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That also sounds like your typical, "genius" who excels at one thing, but finds frustration in other subjects that aren't as easy to pick up. Still. You would

That also sounds like your typical, "genius" who excels at one thing, but finds frustration in other subjects that aren't as easy to pick up. Still. You would think that there would be a correlation between music proficiency and maths. "Because I absolutely had to", is a pretty good motivator. I've lost a lot in life, and had little support: "Why did you start a business at 20?" "Because I absolutely had to."

Retra 10y ago
Why on Earth would there be a correlation between music proficiency and maths? Math involves no musical skill, and music only involves mathematics because mathematics is abstract enough to apply to literally every human discipline. Music is probably one of the places where math is used the least.
- justinator 10y ago
  Surely you must be joking. You can't play music without counting. https://mic.com/articles/94992/the-scientific-reasons-we-should-teach-music-to-kids-in-school https://mic.com/articles/94992/the-scientific-reasons-we-sho... "Mathematics, especially, are aided by music education because it targets a very specific set of brain activity: the development of spatial-temporal reasoning. Highly developed spatial-temporal faculties are imperative for working through solutions to the complex problems in fields such as architecture, engineering, science and, obviously, mathematics — fields that our country desperately needs more children to pursue if we're to remain competitive in a globalized economy."
  - Retra 10y ago
    You can't do anything without counting. And I've met plenty of mathematically incompetent musicians. Enough so that I'd say the more accomplished of a musician you are, the less accomplished of a mathematician you'll probably be.
  - majewsky 10y ago
    > You can't play music without counting. This is something that I recently was amazed by. I had a friend play 140 [1] and found that he struggled with many of the advanced puzzles even after being instructed to count the beats of the music. For some reason, it was very hard for him to multitask the movement of his character with the counting of the beats. Now that I think about it, it's quite obvious that this would come to me easily, since I played the piano for over 10 years. [1] A platformer game where you have to time your movements to the background music. It's really cool and polished and you should check it out; it's on Steam for a few bucks.
- eon1 10y ago
  Lots of genres involve math compositionally, and some for performance - mathrock, jazz, some classical compositions, even pop music, it's definitely necessary to properly comprehend a piece. Let alone if you're going to try anything with polyrhythms, tackle anything beyond basic harmonic theory, or have an interest in understanding the physics behind sound..
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retra 10y ago
    Those are some vague claims that I don't see any evidence for. I have not seen any part of music theory that requires anything more than basic fractions, and the vast majority of music that people write doesn't even require much of that.
- yellowapple 10y ago
  > Music is probably one of the places where math is used the least. As a musician, I disagree with this rather strongly. Math underpins music in pretty much every aspect. Even a beginner musician will end up needing to know basic fractional arithmetic (since note lengths are represented as fractions or multiples of a "beat" length, and said "beat" is in turn usually notated as a fraction of a minute). So if you can read music even at a basic level, you're using math constantly, even if it's notated using dots and stems instead of (or in addition to) numbers. This isn't even going into some more advanced topics of music theory, like the wavelength ratios between notes in a scale/chord, the difference between "just" and "tempered" tuning, how resonance works and why some notes on some instruments resonate differently than other notes on other instruments, etc.
im3w1l 10y ago
Correlation doesn't imply that every single one who is good at music is good at math.

Retra 10y ago

Why on Earth would there be a correlation between music proficiency and maths? Math involves no musical skill, and music only involves mathematics because mathematics is abstract enough to apply to literally every human discipline. Music is probably one of the places where math is used the least.

justinator 10y ago
Surely you must be joking. You can't play music without counting. https://mic.com/articles/94992/the-scientific-reasons-we-should-teach-music-to-kids-in-school https://mic.com/articles/94992/the-scientific-reasons-we-sho... "Mathematics, especially, are aided by music education because it targets a very specific set of brain activity: the development of spatial-temporal reasoning. Highly developed spatial-temporal faculties are imperative for working through solutions to the complex problems in fields such as architecture, engineering, science and, obviously, mathematics — fields that our country desperately needs more children to pursue if we're to remain competitive in a globalized economy."
- Retra 10y ago
  You can't do anything without counting. And I've met plenty of mathematically incompetent musicians. Enough so that I'd say the more accomplished of a musician you are, the less accomplished of a mathematician you'll probably be.
- majewsky 10y ago
  > You can't play music without counting. This is something that I recently was amazed by. I had a friend play 140 [1] and found that he struggled with many of the advanced puzzles even after being instructed to count the beats of the music. For some reason, it was very hard for him to multitask the movement of his character with the counting of the beats. Now that I think about it, it's quite obvious that this would come to me easily, since I played the piano for over 10 years. [1] A platformer game where you have to time your movements to the background music. It's really cool and polished and you should check it out; it's on Steam for a few bucks.
eon1 10y ago
Lots of genres involve math compositionally, and some for performance - mathrock, jazz, some classical compositions, even pop music, it's definitely necessary to properly comprehend a piece. Let alone if you're going to try anything with polyrhythms, tackle anything beyond basic harmonic theory, or have an interest in understanding the physics behind sound..
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Retra 10y ago
  Those are some vague claims that I don't see any evidence for. I have not seen any part of music theory that requires anything more than basic fractions, and the vast majority of music that people write doesn't even require much of that.
yellowapple 10y ago
> Music is probably one of the places where math is used the least. As a musician, I disagree with this rather strongly. Math underpins music in pretty much every aspect. Even a beginner musician will end up needing to know basic fractional arithmetic (since note lengths are represented as fractions or multiples of a "beat" length, and said "beat" is in turn usually notated as a fraction of a minute). So if you can read music even at a basic level, you're using math constantly, even if it's notated using dots and stems instead of (or in addition to) numbers. This isn't even going into some more advanced topics of music theory, like the wavelength ratios between notes in a scale/chord, the difference between "just" and "tempered" tuning, how resonance works and why some notes on some instruments resonate differently than other notes on other instruments, etc.

im3w1l 10y ago

Correlation doesn't imply that every single one who is good at music is good at math.