"The Overtone Series" plays a big part in developing western music theory. There is a special way of doing it on the piano (I forget) where if you play a note you can hear the harmonic of a perfect 5th ringing above it, then an octave above that, then a 3rd etc, etc..Peter Bernstien did a 3 part lecture series on it that was quite fascinating (its on video)some libraries have it.