right back at the same place. This sets up a series of patterns in the mechanism of the nervous system of the listener so that a psychological state is created. If you believe that the Universe is composed of vibrations then you can understand how a study of sound– which is the most concrete form of vibrations that the human mechanism can immediately assimilate–can be an introduction to the understanding of universal structure.”
La Monte Young
Rethinking Time 