Mathematical explanation of music and white/black notes in a piano
The top answer on stackexchange is a <i>superb</i> explanation of musical science that most of the finest musicians in history could not give you. They just don't teach you these things in music class.<p>Musical culture seems to resist illumination, perhaps fearing that the "magic" will somehow be broken. The irony is that music <i>is</i>, in a sense, a mathematical illusion, but revealing the trick only makes it more fascinating.<p>I will add one important point that hasn't really been made: The purpose of equal temperament may have <i>originally</i> been to "change keys without retuning", but it also essentially allows you to play in 12 different keys <i>at the same time</i>. This has been exploited to great lengths as source of musical novelty and is absolutely fundamental to modern music.