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.

Radiohead testifying against RIAA

Radiohead, which gave away its record for free but requested a donation, is going to testify against
the record labels which it views unfairly targets the listener without consulting with the artist. Since Radiohead had no problem with money despite its distribution technique, it serves as an example that the music industry does not necessarily have to charge money to earn a profit. In doing so, Radiohead takes a stand to help wrestle power from the record labels to the artists.

Via torrentfreak.