With each stroke, each roll of the torso, each glide into the turn, the pace, the precision, the propulsion, the graceful surge, every passing gold medal and world record - six of each going into the weekend with two to go - we hear a few more notes of the eighth symphony that was composed in the mind of Michael Phelps's coach long before the most successful Olympian was born.

Bob Bowman, a music scholar and psychologist, will lay down his baton tomorrow after the American superfish races the last of his eight finals at the Water Cube, but the soaring beauty of a masterpiece will resonate down the decades. By the time you read this, Bowman's beat would have his charge drawn up alongside Mark Spitz's Olympic record of seven medals at one Games. The 4x100 metres medley relay will end Phelps's quest by lunchtime tomorrow.

Eight golds, a $1million (about £530,000) bonus from Speedo, a sponsor, and a career tally of 14 gold medals (six straight from Mount Olympus in 2004) , five more than the best of the lesser immortals of sport.

Bowman learnt to play piano at the age of 10. At 12, his father took him to watch a competition at which Tracy Caulkins, one of the most versatile swimmers in history and the 1984 double Olympic medley champion, held top billing. Watching her was “like hearing an orchestra play”, Bowman said, a Beethoven fan with a degree in developmental psychology (minoring in music composition). The moment haunted him and, after graduating, Bowman married together the two loves of his life: music and swimming. All he needed was the right instrument.

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It arrived in 1995 when a gawky ten-year-old, fresh from shedding a fear of putting his face in water, walked on to the pool deck at North Baltimore Aquatic Club. Bowman's prayers had finally been answered after several failed attempts at translating to sports mentoring the rigour and repetition drummed into him as a music scholar.Here was a boy with a capacity to train to the beat and compete in a way that turned a standard tune on its head. In his early days as a coach, Bowman's tempo resulted in burnout among a fair few youngsters. “I was definitely overzealous,” he says.

Enter Phelps, a boy who by 11 had a capacity to train in sync with Bowman's beat and compete in a way that turned the standard tune on its head. “One of the things I call Michael is the motivation machine,” Bowman said. “Bad moods, good moods, he channels everything for gain. He's motivated by success, he loves to swim fast and when he does that he goes back and trains better. He's motivated by failure, by money, by people saying things about him...just anything that comes along he turns into a reason to train harder, swim better. Channelling his energy is one of his greatest attributes.”

After being told that he was suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and enduring being bullied by classmates at school “because I had sticky out ears”, Phelps channelled his energy into 16 to 18 kilometres a day of training, seven days a week, from the age of 14.

Now 23, Phelps, like Caulkins in the late 1970s and 1980s, is the most versatile swimmer on the planet. His conquest this week of waters not so much uncharted as undreamt of has had a balance, a rhythm, a beat, a drop, a harmony, an uplifting majesty to it. The Times compared it to Rodrigo's haunting Concierto de Aranjuez. Bowman asked to have a word. “Where did you get that from? I have been listening to that like every day this year. Fabulous,” he beamed. And then he was off, back down into the belly of the Water Cube away from the public gaze to a place where Phelps's flesh can be found between the hands of masseurs, physiotherapists and sports scientists at hand to do their bit in a campaign that never sleeps.

On the burning deck, As he walked out for the final of the 200 metres medley yesterday Phelps is a scale away from Rodrigo, lost in rapper lost himself in the rap of Young Jeezy's Go Getteras he walked out for the final of the 200m medley in sync on his iPod. It was 1min 54.23sec after Phelps's feet had left his blocks in the final of the 200 metres medley that medal and world record No6 were confirmed. The beauty of 0.57sec was never so obvious; it was the time in which he stayed ahead of his own record pace for three lengths of the pool. The fourth split ahead of time was 0.67sec and that was the measure of his weakness: on breaststroke, the only discipline in which he is not ranked among the top three in the world, he swam as fast as the average split of the eight finalists in the 200 metres breaststroke. Specialists shudder and pray that when the Games are done, their thing is not the thing Phelps next turns his attention to.

In the words of Laszlo Cseh, the Hungarian who collected a third silver medal behind the American in the short medley yesterday in a third European record and then watched the American return to the fray 20 minutes later to qualify for the butterfly final: “You take a big step forward but each time you get to a new standard, he has jumped further ahead. He has an answer to everything.” Bowman's symphony will reach a crescendo on a refrain of master butterfly, in the solo 100m and the 4x100m medley this weekend before Phelps takes off on a golfing holiday in the Algarve via a stop-over in London. A quick tour of the Olympic site, perhaps, at the start of another epic journey.

Great Britain will enter the last day of action at the Water Cube tomorrow with two solid medal chances after the women's 4x100 metres medley relay qualified for the final in a European record and David Davies, the Olympic bronze medal-winner in 2004, raced into the 1,500metres freestyle final.

Francesca Halsall will also compete in the 50metres freestyle final, while Liam Tancock, Chris Cook, Michael Rock and Simon Burnett will contest the 4x100 metres medley final.