Music = Math, Math = Music

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post-ante
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12 Jan 2006, 2:01 am

Don't go breaking my heart! Oh don't go breaking my heart!

Musical_Lottie
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12 Jan 2006, 5:16 am

Cade wrote:

Lonermutant wrote:

I think seeing music as emotion is a better way of seeing it. You use technique and theory to put your feelings into something, not as technique and theory in itself.

There are many great musicians that would agree with you on that. Since music is aesthetical, it is also highly subjective. Therefore understanding music in emotional terms is very appropriate, since emotions, imagination and aesthetics are all closely related and subjective experiences of the human psyche.

Subjective - precisely.

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ramsamsam
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12 Jan 2006, 6:41 am

I agree with the progenitor of this topic to an extent. Music is involved with maths quite largely from a scientific or music theory based perspective. However unlike maths (my knowledge with maths, I will admit is limited), music allows for interperation and there is no correct answer as such.

Rakkety_Tamm
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12 Jan 2006, 6:54 am

Cade wrote:

Rakkety_Tamm wrote:

larsenjw92286 wrote:

How could those two things be related? Math deals with computation, and music deals with creativity.

Ok, listen up. Music and math are the same thing, not just related.

OK, now it's your turn to listen up. As a musician with college degree in music (emphasis on jazz guitar - lots and lots of music theory under my belt, thank you), and someone who's not too shabby with math, I'd say Jason is very right.

Math primarily deals with theory and abstract concepts. Music deals with creating something aesthetic and concrete based on principles that can be mathematically represented or demonstrated. However, that mathematical representation is not necessary for music to be created.

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If you do not see that, then you don't understand ether music or math.

I understand both, and I would say if you do not see the distinctions between them that make them two different human endeavors, either you;ve failing to understand them, or you're so in love with your novel ideas you can't see where you are wrong.

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If you understand the concept of sine waves which you learn in geometry and advanced algabra, you would also know that that is how sound travels. In music theory, you learn that the higher the pitch of the musical note, the closer the waves are together, which can be expressed in an algabraic forumula (Y=sine(AX+b). Depending on the variables such as note value, instrument type, pitch, and wether or not they are in tune, these factor in which what A and b equal.

This is all well and good, if not rather contentious. But remember that math is a symbolic system that represents ideas abstracted from reality, but not reality itself. This why circles are a big deal in geometry, yet a prefect circle as represented in geometry does not exist in nature. The circle is an abstract idea and nothing more.

In the same vein, geometric representations of sound waves are not music - it's an abstraction. Music notation is not music - again, it's an abstrraction. Music theory is not music - one more time: it's an abstraction. Music itself is not an abstraction, but a concrete and real phenomenon. There is a difference. It shouldn't - and doesn't - take either a musician or a mathematican to get that.

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Apperently, you have neither taken neither advanced algabra nor music theory.

I see your purpose here isn't to make friends.

No, really, seriously, people usually don't like it when you make wild negative assumptions about them based solely on them disagreeing with you.

At any rate, I stress that I have taken music theory (6 semesters of it, not to mention decades of using it as a practicing musician) and I'm a geometry fiend. So contrary to your somewhat insulting assumptions about the extent of Jason's education, I clearly prove it is quite possible from someone to have this knowledge and disagree thoroughly with you.

If you simply think music is math, which is nothing more than a system of abstractions, I feel sorry for you. There really is so much more to be experienced in the beauty and wonder of music than music theory and symbolic representations of sound waves. Granted, I wouldn't wish to assume anything about you, but if by chance you never taken philosophy of aesthetics and beauty, you might want to consider it.

I am a taking the college level music theory from one of the highest rating music programs in any college, Western Carolina Univeristy. Music is my life. My teacher, Bob Buckner, teachers what I have stated at the beginning of the topic. Your right I don't give a damn wether or not people on here like me, this is my personality, and if they don't like, they can get over themselves. I do have friends on here, people with the same temperment as I have, and some with the compleat oppisit.

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Musical_Lottie
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12 Jan 2006, 7:19 am

That may be the case Rakkety_Tamm, but if you look at a page of sums you don't see music, do you? Likewise when you look at music notation, you don't see the sums for the soundwaves being produced. Therefore maths and music are not one and the same - maths can be used to calculate all sorts of things; you don't use music on its own to do that. You can use it to help I suppose, if you were going to try something like echolocation with music, but you'd still have to use maths to do the sums and draw the correct conclusion. Likewise music that works is not composed by someone sitting down and thinking 'well this soundwave travels this fast, therefore I shall put another one travelling this fast with it because it sounds good.' You could argue that that's all we're doing when harmonising, but the thought process of 'this note goes with that to produce that effect' is not the same as 'this is xHz therefore yHz goes with it.' And anyway, you don't use maths to express emotion, but music can fulfil that purpose. If you want to analyse a piece to the extent where you take it all to bits mathematically, you can. You can say 'well that bit here is this formula and creates this effect' but it's not the maths behind it that creates the effect. It is, as my friend said, 'incomprehensibly more complicated than that' - and it is. Until we can understand why certain sounds evoke certain emotions, etc etc etc, we can't say 'this bit works because ... ' and therefore cannot define why music works, with mathematics.

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larsenjw92286
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12 Jan 2006, 2:56 pm

Yes, music is not related to math per se because they are two different topics.

You are who you all are as people.

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Rakkety_Tamm
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12 Jan 2006, 7:21 pm

Musical_Lottie wrote:

That may be the case Rakkety_Tamm, but if you look at a page of sums you don't see music, do you? Likewise when you look at music notation, you don't see the sums for the soundwaves being produced.

Yes actully, I do. Thats what we do for assignments in Dr. Buckner's class. We must take apart a piece of music, and write out the expressions, (time changes, key changes, pitch changes, etc) for papers. We must also calculate the sine equations for certin pitches.

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Scoots5012
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12 Jan 2006, 7:37 pm

Music and math....

Synthesizers need math, if it's an analog synth, math is needed so proper capacitance and resistor values can be computed so when a key is pressed, the proper note comes out. If it a digital synth, algorithms need to be computed so the proper bit sequences can be sent to the D/A chips.

In audio mixing, the output of the mixer is equal to the sums of all the live channels added together.

If you take a 1000hz sinewave and a 1001hz sinewave and add them together, the two will cancel each other out once each second.

But these are finite examples. For instruments like brass and woodwinds, there's so much variation in what a musican can make his instrument produce, that no mathematical algorithm can ever be created to accurate reproduce those sounds.

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Musical_Lottie
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13 Jan 2006, 7:20 am

Rakkety_Tamm wrote:

Musical_Lottie wrote:

That may be the case Rakkety_Tamm, but if you look at a page of sums you don't see music, do you? Likewise when you look at music notation, you don't see the sums for the soundwaves being produced.

OK, fair enough. what I meant above was you don't look at a page of maths calculations and say 'oh, that would sound like this' because people in general just don't. Musicians in general just don't. But the point is, not everybody does what you do. In fact, the majority of people - musicians - don't. Therefore your argument is flawed - perhaps in certain cases music = maths, such as in your classes, but it's not always the case. When I play a piece I'm not pulling it apart; I'm playing the notes and trying to get them to sound as good as possible, and all of the other [numerous] musicians I know and have encountered have that same aim too. The whole point of music is for pleasure, and for it to sound pleasing to the ear. Quite how that happens generally isn't really the point, and certainly why that happens cannot be mathematically defined. So yes, by all means you and the rest of your class can tear apart pieces of music until they're just numbers, but that rather misses the whole point of music, in my opinion. You seem to have ignored the fact that music brings emotion into the equation, which just cannot be mathematically defined. If that ever changes, and we do figure out a way to do just that, then your argument might stand. But for now, it really misses the entire purpose of music.

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Wergild
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13 Jan 2006, 3:25 pm

If it were only that simple. Then I'd be the next Beethoven/Rachmaninov/etc.

worsedale
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18 Jan 2006, 4:38 pm

Why do you all have to make such a distinction between maths as 'scientifc' and music as 'creative'. Maths in itself can be highly creative and I believe maths is the prime tool used by musicians in applying their emotions to the airwaves. :idea:
If emotions and subjectivity are the driving force of music, then maths is the cache of rules which ensure the creative elements fit into a nice framework and have a logical effect on the human psyche. This is self evident, when you think about your favourite music very much of it will follow patterns in sequennces which have mathematical logic to them. Take the example also of listening to a great piece of music for the first time. If you stop it, your psyche will predict how the next melody will play. Or so I've experienced.
The maths in music may also be deeply subconscious. Musicians may not use elaborate equations in their music but 'some of them' undoubtedly have a sense of the maths at work as they compose their stuff.
So I think noone is wrong here, including Rakkety_Tamm's refernce to sin and cos equations. Music can probably be graphed like trigonometric functions if the producer or whoever is refining the music, wants it to be precise.

Producers should all title themselves soundscapists, I think its much more meaningful :arrow:

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