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Friday math Movie - Math Rock and Fibonacci

By Murray Bourne, 15 Aug 2008

Ever heard of math rock? According to Ian James, the drummer on the first clip:

Math rock is the chaining together of odd time signatures to create an unconventional song structure.

Mathematics is involved in many aspects of music. Apart from the beat, which is the issue talked about in this video, math is important in harmony (certain notes sound good together while others do not, and this is related to the frequencies of the harmonics of each note) and melody (certain intervals work well, while others sound irritating).

Here's an example of a math rock song by heavy rock group Tool. The video points out how the title track from the album Lateralus has woven the Fibonacci sequence throughout the song.

[Credit to iLamont for pointing me to the second video.]

See the 1 Comment below.

One Comment on “Friday math Movie - Math Rock and Fibonacci”

  1. Peter Price says:

    Murray, thanks for this post. I have been interested in music and math since childhood, and love the way you have made these connections via cool videos.

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