Larry Lesser, The Mathemusician

Selected Resources/References for Educators & Researchers

 
 

Interesting books:

  • Garland and Kahn's Math and Music: Harmonious Connections (Dale Seymour, 1995)
  • Scott Beall's Functional Melodies: Finding Mathematical Relationships in Music (Key Curriculum Press, 2000)
  • Leon Harkleroad's The Math Behind the Music (Cambridge U. Press, 2006)
  • David Benson’s Music: A Mathematical Offering (Cambridge University Press; 2006)
  • David Temperley’s Music and Probability (MIT Press, 2007)
  • Gareth Loy’s Musimathics: The Mathematical Foundations of Music (MIT Press; 2006, 2007)
  • Fauvel, Flood & Wilson’s Music and Mathematics: From Pythagoras to Fractals (Oxford University Press, 2006)
  • Jan Beran’s Statistics in Musicology (Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2004). 

Note: the above books vary greatly in their level of technical precision and in classroom applicability, so browse before buying!

Interesting articles:

 

Articles on a more advanced level:

Some bibliography for educational uses of song:  See www.songsforteaching.com/references.htm and the article by Crowther in March/April 2006 Connect.  VanVoorhis (in Teaching of Psychology, 29(3), 249-250) researched the effectiveness of using jingles for learning particular statistics concepts. While teaching psychology statistics students in two sections (whose grade-point-averages were statistically equivalent), VanVoorhis had three definitions read aloud in one section and had statistics jingles sung for the same concepts in the other section.  On four short-answer test items (maximum score of 9 points), the singing section did better (t(69) = 2.01, p < . 05) and also had a statistically significant correlation (r(31) = .37, p = .04) between test score and self-rated familiarity with the jingle.  Other kinds of articles we’ve seen include F. Rauscher et.al. (“Music training causes long-term enhancement of preschool children’s spatial-temporal reasoning”; Neurological Research, Feb. 1997, pp. 2-8) and E.G. Schellenberg (“Music lessons enhance IQ”; Psychological Science, 15, 8, 511-514).

Searchable song databases:

Applets:

Mathematically-generated compositions:

And finally, there are performing musical groups whose songs are packed with mathematical language, ranging from the Klein Four Group to a very different group called The Mathematicians.  And there are plenty of other individual math teachers who write and compile math songs, such as: #1 and #2.  Those teachers and students writing their own songs will find useful songwriting resources listed in my May 2000 Mathematics Teacher article, and online resources such as http://www.rhymezone.com and http://www.onelook.com.  For those interested in mathematical poems, I recommend these articles: Keller & Davidson's in the May 2001 Mathematics Teacher, Growney’s in October 2006 J. of Online Mathematics and its Applications, Growney’s in J. of Mathematics and the Arts (2008; 2(1), pp.1-7)

 

 

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