As a musician myself, I can easily relate to mathematical connections with music.

Music is, and has been, my passion for many years. I see music as my method of relaxation. To sit back, listen and enjoy exactly what I am hearing.

As a teacher of music, when I am teaching the very basics of music I am also teaching the very basics of maths. Sometimes it can be difficult for children to understand music if they don’t have a knowledge of the basics of maths. On the other hand, sometimes children will understand and relate to maths better because of their musical development.

Obviously the basics of maths and music is the length that each note is worth. When teaching the children the not triangle this allows children to see how many notes would fit into the first long note, the semibreve. The basic structure of this can be easy to remember visually but to work out more difficult theory questions, it is a lot more beneficial to be able to use division. Here is an example of a basic note triangle.

When doing theory practice, I often use note sums to build competence with the value of notes. The children need to know confidently exactly how long each note lasts to allow them to calculate the sums. This is basically just simple mathematical sums but with notes instead of numbers.

 These are a few basic examples.

On a more difficult level, musical scales have a very close link with the Fibonacci Sequence. The Fibonacci Sequence came from a theory on rabbits which gave out a set of very memorable numbers: 1, 3, 5, 8, 13 etc. A musical scale includes 8 notes all together and similarly with the Fibonacci Sequence the most important notes of the scales are the 1st, 3rd, 5th and 8th.

In musical scales we use all four of these notes to create an arpeggio of the scale. Arpeggio’s I initially learnt from the Disney film Aristocats. In this video Berlioz plays arpeggios throughout the song ‘Scales and Arpeggios’ as he plays the notes of the scale in this order: 1, 5, 3, 5: 1, 5, 3, 5 etc. Half way through when he jumps on the piano he plays the full scale as he runs up the keys from the 1st note to the 8th. Have a wee watch below.

Another interesting link with music and maths is that the Fibonacci Sequence is actually created the bass clef symbol which is used to determine the notes on the piano used. I have drawn the diagram below to show you:

I find it incredibly interesting how closely linked the two subjects are. Even just with thins as small as your fingers being numbered 1-5 to help with the order the music is played.

My passion for music has allowed me to enhance and progress with my mathematical competence.