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How Music and Mathematics Relate

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How Music and Mathematics Relate

By: David Kung, The Great Courses
Narrated by: David Kung
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About this listen

Great minds have long sought to understand the relationship between music and mathematics. Both involve patterns, structures, and relationships. Both generate ideas of great beauty and elegance. Music is a fertile testing ground for mathematical principles, while mathematics explains the sounds instruments make and how composers put those sounds together.

Understanding the connections between music and mathematics helps you appreciate both, even if you have no special ability in either field - from knowing the mathematics behind tuning an instrument to understanding the features that define your favorite pieces. By exploring the mathematics of music, you also learn why non-Western music sounds so different, gain insight into the technology of modern sound reproduction, and start to hear the world around you in exciting new ways.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2013 The Great Courses (P)2013 The Teaching Company, LLC Music Social Sciences Social Work Theories
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The narrator is really really motivated about the topic which makes me want to know more. I’m getting brilliant information but some of the mathematical stuff is going by so quick if you are a musician and some of the musical detail is explaining what any musician would already know. He is talking like he is pointing to charts… I’m listening to an audiobook where are they I’m not watching a video.

A Brilliant topic but give me all the information….

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Unfortunately this course has a visual aspect to it that makes it hard for the listener to enjoy the full experience.

Hard to visualise.

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This is the most amazing lecture on music I have ever heard. It explains so many features of musical theory that musicians are thought without understanding the mathematics behind it. I never knew why the musical scale has 12 notes, but this lecture explains it!

Most illuminating!

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Given that this particular edition of The Great Courses is about music, one would think that listening to audio only would suffice. However, very early on, and throughout, our esteemed lecturer in music and math constantly refers to the rich content of images, pictures, diagrams, graphs. He employs physical demonstrations on his beautiful violin and asks you to look at how he’s performing a particular technique. He does the same with piano and novelty instruments such as the Whirly Tube.

We are to visually appreciate and analyse sine waves and compare the graphical frequency spectrums of different instruments playing the same note in order to distinguish timbre and the harmonic series.

This is as much a visual course as it is an auditory one. The production quality is first class. However, the medium of an audiobook is not the format The Great Courses was created for. By listening to the audio only, I felt very much left out in the cold. As if the lecture hall was full and I could only hear from outside by pressing my ear to the door. Imagine watching a movie with your eyes closed. I thought I could bear it, but after two hours into this eight hour course (with constant reference to visuals) I just couldn’t take missing out any longer.

The Great Courses have an app in the App Store with a 14-day free trial (although the full memberships are cheaper if you sign up via their website and not through the in-app purchase). I am now watching the same course using the free trial and the visuals and production quality are far superior than I even hoped or anticipated.

I love this course, but the audio only version is an absolute tease. If you’re happy missing out on all the visuals, then it’s fine on this platform. But if you want the course in its full original glory which means getting maximum educational benefit, insight and understanding then go for the real thing.

This is not the first Great Courses production I’ve listened to on Audible. Some are perfectly fine as audio only. For the first time however, I’ve realised that How Music and Mathematics Relate is not one of those courses.

Enjoy!

Audio Tease. Watch the Brilliant Video.

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Very good overall but some of the talk refers to the visual lecture rather than audiobook

Very good overall but some of the talk refers to the visual lecture rather than audiobook

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