Calculating harmony: How a math professor at Dalhousie University writes music that weds art and science

In 1974’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” Robert Pirsig proposed a problematic divide in the history of western thought as ancient as Aristotle. Pirsig said that western philosophy separates the rational and the romantic. Creativity is divorced from science.

Pirsig posited that eastern traditions recognizing the duality in all things were a better representation of reality: engineering feats require creative leaps and there is as much structure in art as in calculus.

A professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax is resolving the tension between aesthetics and mechanics with his approach to song writing.

Jason Brown is the chair of the mathematics and statistics department at Dalhousie University. He’s been composing music for 50 years. He says that both disciplines depend on pattern recognition.

“People who compose music recognize that one of the things they can play around with is expectations,” Brown said. “The ability to set up patterns is mathematical.”

For his newest song, “One More Part of Me,” Brown collaborated with Lawrence Lesser, a professor at the University of Texas, to create a pop song based on a cantor set – a fractal pattern in which parts of the whole are subtracted.

“What I was looking for was something that would serve as a metaphor for the structure of the song,” Brown said. “Many things in real life are fractal-like.”

The fractal metaphor in the new song is a relationship.

“It gave us a new storyline. I talk about losing a part of yourself. The parts that are lost in the cantor set, that leaves something new behind, that still represents the whole.”

Brown said not everybody agrees with his assessment of art.

“I get plenty of hate mail,” Brown said. “It often comes from musicians who have a misunderstanding of mathematics.”

Mark Bachynski is a producer and professional percussionist who’s worked with musicians across Eastern Canada, including recent East Coast Music Awards nominee, “Black Rook.” Bachynski said he’s not very good at math, so he reduces beats to pattern recognition.

“It’s all timing, rhythms. It’s very complicated. It’s like chess math because the variations are almost infinite,” Bachynski said.

Brown says the infinite possibilities are the reason to impose mathematical restraints, even if most musicians “feel” the math in the music.

In January, Brown delivered a lecture to the National Museum of Mathematics in New York City about Chuck Berry’s “duck walk” technique.

“It’s so cool that he does it naturally. That it moves him. He’s [Berry] not a mathematician,” Brown said.

Brown begins the writing process with chords, melody and lyrics, but the math is applied at every step.

“Having a mathematical approach is just another viewpoint that you can use to enhance your creativity,” Brown said. “Over the last 20 years, my songwriting has more explicitly taken into account my mathematical point of view. I more explicitly look for patterns.”

Brown’s first musical influence was “The Beatles.” He said math can explain some of their success.

“‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ is the song they broke North America with. The music is so brilliant. There is so much mathematics in the song.”

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