Math and Music

I play the violin, viola, and piano and have always marveled at how similar music is to math. To me, time signatures are like fractions; notes are numbers. A musical phrase is an equation to be written into sound through the instrument. Scales are series; chords are complex operations.

The connection runs deeper. Starting from the middle C, every octave above and below increases or decreases the frequency by a factor of 2. An A below a middle C is 220hz. One above is 440hz. Two below is 110. Two above is 880. Although the other notes are not as exact, they too follow a similar pattern. What is interesting here is although the frequencies change by powers of two, we perceive them linearly.

Music and math are both (almost)-universal. Pleasant sound and numerical operations have no face, language, ethnicity, and race. But why? Have both been evolved into our development; are we hardwired to learn math and enjoy music? Perhaps they developed out of evolutionary benefit--pattern recognition would help, and that would lead into mathematics. Music was a form of creative expression and probably stemmed out of a more developed brain. It most likely served unify groups and create a common culture.