I've always heard that if you're good with music, then you should be good at math.
That is so not the case with me. I love music, understand music theory, and actually enjoyed doing reductive analyses back in college. I have a degree in instrumental performance, and currently teach after school programs for musical theatre high schoolers.
Math, on the other hand, has always been difficult for me. Algebra/Trig was the only class I ever failed. One of my current jobs is transcribing second and third grade math classes for an Integrated Math and Science research group. It's been great because it's like a remedial math class for me. Which, when I think about it is really sad. I'm a college graduate enjoying relearning math along with eight year olds.
I was just wondering, all you musicians out there: Are you good at math? And conversely, mathematicians: Are you good with music?
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
I am good "with" music, in terms of having a very good ear for pitch, and a reasonably thorough understanding of what makes it "work" in laymen's terms. I also am fortunate enough to have a reasonably pleasant singing voice. I tended to pick up tha basics of instruments quickly, but stall in learning them because I utterly lacked the discipline to keep on practicing. So I took a little bit of guitar and a little bit of piano, but I can't say with any honesty that I can play either instrument. With the piano, in particular, I struggled with the coordination of both hands at the same time. What's odd about that is that I don't struggle to touch-type, but then, I have years and years of "practice" in that. What I noticed about it that struch me as odd is that I seem to process that kind of learning different from people to whom it comes naturally. Most decent piano players I know will, when learning a new piece, practice the left hand separately from the right hand and then integrate them. I couldn't. In order to learn a piece with both hands, I had to learn both actions together, like "Do this with the fingers on the left hand and this with the fingers of the right hand" and then repeat the process for each note, basically. The same things applies to dance (I do a lot of musical theatre): most of my friends who are good dancers can learn the steps, learn the hand actions, learn whatever other body movements there are, and then put it all together. If you want me to move my legs and my hands at the same time, you have to give it to me coordinated. I cannot memorize two sets of actions and then integrate them.
-o-
I have, FWIW, used music theory as an application of mathematics, in the classes I teach.
Posted by Luet13 (Member # 9274) on :
Well, as a pianist, I fall into that realm of needing to learn a piece hands separately. I've also discovered that memorizing as quickly as possible is a huge help, particularly with more difficult pieces. That way, you can focus on the music itself, without being dependent on the sheets in front of you.
I'm with you on dancing, though. But then again, I don't really dance anymore. I learned long ago, that it was a waste of everyone's time to try to get me to dance well. I enjoy watching our choreographer work the teens though. He is an amazing dancer, and produces amazing dancers through his teaching.
Posted by Raia (Member # 4700) on :
I'm a music major, and math does not come at all easy for me. I have difficulty even with simple algebraic and arithmetic problems. I understand that if you DO have a good grasp of math, it helps with your music field, but the two don't necessarily go together at all! I do just fine in music, even with my mathematical impairment. Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
I played 9 instruments and sang in high school.
I got a D- in Algebra.
Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :
On the other hand, every math professor I had in college could play a musical instrument fluently.
Could be a weird coincidence, I guess.
Posted by pH (Member # 1350) on :
I'm good at math, and I play several instruments and find it pretty easy to learn new ones. Except guitar. For some reason, I have a lot of trouble with guitar.
-pH
Posted by Samarkand (Member # 8379) on :
Luet13 - would I be correct in saying that you like music and enjoy working on it, but not math? That would be why the difference in performance. Honestly, if you're capable of doing and enjoying reductive analyses, there is no reason why you should be bad at math - except that you don't enjoy it or consider it worth investing time and energy in.
Posted by Megan (Member # 5290) on :
I teach music theory. I was pretty good at math, when I did it, but I didn't really care for it much. I've found that, though people correlate math and musical talent all the time, it's a pretty mixed bag as far as whether it actually works that way (which I think this thread reflects).
Posted by Launchywiggin (Member # 9116) on :
I would claim that you can find lots and lots of math IN music, especially if you look in acoustics, harmonies, and musical structure/form. Perhaps people with a mathematical mind are attracted to music because of this?
But, as a music major, I've found overwhelmingly that the opposite is true. Most musicians I know are terrible at math, or don't like it at all.
Apart from a weak knowledge of fractions to figure out those tough rhythms, I've never needed math in my piano study.
And on the hands debate, I've read that there's value in learning hands separate and in hands together. HS lets you pay closer attention to the subtleties of each hand, so you can determine accents/weight/flow. HT is useful, of course, because that's how you'll be performing the piece--you memorize faster.
Posted by Carrie (Member # 394) on :
I was a math major (before the switch to Classics), and was pretty good at it. I got through Calculus and then a bit of Linear Algebra, and didn't fail anything, even when the class was severely biased towards the engineers.
I was also pretty good at piano, but I should have been, considering the years of lessons. My problem was a lack of desire to practice, but I sight-read (still) well enough to fake it.
I used to figure there's some sort of correlation between the two, but now I'm not sure.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
I've always been exposed to alot of music growing up, I played several instruments, but clarinet and piano have always been my forte. I have a good ear for pitch, and though I am being prideful I think I work out great sounding music in my head, even if something is lost in the head to fingers translation I still write though.
Math hates me.
Perhaps its the reverse that if you are good at math you are therefore good at music.
Posted by katdog42 (Member # 4773) on :
I was a math major in college. I love music also. I have taught myself several different instruments. I learn fingerings very easily because I see in my head how it all relates. Music is a game for me. I love to transpose, to play something on one instrument and then just pick up another one. It's great.
However... I am not a musician. Oh, I can competently play about nine instruments but I have no actual musical skill. I can count anything but I when I play it doesn't have expression, it doesn't have life, it doesn't sound like a real musician. I think that my mathematical ability has helped me to figure out so much of the "head" stuff of music, but unlike a true musician, I don't have the heart for it.
Posted by Artemisia Tridentata (Member # 8746) on :
Music was part of the Math curriculum in a medevel university and the diatonic scale is derived mathomatically. I still remember my suprise when I discovered that a sine wave is what a violin string does when you play it. If they had told me that in Trig., perhaps I wouldn't have falied the class. I haven't experenced a Math/ Music skill transfer. The same goes for the Language/ Music correlation. I learned Spanish in a few weeks, and was told that it was because of my music training. But, German went in one ear and was never seen or heard from again, even after 20+ credits of respectable University credit.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
I spent the better part of this morning in a 20th century theory class talking about pitch class sets, so I find this topic rather timely!
You DON'T have to be good at math to be a musician or a composer.. I even venture to say it doesn't help at all. It might. In as much a way as being good at anything makes you a better musician, more focused, wordly, keen, whatever. I know a guy who is about to complete his masters in composition and theory, and he also has a master in applied mathematics, and he doesn't consider it to be an advantage. Even the most hardcore of the serialists were really just reactionaries against the bondage of traditional esthetic, and before them, 12 tone composers like Schoenberg, or later Stravinsky, were just working in what was basically post-romantic, modern esthetics, which are more affected by conservative musical values than you might think. Schoenberg considered himself a conservative in wolf's clothing.
Personally, I took advanced trig and HATED it. I dropped my senior math class in high school (as if I would ever need calculas) so that I could study guitar instead, and I had a series of screaming fights with my father over it. I later became a musicology student, and have never used trig, not even close, not even this year, while I've been studying 21st century compositional techniques.
People who believe that modern musical composition has become too "mathematical" are out of touch with what most composers are doing. Serialism in its raw form has been abandoned, and composers have created new sets of esthetic values, like neo-romanticism and minimalism, which incorporate lessons learned, and re-evaluate the importance of a piece of music sounding pleasing. This is not to say that composition has become entirely one or the other, calculated or intuitive, but there are elements of calculation and intuition in composition that have not changed for 6 hundred years. People who believe that music would survive long without one of those are wrong, at least historically.
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
quote:Originally posted by Artemisia Tridentata: Music was part of the Math curriculum in a medevel university and the diatonic scale is derived mathomatically. I still remember my suprise when I discovered that a sine wave is what a violin string does when you play it. If they had told me that in Trig., perhaps I wouldn't have falied the class. I haven't experenced a Math/ Music skill transfer. The same goes for the Language/ Music correlation. I learned Spanish in a few weeks, and was told that it was because of my music training. But, German went in one ear and was never seen or heard from again, even after 20+ credits of respectable University credit.
To be more accurate, Music was among the cannon of medieval universities, but with as much emphasis in many cases as math. I believe it WAS under the mathematical side of the curriculum, but I've shelved my handhouts from that particular class, so I couldn't tell you exactly how it slotted in.
Diatonic music evolved as a dominant (pun) style especially during the classical period, well after the medieval monks and court composers had explored it and countless other systems, scales and pitch organizations for hundreds of years. It is derived mathematically, however it evolved not from a mathematical study, but from convenience. People are not perfect at recognizing the difference between natural harmonics and a division of the octave into equadistant 7 tones and 11 semitones, so we use equal-temprament to "fake it." Systems of division VERY close to that of western harmony have been found to be in use in bells and other instruments in asia and africa dating to before recorded history, so it's clear that people arrived at this system intuitively, just as most scale and pitch systems have been developed- even those in use by nontonal composers today.
Posted by Astaril (Member # 7440) on :
Opposite to Carrie, I was a music major before my switch to Classics. I was always good at theory and sight-reading and picking up new instruments. I also have an impeccable sense of rhythm, as I've been told in probably every dance class I've ever taken.
I was really good at math until grade 10, when we had to factor. That was the beginning of my break-up with math.
I loved trig and did fine with most of finite, but calculus killed me, as did statistics, and since then, it's only gone downhill. It's not because I didn't/don't like math though. It just got harder, somehow, even though I still wanted to learn it. I gave up on my lofty dreams of being an archaeological conservator largely because I couldn't handle the math for Chem 101, and the endless frustration and gazillion extra hours it took me to learn everything eventually no longer seemed worth it.
So I don't know where I fit in the scale.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I am teh 1337 at math, and I can just about carry a tune in a handbasket.
Why a handbasket, by the way? A backpack is much more convenient. Do they even make handbaskets anymore?
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