FREE ESSAY ON MATH AND MUSIC: THE BASICS

MATH AND MUSIC: THE BASICS

When you listen to a piece of music you usually don't think of math, but the two are
interlinked and music always involves math even though we don't always realize it. When
musicians play music they are using mathematical formulas to play. There are formulas for
making cords, scales and a formula for the what notes they play.
Musical notation also involves math, you use time signatures while playing along to a
piece of music which are basically just fractions, 3/4,7/4, and 4/4 are all time
signatures. the bottom number in the fraction gives you the type of note to be played and
the top gives you the amount of times it is played. There are five basic types of notes
to be played in music, the sixteenth note, the eighth note, the quarter note, the half
note, and the whole note. For each of these notes you divide the previous note by two.
The sixteenth note is divided into two which gives us eight, the eight into four, and so
on (see chart). The easiest note to start with is the whole note there is one beat per
measure of a song, for the half there is two beats per measure, and so on until there is
sixteen beats per measure.
(www.tabcrawler.com)
Guitar chords are also made using a formula, first you get the scale of the type of cord
you are trying to form, for example lets say c-major the formula for making a major cord
would be tone, tone, semi-tone, which would mean the first note in the scale, the fourth,
and the seventh. This is how most musicians make a cord. The first note in the scale is
always a full tone as is the last this is because this is two octaves apart and they are
the root notes. 
(guitar player, June 1996)
There are twelve tones in an octave ex. C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B. A full
octave would have another C at the end but it is the same pitch as the first C except an
octave higher so it is usually left out. Ancient Greeks came up with this method, they
said in an octave each note was an integer multiple of the first. There is not a perfect
octave however it is always a couple of numbers off the original frequency. log3/log2=
continued fraction[1,1,1,2,2,3,1,5,2,23,...], is the best fraction to get closest to the
perfect octave. if we take the notes frequencies, and build fifths we get pretty accurate
to a perfect octave. Twelve is by far the easiest number to get closest to a perfect
octave which is why there are twelve tones in an octave. A whole tone is usually from one
whole note to the other or one # note to the other except on tow occasions: b-c and e-f
there is no # note in between those notes so from b-c and e-f is a whole tone but
anywhere else it is three notes ex. a-a#-b (www.classic-guitar.com)
Math is also very important while making a guitar. A normal guitar usually contains 21
frets, the spaces in between the frets is usually found by getting the total length of
the neck, and then using the rule of 18 which is 17.835. You divide the length of the
neck by this number and this gives you the length of the first fret. Then you subtract
the length of the first fret from the total neck length and then divide the length by
17.835. You do this until you have the full neck fretted
Bibliography
Bibliography: www.tabcrawler.com, good place for guitar theory
www.classic-guitar.com, good place for time signature 
Book: Drum Basics, good source for musical notation]
Guitar Theory, good book for musical theory