Musical Math

6 Musical Math My oldest brother is very good at math. He's an electrical engineer. My second oldest brother is even better at math. He's an architect. Then, there is me. I'm not good at math at all. In fact, I struggle with it. One day, my second oldest brother sat me down at the keyboard and showed me the math that exists in music. Everything on the keyboard became so simple. It was all there in black and white, literally! He showed me that there are thirteen notes in a music scale, and then they just repeat an octave higher. Then, he showed me how chords are made up of combinations of notes that are sometimes three whole notes apart, and some-times five, nine or thirteen. This was all fascinating, but I didn't want to learn to play the piano. I wanted to be an engineer, like my brother. But from that day on, I started to look for math in other things.

Later that summer, my brother and I went to an art museum. We looked at pictures from long ago. We saw a sketch by a famous painter. It still had the perspective lines showing on it. These lines began at a small point and went out in all directions. The painter drew all the houses to fit the lines he had drawn in the sketch. It had perfect perspective. Here again, was math in art! Before school started, we went to the seashore for a week-long vacation. There we found some shells on the beach. My brother picked up some shells and explained how the shells fit a mathematical pattern, going from small to large. Math again! Well, this all happened when I was about thirteen. I'm now an adult. You're probably wondering what I grew up to be. Did I become an engineer or an architect? Well, let me put it this way. I use math every day. I divide, add, multiply, and I analyze and compare different frequencies to see which ones fit with other frequencies. Then, I write them down using a mathematical language. What's my job? I write music! I guess I'm a lot like my brothers after all.