I started playing the piano when I was 7 and I picked up the oboe when I was 8. Through the oboe I’ve been playing in school orchestras, in church and my local school board orchestra as well as singing in school choir. I would consider myself quite a musical person and I really enjoy both listening to and playing music. Maths has been a massive help to my musical journey. The basic mathematical skill of counting is so important in music especially to me as my oboe teacher would often exclaim “Megan, do I need to send you back to P1 to learn how to count properly!” Or when I was starting out playing the piano and counting up the notes to figure out what notes they were in the bass clef. Without a basic understanding of mathematical concepts I wouldn’t have gotten very far.
In our lecture we looked at some aspects of music which maths are essential for. Some examples we came up with were; note values, rhythms, beats in a bar, tuning, pitch, chords, counting songs, fingering on music, time signature, scales, musical intervals and modulating the key. We went on to look in detail about the maths used in different types of scales. This reminded me of a key musical concept that I used to help me with my grade 5 theory: the circle of fifths.
The circle of fifths is used to help composers find the relative major or minor keys of the key they’re using as well as giving the sharps and flats in the key signature. The circle of fifths is show in order of fifths (hence the name). For example between C and G there is an interval of 5 notes. I used the circle of fifths for my grade 5 theory to help to remember the order of sharps and flats in key signatures. Without maths a musical concept such as this would not be possible as you need a basic understanding of counting, ordering and sequencing to be able to understand the circle of fifths.
Another thing we looked at in our lecture was the musical concept of tuning. This is something that I’ve always found hard to wrap my head around. The oboe is quite a hard instrument to tune. Most oboists use an electronic tuner to make sure if they are playing at the right pitch especially when they are tuning an orchestra. However sometimes using an electronic tuner isn’t possible and so oboists have to train themselves to knowing when they are in tune and how to fix it if they aren’t. Another instrument which is hard to tune is the piano. Pianos can never be completely in tune. We watched the video below on how it is impossible to tune a piano perfectly to the right pitch. Tuners use mathematics to tune pianos and without a knowledge in the basic mathematical concepts this task would be impossible.
Music and mathematics go hand in hand. Without mathematical concepts and ideas music would be a lot harder to understand especially to those who don’t play musical instruments. Maths helps musicians to understand what they are playing and how they compose music. Maths has certainly helped me in my own ability to play and understand music.
