Connection between Music and Math

[DaftCat]

Hi,

For those who are interested...

http://www.scienceray.com/Mathematic...ematics.129161

DCat

[false404]

Interesting read, I've heard stuff about the relationship of musical ability and doing well with math a little before. I wonder if listening to Tool helps...

[DudeistMonk]

Great article but...

which will give you the key of that note. This will also give you a major scale. According to Answer, majors scales are defined as: “an ascending or descending collection of pitches proceeding by a specified scheme of intervals”. This interval is: x+1+1+1+(1/2)+1+1+1+(1/2), with x representing any note, which was discussed earlier. There are thirteen major scales that are distinct, C, C#, D, D#, E, E#, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B. Any scales after these would be defined as octaves, one whole pattern above the others. To find octaves we use the formula (with x representing the first note of any scale):

x=x+13

E# is F and X=X+12 or am I going crazy?

Ohh and check this out its along the same lines but much more complicated http://music.princeton.edu/~dmitri/

[mikethecannibal]

perfect... take the one joy i have away from school, and remind me that it is now reminisciet if my most hated subject... thanks

[Dosed_Mind]

Stuff like this is exactly why i find physics fascinating - being able to understand the mechanics and logic behind everyday things, like why some intervals are more pleasing to the ear than others. Could be better written though

[DocBop]

Music is basic math because we number things to relate to them. Like intervals up and down add up to 9. A note in an interval is a 3rd up or a 6th down, 4th up or 5th down, 7th up or 2nd down. Chord subs are the 3rd of the current chord for common sub's.

Now when computer got popular I found a lot of computer people were also musicians. Musicians made good computer programmers. So I was talking to a college prof' about that. He said understanding music and computers and how the pieces fit together requires the same sense of abstract logic. That abstract logic comes into play in numbers and recognizing sequences. So its all about how we tend to think about things.

[crazyguy832]

In music, the lowest note possible to play is a low “A” at 55 hertz

I call baloney!

>_<

Also, x = x + 12, not x + 13...

That's actually quite a bad article...

[projectMalamute]

Originally Posted by crazyguy832

I call baloney!

>_<

Also, x = x + 12, not x + 13...

Actually x = x.

x = x + 12 is a contradiction, no mathematician would ever, ever write that. Using this logic we can draw conclusions such as 17 = 5.

I'm a musician with a degree in mathematics, I find the subject at hand fascinating. That article is pretty terrible though.

[BassChuck]

Terrible article. Very narrow and childish. Poorly researched. Many High School students with a good music theory class would be able to shoot holes in it. Mostly involved with showing the connection between SOUND and math... or the connections between WESTERN music notation and math.

What happens when he takes his point of view and applies it to Indian music? Or African rhythms? Most musical idiots can tell the difference between Haydn and Hip Hop... is there a math to show that? (I like the bit about harmonics being more complicated.... that's where some math might help our understanding).

One research that will never be done would be to play Beethoven at 120db to one group of babies and HipHop at muzak volume to another.... I'm going to bet that the HipHopers would be calmer children (and therefore better at school and intellectual tests).

And....BTW..... 55 Hz is NOT the lowest sound posible in music, its the lowest note on his piano. The human ear is capable of lower notes.... 20 Hz is a good place to start on that and 20kHz is an average top sound.

[E2daGGurl]

I agree about the article missing its entire target - but the connections it tried to make are still there and are fascinating.

I've started liking math again, now that I'm playing bass - indeed, going back through the history of math (especially geometry) has improved my playing and my math skills.

[ac1710]

Sound is physics which has lots of maths in it. The reasons why major chords sound happy lie in physics which uses mathematical formulae.

However Music is NOT maths. Maths is the study of constant events and formulae. i.e. 1+1 =2
In music 1+1 = 42.

Theres no denying that there are patterns in music, but in linking music with maths you take all the artistic benefits and principles. Many people link composers such as Bach with maths, this is garbage. bach uses symbolism and basic patterns which are not maths.

[TeeMartin]

Originally Posted by mikethecannibal

perfect... take the one joy i have away from school, and remind me that it is now reminisciet if my most hated subject... thanks

If you hate music so much why are yo on Talkbass?

[Thunderthumbs73]

The connection of music and math is questionable in my mind. While you can make music about math, my impression is if that proposition is truly valid for everyone, then one is good at one pursuit, and one should be good at the other- and that this would be true for all. I've always and still suck at math, but am (what some say) an excellent or fantastic musician. These are someone else's descriptors, not mine.

Anyway, the connection of math and music is perhaps a plausable connection for those people who approach music in a very analytical way. These people, for instance, can be the type that can sight-read anything (and do it well), but take the music away, and many of these people struggle or even fail even effectively navigate the basic blues song. I've seen this TONS of times.

On the other hand, those people (I am one) who never once thought about the "math" of the music and who are/were much more intuitive musicians operate in a VERY different way than those whose approach is analytical.

People talk about the connection between math and music or vice versa, and at best that connection is valid for only a portion, and not the complete set of those individuals who are musicians.

Lastly, dig deep enough, and you can make anything about math it seems, but that you can draw connections and make analysis (even convincingly) about it does not necesarily make it true.

[projectMalamute]

I just read through the rest of the article.

For the love of god nobody try to draw any conclusions from it. The music theory is mostly wrong and the mathematics is even worse. I was going to post a few corrections but it would be a long, long post.

[warnergt]

Originally Posted by DudeistMonk

E# is F and X=X+12 or am I going crazy?

+1 I agree with you. It's a fundamental mistake in the article. E# is not distinct from F as claimed.

Originally Posted by projectMalamute

Actually x = x.
x = x + 12 is a contradiction, no mathematician would ever, ever write that. Using this logic we can draw conclusions such as 17 = 5.

If the mathematician were a programmer, he just might use such a notation. It's a programmer's notation. e.g. Let x = x + 12.

[crazyguy832]

Originally Posted by projectMalamute

Actually x = x.

x = x + 12 is a contradiction, no mathematician would ever, ever write that. Using this logic we can draw conclusions such as 17 = 5.

I'm a musician with a degree in mathematics, I find the subject at hand fascinating. That article is pretty terrible though.

Computer sciences disagrees with you.



You're right, I know, I was just pointing something out.

[MarkTAW]

Music *is* math.

Music *is* emotion.

The two ideas are not mutually exclusive. Just because *you* don't understand the math behind music doesn't mean there isn't math behind music.

When you pick up the piano, the fretted bass, the electric guitar, you go "music has 12 notes" and you begin to learn how to choose which of those 12 notes to play when. But do you know why those 12 notes were chosen? Out of all the possible subdivisions of the octave, why 12? Or do you know why the seven notes of the major scale were chosen, and why the 12 tone chromatic scale doesn't accurately represent any of those 7 notes but the first? (they're just approximations)

I can guarantee that Bach knew why there are 12 notes per octave and why those 7 notes were chosen for the major scale, and I can guarantee you that when Bach taught music, one of the first things he did was teach the math behind the 7 note major scale.

Bach was so aware of this that he wrote a series of fugues and preludes in all 24 keys (12 major, 12 minor) called The Well-Tempered Clavier, named after a precursor to equal temperament - well temperament.

You don't have to understand the math behind music to appreciate it or even make it on the virtuoso level. Jimi Hendrix may not have known the first bit about the math behind music, or about how electricity works, but when he plugged his guitar into an amplifier he was using both. Dale Ernhardt may not know the first thing about how a combustion engine works, or the physics of keeping a car on the ground at 150 mph, but he was using both when he drove.

[MarkTAW]

Incidentally, that article doesn't answer any of the questions I posed (why 12 notes, why 7 notes) except maybe in the most cursory way and it botches the explanation. It's more likely to turn people off to the true beauty of the math behind music than to turn anyone on to it.

[EADG mx]

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Music is closer to physics than math. Maybe even closer to drama, visual art, etc.

I know too many musicians that were always terrible at math.

[projectMalamute]

Originally Posted by crazyguy832

Computer sciences disagrees with you.



You're right, I know, I was just pointing something out.

A C++ compiler disagrees with me. A computer scientist would write x := x + 12