caravelair

i've often heard people talk about how doing math helps you with music, and vice versa. also, i know that a lot of jugglers are quite math-oriented. it makes sense that excersizing one function of the brain could help with other functions which probably use similar parts of the brain or something like that, but i've never actually seen any evidence which "proves" this idea. i was just wondering if anyone knows of any scientific experiments or research which have been done on this topic. thanks.

Jackalope

It may depend on what they mean by "music." Math helps you with musical theory. And it occasionally helps some people learn compound time signatures, but by and large it won't make you a better player. Keep in mind that many excellent musicians don't read musical notation, or read it very poorly. These people (I'm one of them) learn by listening to someone else's playing. There are plenty of subtleties that cannot be notated, so even conservatory players should cultivate the skill of learning by ear. I currently play with someone who did the 5 year stint as a music major in college. He admits that he's using the sheet music as a crutch, since he's getting the finer points by listening to me play.

I can puzzle out musical notation, but as the stuff I play doesn't fit into western music theory very well (most ethnic music doesn't), what's on the page is going to only be an approximation. One still needs a working knowledge of the tradition to get a real tune out of what's written down.

The only thing I can think math would help one with is puzzling out intervals, and perhaps in timing. I find that rhythm is another thing that can be trained, but some people are born with more innate ability at it than others. Rather in the way that some people have perfect pitch, and some have good relative pitch (given a starting note, they can reproduce a melodic line with all the intervals intact). And just as there are people who are tone deaf, there's something called disrhythmia, where the subjects couldn't even tap their foot in time with a recording. I have encountered a few of those.

So as a working musician who mostly picks up tunes by ear and who has been described as a "human metronome," I'm not sure what help studying math would be to a prospective musician. I certainly sucked at basic algebra in school, though I excelled at geometry and trigonometry. I almost survived calculus after I realized I could visualize problems. Still failed, though.

Ah, pattern recognition might be a common factor. It certainly would be for juggling, where one must have the objects pass though one's hands in a particular order and pattern. But strong visualization skills would serve just as well, and don't neccessarily go along with math skills.

I'm rambling by now. As someone who grew up in a family where singing was normal and playing instruments was a normal passtime, I don't quite have the same cultural background as most middle-class whites. I know that many people aren't exposed to real, live people making music until they get into grade school. Or much, much later. With that late a start, maybe the math skills do jumpstart something. I'm still shocked when I get students who can't hear the difference between jigs (6/8) and reels (4/4). I have to remind myself these folks didn't spend their whole lives immersed in live music made by the people living around them.

Vandrare

perhaps what you're referring to here is whats been called 'the mozart effect'. this is basically the idea that listening to mozart can help give a brain boost for a short period. i've actually just started researching for a paper on this, and its very interesting to see how much of it is hype compared to real research - so if anyone happens to have a fantastic link about this i'd love to know about it.

but from what i've found so far, there is research both for and against the mozart effect, and it seems it may have an effect on ability to perform spacial tasks rather than just boosting IQ (which therefore ties into the maths).

learning music from a young age though does have a very good impact on the brains development as during those very important years the brain is stimulated in a large variety of ways to produce and increase neural networks... but this is also a huge topic which i dont have time to make a well researched post on at the moment i'm afraid. a good book about this though is 'smart moves' by carla hannaford (i think that's correct from memory), and if your interested this may help you.

:-D Anna

xorbie

Actually, there is another math-music link which is that very interesting mathematical patterns arise in certian musics. I think they did some really interesting analysis on something Beethoven wrote, but have no links