In the west we pretty much associate those twelve equally tempered notes with music, so anyone who hasn't done a lot of study into music theory would get that reaction.
But basically you can derive a lot of different intervals from math. The more rational the fraction representing the interval, the more consonant it sounds. Like a power chord is a root note and another note with a frequency roughly 2/3rds more than that. A major third is a root note and the interval 5/4s above that. The bigger the fraction gets the more dissonant the sound is. Like in blues you have ratios like 7/5's that create a lot of dissonance.
Of course, in the 12-tone scale that we're familiar with, it's not
exactly that, but it's close enough that most people can't tell the difference. If you used the completely rational intervals, the interval between each individual note in the scale wouldn't be equal, and so the scale would go ridiculously out of tune if you tried to change key using the same set of notes. With the 12 tone equally spaced scale every interval in every key is equally and mildly out of tune. The 12 equally spaced tone scale is used, basically, because it's convenient. With rational tunings, you'd have to manually retune the instrument during performance to change key, which would be ridiculous.
It's easy but it's limiting and bland at the same time, and I'd just like to get out of that.
