
The second volume of a commonsense, self-contained introduction to the mathematics and physics of music, focusing on the digital and computational domain; essential reading for musicians, music engineers, and anyone interested in the intersection of art and science. Volume 2 of Musimathics continues the story of music engineering begun in Volume 1, focusing on the digital and computational domain. Loy goes deeper into the mathematics of music and sound, beginning with digital audio, sampling, and binary numbers, as well as complex numbers and how they simplify representation of musical signals. Chapters cover the Fourier transform, convolution, filtering, resonance, the wave equation, acoustical systems, sound synthesis, the short-time Fourier transform, and the wavelet transform. These subjects provide the theoretical underpinnings of today's music technology. The examples given are all practical problems in music and audio. Additional material can be found at
Music and music theory are two different things. A person who is an expert in music theory is not necessarily a good musician and vice versa. There are approaches to music theory based on mathematics (see book list below); here at the latest, your assumption is likely to be correct, but hardly in general.
Book list:
Mathematics and Music - Composition, Perception, and Performance
Musimathics Volume 1 and 2
Music and Mathematics - From Pythagoras to Fractals
Mathematical and Computational Modeling of Tonality - Theory and Applications
I wanted to help myself and other folks develop better intuitions around the material, particularly focusing on short animations to develop better visual intuition along with working code examples of the material in the books.
Books covered (with a notebook for each chapter):
* Musimathics volumes 1 & 2 by Gareth Loy
* Introduction to the DFT by Julius Smith
* Introduction to Digital Filters by Julius Smith
* Physical Audio Signal Processing by Julius Smith
also a couple not directly about audio but helpful for the domain:
* Coding the Matrix by Philip Klein
* Accelerated C++ by Andrew Koenig and Barbara Moo
Hope someone gets some value from these - have fun!
