December Days: Music and Maths

[jack]

It's common for people into maths to also be into music. But it never really happened for me. In fact, I like music, but still haven't got into any music in a major way, unlike almost everyone else in the world, which I'll talk about more in a later post.

I've heard descriptions of how maths and music go together for some people, but for me, they seem to trip completely different parts of my brain. Maths is a process of free-associating possible approaches; tracking each through methodically until it reaches some sort of conclusion, and repeating until you've got somewhere. Music trips my emotions. I can imagine how a sort of pattern-spotting could apply to both[1], but I find it hard to see music like that, I'm barely beyond "I like it but I don't know why" and "I don't like it but I don't know why".

I am somewhat interested in pop explanations of music theory when it's explained in terms of frequencies and "this is why these notes go together and why these notes don't go together". But I find it impossible to grok explanations that involve learning a bunch of terminology according to how various things were discovered. I need things laid out with "these concepts are fixed because physics, these are cultural, these are an artifact of the notation system, these are basically the same but slightly different, etc" :)

I do feel a cultural affinity for the sort of music which mathematicians stereotypically often like, though, even if my actual exposure to it is small :)

Footnotes

[1] Come to think of it, that's an interesting observation about maths, that one foundation of actually doing maths, rather than applying previous maths, is generalising between different things that are similar in some way that's hard to explain. This proof and this other proof are the same, but one has 3 and one has 5 -- can I replace 3 with "any odd number" or "any prime number"? The method of solving this integral and that integral are very similar -- can I generalise to a method which works on any related integral? Category theory is this tendency on steroids.

But I don't know if this is something that really good mathematicians are much better at, or just something that you need a minimum amount of.

Comments

[gerald_duck]

I trust you've read Godel Escher Bach? If that doesn't make you go "ooh" about how music and mathematics are interrelated, nothing will. (-8

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Maths is a process of free-associating possible approaches; tracking each through methodically until it reaches some sort of conclusion, and repeating until you've got somewhere.

It was only when I got to the next sentence that I realised that the first word of this wasn't 'music'.

[jack]

Huh :) Maybe that is so much more similar than I'd seen, I'm not sure. I've no experience composing music, but I've a tiny bit of experience writing fiction, and to me they still feel quite different, even though I've noticed a similar sort of "lay the problem out systematically" approach...

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Hmm. It depends on the music, but if you look at something like Bach or Palestrina, the formulae are pretty much as you describe, and if you look at someone more modern then they become less clear but still underlying structures are important.

I don't have much background knowledge on this level with literature, but consider also an artist such as Jackson Pollock. Such beauty made purely by exploring mathematical concept - and of course, he mostly worked with fractals, but it doesn't have to be.

Were I to find some further reading on the subject, would you be interested? I mean, I'm looking because I am :)

[seekingferret]

I do feel a cultural affinity for the sort of music which mathematicians stereotypically often like

Which sorts of music does this mean? Do you mean like how mathematicians are supposed to like Bach because of the well-tempered scale being mathy, or mathematicians liking 12 tone/serialist music for similar reasons, or do you mean like how many of the mathematicians I know like structured folk dancing? Or how mathematicians are supposed to like 2gether because they know their calculus? Or something else?

[gerald_duck]

In my experience, it's the fugue form that appeals to mathematicians more than the well-tempered scale in Bach's music. Certainly in my case.

The fugue form survives in contemporary music. Mike Oldfield's Amarok is, I would say, a modern fugue. And one of my utterly favourite pieces of music. Not coincidentally.

Mathematicians also appear to be drawn to bell ringing, incidentally.

[naath]

I like music in much the way I like maths - it's a sort of puzzle-thing that you can figure out what it's doing but only if you think about it. Also repeating patterns etc.

But I can only really appreciate music if I'm *playing* it. I'm really bad at listening to music.

(Music theory is mostly not very hard, but it is full of weird words. Much like any subject is really. Easier to learn if you have examples on-hand)