I have to do a presentation on how math and music relate. I have found some things and facts but everything is so complicated. If someone could help explain to me how I can narrow my topic down and make a presentation that is simple but effective. It can be anything within the grips of music and math, the possibilities are endless...

Question

Thank you

Answer 1

One idea is to concentrate on how Plato (Socrates' student) correlates math and music in his work, especially in The Republic. By doing this, you can emphasize that humans have been making this connection for over 2,400 years!

http://www.google.com/search?q=math+and+music+in+The+Republic&oq=math+and+music+in+The+Republic&aqs=chrome..69i57.7090j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8

Answer 2

Perhaps you will find it fascinating to see the relationshipe between music and the Fibonacci Numbers and the Golden Ratio
( google Fibonacci numbers to see thousands of webpages, here is probably one of the best:
http://www.maths.surrey.ac.uk/hosted-sites/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fib.html

those numbers are:
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 ...
(add any two numbers to get the next one)

Just one of the remarkable of hundreds of relationships is this:
look at one octave on the keyboard of a piano
there will be a total of 13 keys
8 are white and 5 are black
the blacks are grouped in 3's and 2's
which makes up the sequence: 2 3 5 8 13 of the Fibonacci numbers.

( I recall reading one source that claimed that appr 15,000 PHD theses have been written relating music and the Fibonacci sequence.)