It might seem ridiculous already, maths in Art? Nature? and now Music! Alas it truly is all around us, put in your headphones and count out the beats to your favourite songs, recognise patterns and repetition in the rhythm, get louder and quieter throughout the tune. It is all mathematics.
Symmetry in music is a very regular occurrence, skip to 3.41 in the video below for an example of a very impressive yet simple example of not just symmetry, but repetition and pattern as well.
The tune in the video is made up of the same combination of notes just at varying speeds, or flipped by symmetry using several instruments. This piece was created by J.S.Bach and this style of composing was frequently adopted by him.
Another element of mathematics in music is pitch, pitch is measured in Hertz (Hz) and is the rate at which vibrations are produced. The mathematics in pitch is that it can be measured as a frequency (Wiggins, 2012).
The tones in music are all worth numerical values, it is these numbers that determine the sound of the tone. These are related to pitch also.
Musical Intervals correspond to precise and simple ratios, The harmonic series intervals with the simplest ratios are named “perfect” in music theory. Medieval composers favoured the P8, P5 and P4 as the most consonant intervals, partly because of their mathematical simplicity and elegance. (Rogers, 2004)
References
Rogers, G.L. (2004). Interdisciplinary Lessons in Musical Acoustics: The Science-Math-Music Connection Music Educators Journal . Available at: http://mej.sagepub.com/content/91/1/25.citation (Accessed: 01 December 2016)
Wiggins, G.A. (2012): Music, mind and mathematics: theory, reality and formality. Journal of Mathematics and Music: Mathematical and Computational Approaches to Music Theory, Analysis, Composition and Performance. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17459737.2012.694710 (Accessed: 01 December 2016)
