Music is not a math problem.

[DC Ross]

Music is not sitting in a library pouring over notation, or trying to figure out why Brahms used that accidental in the 75 measure of his fourth symphony*. Music is not physics. It can be defined using physics, but that

[Mr. Botch]

The following comes from someone with two engineering degrees; you have been warned:

 

Ah, but Math is also a vehicle for conveying emotion. Real math will make your adrenaline start pumping and set your heart racing. It will make you break down and weep, jump up from your seat, throw your fist in the air and scream

[TimOBrien]

You may think it's only passion, but deep in your brain it's figuring out the proper intervals to move your fingers.

 

'Just 'cause you don't have to CONCIOUSLY think about something doesn't mean it's not happening...

[Brittanylips]

 

Originally posted by DC Ross Music is not sitting in a library pouring over notation, or trying to figure out why Brahms used that accidental in the 75 measure of his fourth symphony*. Music is not physics. It can be defined using physics, but that

[Anderton]

I've always felt the point was to have the theory down so well that it became a part of you, so you didn't have to think about it...but it would inform what you were doing from an emotional standpoint.

 

Case in point: Technique. While technique itself isn't music, if you don't have the technique to convey what you want, you'll be limited in how you can express your emotional content.

 

You might want to check out an article I did in the December 2004 issue of EQ magazine (http://www.eqmag.com) that talked about "keeping the art in the state of the art," and got heavily into how the two hemispheres of the brain process information differently. It also explained the dichotomy between the pure, unbridled emotion of music and the thought processes behind making it.

 

Overall I think this is a fascinating subject and one that bears not just research, but discussion.

[Phil O'Keefe]

You know, when I was in high school band, we had a GREAT drummer who was having problems with his math classes - I think his parents were going to make him drop band until his math grades improved... and I remember him complaining to the band director about it and saying something along the lines of "what do I need math for? I want to be a musician..." and the band director gave him a ten minute lecture about the importance of math and its relevance to music...

 

Music isn't math, but an understanding of math is useful - crucial to musicians. Some cats can "feel" it and understand it instinctively, but then again, the first time you have to notate dotted eighths in 7/8 time at 165 BPM or calculate tempo and duration for a loop or a delay time, you'll be happy you have a little math knowledge.

 

But at the core of what you said DC, I'm with you! Music IS passion and feel... knowing math and physics helps, but OTOH, I don't want my machines doing all the work for me either - it needs that human emotion and feel IMO... it's gotta move me.

[Mr. Botch]

I've always found it interesting that college math departments always had a much higher percentage of musicians than most other departments.

[KB Gunn]

Two quarter notes leave the opposite ends of a manuscript at the same time. One travels at 80 bpm and the other travels at 120 bpm. The total composition is 320 measures in length. At what measure will the two quarter notes meet?

[Raymar]

I'm into ambient music and no longer need to pay attention to the metronome since I turn it off now. Don't think about measures either, however I'm free to indulge in those featues if I like but ambient music is music/soundscapes minus the western idea of time. Music can also alter your consciousness.

 

Steve

[Perfessor]

Originally posted by KB Gunn Two quarter notes leave the opposite ends of a manuscript at the same time. One travels at 80 bpm and the other travels at 120 bpm. The total composition is 320 measures in length. At what measure will the two quarter notes meet?

 

Right on time!

[alfonso]

I can understand both of the "positions" of this confrontation, but they both are reduced by a "statical" look of the elements of music, as if there is a balance between opposites, passion and study.

 

My idea is that the music is such a passion that pushes you to feed it somehow.

 

Techniques, languages, oral or written knowledge, traditions, research, all of this has many ways to be aquired. Passion pushes you to work in order to expand your musicality and each one can find his own way.

 

What is true maybe is that you will not stop feeding your knowledge if you are passionate about music, no matter how do you prefer to do it.

 

If you are not passionate, you won't stand any type of work or training for a long time.

 

So it's better that the passion and the desire dictate you the urge of studying. It gives sense to your work and makes it pleasant.

[bbach]

 

Originally posted by Anderton I've always felt the point was to have the theory down so well that it became a part of you, so you didn't have to think about it...but it would inform what you were doing from an emotional standpoint.

 

 

I have to so totally agree. It needs to be just second nature, just like walking across the street. You automatically look each way, listen, and go. If you have to think about it, you'd better practice walking across the street a few times.

Music 'math' and theory are the foundation. Then you move on. I love theory. I can't get enough. I'm a total nut job. It's just facinating how it all relates. I try to tell my daughter who struggles with math, why it comes into so much play in life. I wonder if I'm getting through?

[Sylver]

Music is frequently exactly what the player and the listener need it to be.

 

That's one of the cool things about it. You don't have to understand it to listen to it or to play it, but it can also be a grand puzzle for the inquisitive to unlock and contemplate.

 

But what you shouldn't do is berate someone else's enjoyment of it. And I've never met ANYONE who liked everything, but met many who were respectful of most things.

[halljams]

I am college educated in music and it helps in alot of ways, but the things i like most about music still have nothing to do with what i learned there.

Anyone who can open themselves to that elusive flow of whatever it is that comes from where ever it comes from, has the ability to make music as greatly as it can be made.

The greatest musicians just know how to keep the valve open long enough to keep the flow going through an entire performance.

If the performance is successful, the listener will feel the same sensation listening as the artist does performing. That tingling, out of this world thing that goes through your body as the music plays.

This is why no tools or tuning or editing can substitute performance, only humans can lock into that magic {censored} directly in real time. There is no other way, and musicians that ignore this element of performance are wasting everyones time, including theirs because they are creating music that is worth nothing to anyone and never will be. The purpose of music is to act as a medium to spread that magic feeling amounst each other.

The purpose of math is completely different.

That said, it is easy to get confused and think the two are more connected than they really are. I do it all the time:)

[blue2blue]

Originally posted by Mr. Botch I've always found it interesting that college math departments always had a much higher percentage of musicians than most other departments.

 

Database development isn't usually a math-centric endeavor (you use a lot of basic math and you certainly have to have a second-nature understanding of algebra -- and symbolic logic is absolutely crucial)... but back in the late 80s or early 90s, there was a mag called Database Advisor that ran a (somehwat less than formal) survey of their readership. Even though the editor, himself, was a former pro musician, they were surprised that over half of the readers were musicians on some level and that nearly a third of them had played music professionally at some level.

 

[Of course, that may say more about the outflux of refugee former pro musicians from the music biz... I mean, that's why I'm a database guy. I found that regular ol' suit and tie business people were a whole lot less skanky that the "business" types in the music biz.]

 

 

 

I think a crucial thing about the math in music is that, while it is undeniably there at the core of the music, we humans (and other animals) respond to it at the system level...

[light_without_heat]

Maybe we can all agree upon this.

 

1. The human brain works in such a fashion that no conveyance upon words across this electronic medium could possibly mean the same to one as it would to the other. Since all of our brains, experiences, perceptions, and our very thoughts that we conjure are so custom-molded to our own realities we must all realize that music is something we share but cannot truly explain. It is just another part in the whole. A million different people all have a million different views on music, it's relevance, how to play it, what sounds good...etc...

 

2. We all dig music so that's pretty much where it lies. The energy we all pour into this art perpetuates and creates music-the very reality of it.

[acousticvoodoo]

However music is constructed... whether the performer was schooled with formal music theory, and wrote the piece out and learned it note for note... or whether the performance was entirely made of the moment of improvization...

 

To the listener, it mostly unimportant, and unnoticed. The listener has a subjective appreciation of the music that does not normally contemplate the "writing" of the music... or the schooling of the performer for that matter.

 

Of course, most listeners don't carefully listen, consider, and then "decide" after careful evaluation whether they "like" a certain music or not. They simply react in the immediate moment... based on their own subjective criteria.

 

Culturally, we have certain music / feeling cues that seem fairly universal. I participate in volunteer based music appreciation education for 2nd grade students in my daughter's elementary school. Part of the class features different classical music cuts, and the kids are encouraged to listen, then comment on how the music makes them "feel". These are kids who are often hearing this music for the first time, (well perhaps outside of Warner cartoons), and invariably the answers congregate around similar feelings for certain music exerpts.

 

This seems to cut across racial, ethnic, religious, gender and other boundries. It seems almost axiomatic. For humans, certain organization of sounds stimulates certain emotional reactions.

 

Filmakers of course have known this for some time... how else could you "score" a film if different patrons "felt" differently about the score's connection to the action of the film. It would be difficult to provide a coherent score without the vast number of people "feeling" similarly about it.

 

When I think about "the public's" view of music, I often reflect on the show "American Bandstand". Each week, Dick Clark would introduce a new song, and the "kids" would say what they thought about it. The most common response for a "popular" song? "It's got a good beat, and you could dance to it."

 

The ultimate "pop-music" recipe!

 

NEVER in the history of the show did any kid ever say... man, you could tell THAT song was written by a guy with an advanced degree in music... I give it a "10".

 

But what do kids know?

 

I've been recently reflecting on WHY I like certain music, and REALLY DON'T like other music.

 

I've come to realize that my own subjective tastes have been shaped by both my exposure to music as a pre-teen and teen, (and these preferences have held the most sway in my own tastes throughout the elder days of my life), and also the experience of being a performer. As a performer, I am more willing to accept technique as a "lure" for my interest, even in music that's outside my normal "tastes".

 

The hot country guitar players for example, often catch my ear, while "most" of country music's offerings don't really interest me.

 

michael

[halljams]

 

Originally posted by acousticvoodoo The hot country guitar players for example, often catch my ear, while "most" of country music's offerings don't really interest me. michael

 

I would be willing to bet money that the reason for that is the influence of the blues in their playing. Where the rest of the tune sits like a hunk of dusty lard as a wanna be sitcom actor who has no control over their own brain allows their mouth to start drivelling out some "music row" tried and tested garbage and other silly {censored} over top of it. God i hate that music. But i regress...

 

I went through that thing where i tried to figure out why i liked the music i like and it always came down to; the music i like has some blues influence mixed in to taste with other styles or approaches. No blues...me no likey.

[philbo]

Music - math vs. passion - - It's like any other way of expressing yourself.

 

For example:

If you don't have the techniques and knowledge of speech, and all you have is pure emotion, you don't have the means to communicate it.

 

There is a continuum between the two - pure logic-based math-driven composing and precision performance, and on the other end, raw emotion and passion.

 

Striking a balance between them, while still conveying your music in a way that touches peoples hearts (or heads, as the case may be) in new music is pretty much where I aim my efforts.