Link between music, math adds up on PBS program
Collaboration aims to help New Mexico youth by showing concepts in action
An hourlong program airing Thursday night on PBS New Mexico mixes math lessons with music to show how the two are closely related.
PBS, in partnership with the Santa Fe Institute and the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra, produced The Majesty of Music and Math to explore the mathematical concepts behind music, including why instruments sound different, how composers use fractions and why certain chords sound more pleasing than others.
“Kids have a hard time relating math to the real world,” said Franz Joachim, PBS New Mexico’s general manager and CEO. “Well, this is relating to something you hear every day.”
National reports consistently rank New Mexico’s public school students at the bottom when it comes to math proficiency. Joachim said he wanted to create a multimedia tool for match teachers to help build interest and math and maybe boost scores.
“We’re relating fractions to music,” Joachim said. “Some kids will get that.”
PBS worked with the Santa Fe Institute and the local orchestra on the threeyear project to create something even a “science geek” like him could learn from, Joachim said.
“I knew math and music were related, but this was prompting really specific ways,” Joachim said. “It’s kind of mind blowing.”
Chris Moore, a mathematics, physics and computer science professor at the Santa Fe Institute, serves as the program’s on-air host. He uses a Chladni plate to show how different pitches create mathematical patterns. The plate, named for German physicist and musician Ernst Chladni from the early 1800s, is a piece of metal balanced on a peg and topped with sand. Designs form in the sand as the sound waves cause it to vibrate.
“For a lot of people,” Moore said in a recent interview, “mathematics seems
intimidating. It’s something they didn’t enjoy in school. The way we teach math in most schools, kids don’t get to see the beauty of it or the fun of it because they’re stressing about making a mistake.”
While there are right and wrong answers in math, Moore said, there also is far more creativity and beauty in the discipline than most classrooms showcase.
“When people do mathematics, they use many of the same parts of their brain when we listen to music or create music. And, I’d argue, many of the same parts of the soul,” he said.
In the show, Moore uses familiar music performed by the 65-member orchestra, such as a piece by Bach and the Mission Impossible theme, to show the connections between math and music.
“The way [math] is taught in schools, it seems like this dead, dry thing,” he said.
“Hopefully if people see this program, it’ll make math sing to them. … If it helps math come alive for some people, even one kid in New Mexico, it was worth it.”
Principal conductor Guillermo Figueroa for the Santa Fe Symphony Orchestra and Chorus said the orchestra was proud to have participated in creating something that will reach people of all ages.
“The inexorable logic of music and the transcendent beauty of mathematics came together in a presentation that will appeal to the hearts and minds of musically and/or scientifically inclined audiences,” Guillermo wrote in an email.
Along with the documentary, PBS New Mexico is creating a dozen interactive lessons on math and music concepts that are accessible to educators at no cost on pbslearningmedia.org.
Regardless of grade level or age, Joachim said, The Majesty of Music and Math is certain to spark a viewer’s interest in the relationship between math and music.
“It just opens [music] up to a whole new level of inspection and enjoyment,” he said. “[People] are going to hear things they never thought of connecting before, and they’re going to come away with new questions.”