Feb'09
28
The Mathematical Take on Music
Are you a mathematically minded musician? Seed magazine has this great article on the relationship of math and music. It talks about how one would map harmony to complex mathematical structures.
When, the dust settles, two-note chords live on a Möbius strip, three-note chords live on a solid, twisted triangular doughnut, and larger notes live on higher-dimensional analogues, whose shapes become difficult to describe nonmathematically. The boundary of each space, or shape, is geometrically unusual (“singular”)–line segments appear to “bounce off” the boundary, rather like billiard balls reflecting off the edge of a pool table.
Related Posts:
- More Music and Math (1.000)
- Introduction to the Circle of Fifths (0.200)
- Introduction to the Circle Progression (0.200)
- Respect The Form of a Song (0.200)
- Modal Interchange Demystified (0.200)
This is funny because I am a musician and I am terrible at math. It’s mostly the more complex things I’m not good at though so…*shrugs*
I feel math is often linked to music because at the heart of it, the act of writing/playing music is about manipulating ratios over time (albeit a narrow set of ratios in the scheme of things). This is something that lends itself well to mathematical description and analysis. I’ve heard it remarked that learning to play an instrument will give you a leg up in math. I’m sure there have been studies done. If anyone wants to point them out, that would be great. That said, the two subjects still occupy different modes of thinking. There are plenty of mathematicians who couldn’t carry a tune to save their Napier’s bones.