moonchildhippy
Group: Members
Posts: 1807
Joined: Dec. 2004 |
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Posted: Dec. 24 2007, 10:23 |
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| Quote (Ray @ Dec. 23 2007, 13:20) | | Quote (Moz @ Dec. 23 2007, 12:25) | I agree with Sir Mustapha. 
You only have to look at a time signature to see mathematics in music. 4/4, 3/4, 2/4, 7/8, 6/8, 12/8... |
Aha! Yes, music is very mathematical, it's all about resonant frequencies, combinations of sine waves at various frequencies to give new tones......but the ability to string together a series of notes in to a striking tune is far from mathmatical - it comes from having a ear for such things. I'm pretty good at maths but crap at making up a string of notes into a tune that you would like such as the start of Ommadawn or anything else....  Although I would consider myself to be very creative, in lots of other ways. I guess I missed out on the musical Gene?
Ray |
I agree that there's maths in music up to a point, but the only maths I can see is the timing/rythym of a piece. Then again is rythym matematical, well yes and no. Poetry has a rythym, but I would say that there's no maths in poetry. To illustrate my point here's "The Night Mail" by WH Auden
This is the Night Mail crossing the border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,
Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner and the girl next door.
Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.
Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,
Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.
Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from the bushes at her blank-faced coaches.
Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.
In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in the bedroom gently shakes.
Dawn freshens, the climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends
Towards the steam tugs yelping down the glade of cranes,
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In the dark glens, beside the pale-green sea lochs
Men long for news.
Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from the girl and the boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or visit relations,
And applications for situations
And timid lovers' declarations
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled in the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Notes from overseas to Hebrides
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.
Thousands are still asleep
Dreaming of terrifying monsters,
Or of friendly tea beside the band at Cranston's or Crawford's:
Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
To me this poem has the rythym of a train at speed on the tracks.
Back to music, I agree that having the ability to put a series of chords/notes together into a striking tune is far from matematical. Speaking as a would be guitarist, well I try to play my guitar, I don't really consider the maths involved in a piece of music, other than trying to keep the rythym. When I listen to a piece of music I don't really think of the maths behind it other than the timing of the piece, for me I just wish to engage in the pleasure the combination of notes/chords brings to my ears , which to me ia more of an art form than a mathematical equation.
I just wonder how many musicians were good at maths at school, the only one I can think of that springs to mind is Brian May, as I know he has maths/science degrees, but I wonder what was going through Brian's mind when he compsed some of his masterpieces with Queen, I doubt very much he was thinking about maths.
I consider the ability to compose music as an art form, reliant more on harmonics rather than maths, harmonics is more of a physics than maths, as in say guitar strings vibrate at so many hertz. Maybe music is one art form where maths, physics and art successfully combine.
I know a few musicians, and many of them would admit to not being good at maths. In conclusion I would say that music has an element of maths within it, but in maths 2+2 always equals 4, there is only one correct answer but music is an art form, where the possibilities are limitless  .
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