Music and Mathematics

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One may not realize the ample amount of mathematics that is included all genres of music. Music is the art of arranging sounds in harmony, melody, and rhythm in time to produce a continuous composition. Although there is not legitimate proof of where and when music originated, it is has played a part of everyone’s history.
Mathematics is the study of the measurement, properties, relationships of quantities and sets, using numbers and symbols. Mathematics were originated by the Pythagoreans in the 6th century BC. Over time, different nationalities added their own contributions to the study of mathematics. Pythagoreans are also the first to study the aspect of musical scales.
Majority of musical songs have a repetitive pattern of rhythmic structure to form an arrangement. One similarity that music and mathematics have in common are the way the symbols of each are read. Songs or musical pieces, are separated into bars which are also called measurements. Every bar consists of a certain amount of time creating a beat. When a song is composed to be played by a musician with the skill of operating an instrument, it is often written in the form of symbols. Each symbol instructs the musician to play a certain note or key. Notes are different in size and shape which determines the length and time it should be played. There are several different kinds of notes including whole, half, quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes. Numbers and fractions are also known as notes; thus, the relationship between music and mathematics. Music theorists discovered that cadence, verbal-literal language, frequency, timbre, tempo and patterns all involve some form of mathematical strategies.
Although musical bars contain numbers, the most common similarity ...

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...is involved in the making of most songs. The topic sparked my interest to answer the question of what the two subjects had in common. The fact that two totally different subjects can stimulate the very same part of the brain is intriguing. As I researched more about the similarities I learned that math is a strong point in music therefore that is why they both stimulate the same (ST) section of the brain.

Works Cited

“Algebra of Tonal Functions." Review. Web log post. N.p., 1 May 2007. Web. 26 Apr. 2014. .
Benson, Dave. "Music: A Mathematical Offering." N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr. 2014. .
Glydon, Natasha. Math Central-Music, Math, and Patterns. Rep. University of Regina and The Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences, n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2014. .

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