Where math and music meet
Professors and student reveal the formulaic magic of music in new study
Breann Schossow
Issue date: 2/4/10 Section: Currents
What do Ludwig Van Beethoven and Jimi Hendrix have in common? One man, a classical composer and the other, a rock-and-roll guitarist separated by hundreds of years?
Well, according to a study by two Eau Claire professors, the short answer is that both men produced great music. While looking at short samples of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in E and Hendrix's 1968 recording of All Along the Watchtower, both have similarities in pitch.
The study, written by music professor Gary Don, mathematics professor James Walker and math majors Karyn Muir at the State University of New York at Geneseo and Gordon Volk, a student at UW-Eau Claire, was published in the American Mathematical Society's Notices last month.
Walker said the purpose of the four-year study was to look at what spectrograms, or sonograms, would show about musical patterns. However, the idea for the study was born when Don produced a picture of a fern using fractals - or bright, geometric figures - which he initially looked at as a graduate student.
One of the things Don said he liked best about this study was the emphasis on student-faculty collaborative research. Don said he worked with UW-Eau Claire graduate Amanda Potts, who now is a graduate student at Northwestern University. While at the university, Don added, Potts was a double major in music and mathematics who graduated in Spring 2003.
Potts said she started working on the study as a junior with Don, using computers to generate fractal patterns to turn into music. She later worked with Walker and the spectrograms once he learned of her involvement in the project.
Overall, Potts said she enjoyed the creative independence the project allowed and the relationships she was able to build with the professors.
"Just to learn on your own was really exciting and really interesting, and also was really good preparation for graduate school," she said.
Walker said his original area of study, Fourier analysis - or the mathematics of sound, light waves, etc. - led him to his interest in the study of music, he said.
Well, according to a study by two Eau Claire professors, the short answer is that both men produced great music. While looking at short samples of Beethoven's Piano Sonata in E and Hendrix's 1968 recording of All Along the Watchtower, both have similarities in pitch.
The study, written by music professor Gary Don, mathematics professor James Walker and math majors Karyn Muir at the State University of New York at Geneseo and Gordon Volk, a student at UW-Eau Claire, was published in the American Mathematical Society's Notices last month.
Walker said the purpose of the four-year study was to look at what spectrograms, or sonograms, would show about musical patterns. However, the idea for the study was born when Don produced a picture of a fern using fractals - or bright, geometric figures - which he initially looked at as a graduate student.
One of the things Don said he liked best about this study was the emphasis on student-faculty collaborative research. Don said he worked with UW-Eau Claire graduate Amanda Potts, who now is a graduate student at Northwestern University. While at the university, Don added, Potts was a double major in music and mathematics who graduated in Spring 2003.
Potts said she started working on the study as a junior with Don, using computers to generate fractal patterns to turn into music. She later worked with Walker and the spectrograms once he learned of her involvement in the project.
Overall, Potts said she enjoyed the creative independence the project allowed and the relationships she was able to build with the professors.
"Just to learn on your own was really exciting and really interesting, and also was really good preparation for graduate school," she said.
Walker said his original area of study, Fourier analysis - or the mathematics of sound, light waves, etc. - led him to his interest in the study of music, he said.
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