Science is often seen as dry, systematic problem solving or maths based practicals whereas music is seen as a creative outlet or hobby. In reality, these two subjects have many commonalities;
Music was actually considered a type of maths in Ancient Greece with many Greek scholars playing music. Pythagoras, a famous greek philosopher, thought that music should be measured through mathematical ratios and numbers and that it was an acoustic science. Even today, a large amount of scientists are talented musicians and no, this isn’t because they’re just good at everything.
In fact Pythagoras was somewhat right, music is very maths based, finding the right amount of notes to fill the bar is essentially adding fractions and a lot of scientists enjoy using systematic thinking to play their instrument, which is different to non-scientist musicians but very effective. Also, the creativity and pattern spotting in music and science is much the same; finding the key signature to a piano piece or creating lines of music in order to make a catchy tune is similar to spotting trends in large amounts of scientific data. Many parts of music train your brain in ways that improve your science and vice versa which makes musicians better scientists and scientists better musicians.
And, as everything can, music can be explained through physics. Stripped down music is essentially vibrations, sound waves and the control of them, with every instrument having a different overtone, sharper or softer and the pitch being measured in frequencies.
So just remember, next time you practice an instrument, you're technically doing physics homework.
Written by Bella Di Cicco
