I love music and I always have. I was never able to sing so I turned to instruments instead, just like my dad and my granddad. From a young age I played the trumpet in jazz bands, brass bands and windbands and have never doubted it wasn’t for me. Since moving to university, I have stopped playing as much but this input reminded me just how much I miss it.

Within music, there are a lot of scales and the whole tone scale is  particular favourite of mine. After this input I started researching further  the relationship between maths and music and discovered there was a link between the whole tone scale and Pythagoras. The whole tone scale is demonstrated at 1:01.

The whole tone scale was developed my Pythagoras by using the ratio of the frequency of the sound waves of two tones. Octaves have a ratio of 1:2, and so Pythagoras used smaller intervals to develop the whole tone scale.

Also mentioned is the symmetrical nature of the scale which can be seen here:

Symmetry in music is common. A well-known composer who used it was Bach, and it can be seen in his Goldberg Variations at 3:11.

Another Mathematician, who’s work featured in music is Fibonacci. His work features in the design of the piano keyboard as well as in pieces of music. You can read about this in my blog about Fibonacci.

I never thought that one day my love for music would increase my enjoyment for maths, but it definitely has! I now know longer view maths as a scientific and analytical subject, instead, I can see the art and emotion and beauty of it.