Reading about the golden ratio the other day, I wondered if the beats in a 
shuffle are in the "golden proportion". A quick Ruby program indicates they 
might be:

http://subbot.org/misc/golden/golden.txt
http://subbot.org/misc/golden/golden2.txt
http://subbot.org/misc/golden/sound.txt (part of the "Win32/sound" Ruby gem)

Of course using "sleep" to time the notes is not very accurate due to scheduling
and garbage collection, etc. so I should probably use a Timer.

To further test my hypothesis that jazz rhythms such as shuffle and leg-of-lamb 
etc. conform to the golden proportion, I could measure the time intervals 
between drum beats on recordings. This would require some precise equipment.

I wonder how the jazz rhythms on electronic keyboard metronomes are produced. 
Do they make use of the golden ratio in the programming?

This page: http://www.goldenmuseum.com/0702Rytmus_engl.html is kind of 
interesting, suggesting the heart beats in the golden proportion (and a 
heartbeat is like a shuffle, right?).

"Who is the conductor of the multi-voice biorhythmic symphony of our organism 
and of our brain electrical oscillation frequencies, in particular, of the 
steadiest a-rhythm frequency? Recently the Russian scientist Slutsky put 
forward a rather interesting hypothesis to answer to this question. He 
recognizes that the animal and man organism represent by itself the biorhythmic 
system, which is developed during a long evolution under influence of the 
environment, the earth's and cosmic factors. Therefore, it is necessary to 
search in the environment the source of electromagnetic oscillations with 
frequencies corresponding to the frequencies of the brain rhythms In Slutsky's 
opinion, such a source is the geomagnetic field having the oscillation frequency
8-13 hertz, that is, the same as well as the a-rhythm. Also electrostatic 
atmosphere waves have the same frequency. Thus, we can see consider the brain 
as a radio receiver, which is self-tuned according to the frequency of the 
Earth's magnetic field."