The history of Fractions: Music and Mathematics

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Recommended: The relationship between music and mathematics

As many of my elders have quoted, “You’ve got to know where you come from to know where you’re going,” or some variation of this saying. It rings true in the journey of life, love, and something that I consider my life and my love-- music, and the explosion of what some may loathe and some may love (I, the latter)--disco music!

With a focus on music production, I must protect, justify, and enlighten myself on all things music, as well as others, and edify all within reasonable distance on the correlation of fractions and music, and just how a fraction, also known as a time signature when written on a music staff, has been responsible for the swing and groove of music, and the creation of an evolution of soulful dance music.

You may ask yourself, or someone who was actually alive in that era, what could you possibly love about disco?! Well, maybe because the term disco is used so very loosely, you’re internalizing a skewed interpretation of disco, as it has been introduced to you, but we’ll get to that later. First, lets find out “where we’re coming from.”

Fractions have been a around long enough for me to understand that I do not like them, but they play a significant part in simplifying, for some, division of goods or time. There is no one person who can be credited with the invention of fractions, but their use has been traced back as early as 1000 BC, in Egypt--using the formula to trade tangibles, currency, and build pyramids.

Egyptians, or more accurately, Pharaohs, did not write fractions in the formula that we are accustomed to seeing and using, today. The hieroglyphs, as explained on page 20, chapter three of, Mathematics in the Time of the Pharaohs, were not as efficient, then, because it did not allow for certa...

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...scover these bonus sources below--music with message, featuring Mr. Earl Young, and then we can truly say, we “know where we’re going.”:

Works Cited

The O’Jays, “I love Music.” Credited as the first disco song:

Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, The Love I Lost (Lead by Teddy Pendergrass):

Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Bad Luck (Lead by Teddy Pendergrass):

Earl Young’s demonstration of disco:

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