Review: The Math behind the Music
Leon Harkleroad (2006). The Math Behind the Music. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-81095-7.
A book on math and music, with such an ugly cover... how not to look like a nerd with all that... whatever... the book was really good and not that nerdy anyway !
In the fact, the first interesting feature is that the author wrote the book for non-mathematician and non-musician. Well, I guess you have to be interested a little bit in one or the other to read it, but it's true: you don't need to know any mathematical stuff and the only required musical concept is about the most basic structure of musical scores.
Second interesting feature: within 130 pages, the reader is taken on an impressive tour of musical and mathematical concepts.
Within the world of music:
- pitch, tone, timber and attack
- tunes (with the various historical tuning systems)
- composing (and most especially varying a theme)
- bell playing (where I first learned about the sophisticated art of change ringing)
- composing with computers (with the famous Xenakis )
- melodic patterns (asking the question: what makes a tune interesting for its listeners)
- frequency analysis to define a pitch (with the famous Fourier)
- transient phases to define the attack
- group theory (( ex: groups of (theme) variations or groups of permutations ))
- probabilities
- fractals
- L-systems