Music Theory & DNA
Discover how musical scales feel, sound, and connect to the building blocks of life. Pick an instrument, hit Play, and watch the notes move.
DNA Nucleotides
The four letters of the genetic code — and their musical equivalents
A purine base — one of the larger nucleotides. Carries energy as ATP. Always bonds with Thymine using 2 hydrogen bonds.
A pyrimidine — one of the smaller nucleotides. Bonds with Guanine through 3 hydrogen bonds, making it the stronger pairing.
A pyrimidine found only in DNA, not RNA. Pairs with Adenine via 2 hydrogen bonds. Replaced by Uracil when DNA is transcribed into RNA.
A purine like Adenine. Its 3-bond pairing with Cytosine makes C-G regions harder to unzip — critical for DNA stability.
🧬 Anatomy of DNA — from letter to life
The single letter of the genetic alphabet. Each has a sugar, phosphate, and one of 4 bases (A, C, T, G). Chain billions together and you have DNA.
A always bonds with T. C always bonds with G — no exceptions. These form the rungs of the DNA ladder and allow perfect copying every time a cell divides.
Two strands twisting like a spiral staircase. Discovered in 1953 — one of the greatest scientific moments in history.
A stretch of base pairs encoding one protein. Humans have ~20,000 genes — but they make up only 2% of our DNA. The rest is still being studied.
Each nucleotide maps to a musical note. Conserved regions across species play similar passages. Mutations sound different. Evolution becomes audible.
🎹 DNA → Musical Note Mapping
| Base | Full Name | Musical Note | Pairs With |
|---|---|---|---|
|
A
|
Adenine | Do (C) | T |
|
C
|
Cytosine | Mi (E) | G |
|
T
|
Thymine | Sol (G) | A |
|
G
|
Guanine | La (A) | C |
The Phylogenetic Tree
The family tree of all life — and why it sounds the way it does
Humans and chimps share ~98.7% of DNA — in Tree Harmony their music sounds nearly identical. Zebrafish share ~70% — same melody structure, many different notes.
Branch Length = Time
Longer branches = more evolutionary time = more mutations accumulated. More mutations = more musical differences between species.
Conserved Regions
Some DNA sequences are identical across thousands of species — too vital to change. In Tree Harmony, these sections sound the same in every species' song.
Hearing Evolution
A Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA) lines up DNA column by column. Tree Harmony turns each column into a chord — evolution you can literally hear.
Musical Scales
Choose your instrument → Press Play → Watch the scale animate
The most natural scale in music — pure, resolved, and uplifting. Every white key on the piano in order. When something sounds cheerful, this is usually why.
The most natural minor scale. Melancholic and deeply emotional, used in countless moving songs.
Minor pentatonic with an added flat 5th — the 'blue note'. The sound of jazz, rock, and soul. That one note creates all the tension.
A minor scale with a raised 6th. Darker than major but less heavy than natural minor. Used heavily in jazz, funk, and modal music.
Starts with a half step — instantly exotic. The flamenco scale. Used in metal and Spanish guitar for its dark, intense, foreign sound.
Major with a raised 4th — one note makes it feel surreal and otherworldly. Used in film scores for magical, floating, dream-like scenes.
Major with a flat 7th. Sounds like rock and blues. The Beatles used it constantly — it has a major brightness with a cool, unresolved edge.
The most dissonant scale — has a flat 2nd and flat 5th. Almost never used as a home key because it never resolves. Used in metal and horror.
Phrygian dominant — a Phrygian scale with a raised 3rd. The quintessential Spanish/Middle Eastern sound. Instantly evocative.
A pentatonic scale with suspended 2nd and 4th. No 3rd or 7th — ambiguous, ancient-sounding, and hypnotic.
Major pentatonic built on the 5th mode. Wide intervals give it a sparse, open, Eastern feel — like a single instrument in a large space.
A Japanese scale with only 5 notes — half step, large gap, half step. Stark and meditative, used in traditional Japanese music.
From Balinese gamelan music. Uses very unusual intervals not found in Western scales — deeply ceremonial and unlike anything else.
Based on Native American Hopi musical tradition. Pentatonic but with distinct intervallic character — meditative and grounded.
Invented by Verdi — contains all 7 notes but in a completely irregular pattern. Sounds like it constantly wants to go somewhere but never lands. Truly strange.
Developers
The team behind Tree Harmony
