When you think of music, you may not immediately think about the reliance on math that music has. However, from the complex sound of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony to the pop songs produced by Beyoncé you find yourself humming all the time, there is a huge correlation between math and music. Memorizing long division or calculus might not be the best strategy for creating a music composition or playing an instrument, but numerical fluency, understanding the relationship with numbers have to one another and linking patterns help us understand the structure of music. If you’ve ever seen a musician pick up a piece of music for the first time and play it or sing it beautifully, they are definitely using math to help guide them in reading the music. Math is a huge part of teaching music and learning music theory! Let’s break down some of ways music and math comingle.
Think about some of the first songs you learn as a kid. One of those might be a counting song like Five Little Ducks, the one that goes “Five little ducks went out one day, over the hill and far away, mama duck said quack, quack, quack, quack, but only 4 little ducks came back.” This simple song incorporates many basic math skills, including counting and subtraction (by reducing numbers with each verse), matching and comparing (through changes in pitch and rhythm) and pattern sequencing (through repetitive melodies, rhythm and lyrics). All that, by just singing a repetitive children’s song!
But there’s more.
Several studies have come out concluding that when young children are exposed to classical music and provided musical instrument instruction, they score higher on spatial temporal cognition and hand-eye coordination tests. Furthermore, the same math concept necessary for understanding fractions, decimals and percentages in math, is the same used for rhythm in music. Children who are taught how to play instruments and read music practice subdividing beats (measurements of time) over and over, which is a tangible way to experience practice with numbers. Learning to play an instrument could honestly help most any of us understand numbers in a very practical manner!
Music is full or repetition. You may have a favorite genre or music and chances are that there is some sort of chorus in it. Think of some of the most popular music today, from artists like Halsey, Post Malone, Ariana Grande, Taylor Swift. Nearly ALL of their songs have a chorus line in them that gets repeated. That repetition, love it or hate it, can be very catchy, but it also gives structure to the song. Pop music is popular for a reason – people like the redundancy of choruses. Beyond choruses, the structure of music is set up as a pattern. Everything from time signatures to measures guide music so that it flows and sounds like something intentional. Without pattern in music, it would just sound like a bunch of discombobulate sounds.
Then there’s math. Math uses patterns to explain conclusions and predict the unknown. Math is quite literally the study of patterns. Approaching music from a math perspective, you can find traces of theory, trigonometry, geometry and calculus.
If you aren’t a musician you may look at a sheet of music and feel that it looks like something written in a foreign language. Music theory isn’t a language, so to speak, but it does follow rules and patterns, just as any language does (and just as math does!). Written music is comprised of symbols that tell the reader how something should be played. One of the best direct applications of math n music theory is in something called measures. Music is divided in sections called measures and each measure has an equal number of beats or counts in it. Measures are then mathematical divisions of time, with beats being smaller mathematical divisions of time. Measures also contain notes and rests in them. Notes look like a filled in ovals, or open ovals, either of which can have a sticks with a flags hanging off of them or can be connected to each other with several sticks. They indicate when music is to be played. Rests look almost like birds flying sideways. They indicate when to take a break from playing.
Each piece of written music also denotes a time signature. This gives information about how the piece should rhythmically be played. The time signature is what determines how many beats should be played in each measure. Time signatures look like fractions with one number on top of another and a divider between them and they sort of act like fractions because they tell you how to divide the beats in a measure. Musicians then must understand the value of the time signatures and notes in order to correctly count the music they’re playing. Without measures and time signatures, music would be chaos.
From punk rock to salsa, music and math make pretty great harmony. If your child hasn’t had any experience with organized music, bringing music lessons into their life could have a very positive effect on their math understanding and confidence, and perhaps a want to know more. And, of course if your student is significantly struggling with math, bring them into Mathnasium of Cherry Creek for an assessment. We love to help kids achieve math confidence and success!
