Here’s an article about it: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3044877/the-golden-ratio-designs-biggest-myth

I’m no 100% sure either way, but i think it’s definitely worth questioning.

If we think of sound like a combination of circular dimension events (waveform cycles) with a linear dimension event (time), we could imagine a vast land for various Golden Ratio appliances.

Yet probably due to its “spatial” (i.e. linear) nature, the Golden Ratio already got various applications in music history, specially in the time-related domain.

On the wake of former attempts to search for new harmonic contexts, overcoming the classical tonal system in music (think of dodecaphony), composers like Bartók, impressionists like Debussy and Satie, and unfailingly Stockhausen experienced with Golden Ratio for melodic relations, in notes occurrences and in the overall structural form of a musical composition.

I remember how, in a composition class, we analyzed the exploitation of Golden Ratio at the climax point of Bartók’s “Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta”.

We can read an excellent dissertation on the use of Golden Ratio in music, in this paper released on the Academia site, look here: http://www.academia.edu/3569720/The_Golden_Section_as_a_Source_of_Consistency_in_20th_Century_Music

Now, why not think of using Golden Ratio at the “circular” level (the dimension of waveforms) and at the micro-scale of sound itself?
We already have the tools to synthesize and manipulate every possible parameter of sound generation, so we could really experiment with new harmonic/enharmonic ratios and frequency content relations.

We could also try and apply Golden Ratio rules in hundreds of modulation parameters (think of phase modulation or modular synthesis), in pattern sequencing, in modeling spiral shapes of grains generation as the curves of evolving textures, and so on…

I guess, there’s really a lot of space for experimentation, whether one wants to.
So, to end with a joke… maybe one day we’ll get the plugin of our dreams, sort of this funny thing, popped out in the “April fools day”:
https://www.facebook.com/wavesfactory/photos/a.10150594409348181.382653.235396943180/10153545390543181/?type=3&theater

Greetings,
diz.

I really appreciate your blog, especially much this more philosophical approach :)