Search Front Door Kitchen SoundGarden CoffeeShop Resource Room Kids Create! Gallery Go Back Musical Math – What does math have to do with music?

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As you enter this discovery path you see a most incredible sight; numbers floating around like hot air balloons, musical notes of all shapes and sizes, musical meters too, a Giant Musical Staff, and a section of a huge golden snail shell that's half buried in a pile of pine cones. In the distance you can hear Euterpe's (a Muse!) cello music (64") wafting like a cool summer's breeze.

To continue your visit check out the following online activities:


Perhaps the most basic mathematical connection we have to music is that sound of our mother's heart beat when we were in the womb. Thump-thump, thump-thump. thump-thump. All of our musical foundations are built upon this simple fact.

What other mathematical relationships influence music?

Activity: Keeping Time: what is rhythm, meter, and tempo?

Activity: Melody: how is music like a language?

Activity: Dynamics & Expression: how is music like a language?

Activity: How do we write down music?

Activity: What are musical intervals?

Activity: What are chords?

Activity: What are musical scales?

Activity: Harmony: how is music like a language?

Activity: Musical Forms: how is music like a language?

Activity: The Fibonacci Series: do musical relationships exist in the natural world?

Activity: The Golden Section: do musical relationships exist in the natural world?

Activity: Tuning & Temperaments: how do people play in tune?

Activity: The Harmonic Series: what does math have to do with harmonic sound?

Activity: Melodic Symmetry: what does math have to do with melody?

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"Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics;
I can assure you that mine are still greater."

– Albert Einstein


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