Tag: instruments

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Short Story: Playing a Tune

instruments

The town of Discord was an unusual town, to say the least. It was filled with instruments–oboes, clarinets, violins, guitars, and more roamed the streets. All day long, they each attempted to play their own tune by rubbing or twisting their instruments as best they could. The result was the most disharmonious sound you could imagine–and some badly twisted instruments!

It hadn’t always been this way. Originally, all the instruments had been in perfect harmony. The Master Conductor had played each one with expert skill. But the Great Deceiver thought he should be the conductor instead. When he failed, he set out to destroy the instruments the Master Conductor loved. He convinced them to play themselves and make up their own tunes. The instruments that had been made to be part of a great concert of music chose instead to listen to the Great Deceiver, exchanging the Master Conductor’s beautiful tones for their own discord.

Jammy, a run down guitar, was one of these instruments. He was as good as all the others at making up his own discord, breaking one string after another in the process. Then one day, he met the Master Conductor. He learned he’d been fashioned for a different purpose. The Master Conductor gave him a beautiful song to play instead of the discord.

Jammy wanted to play that song wherever he went, so others would learn of the Master Conductor. But Jammy found this a challenge. He’d gotten so used to playing discord, that he didn’t know how to play anything else.

He ran back again to the Master Conductor, listening to him play the harmonious tune and attempting to imitate it. But his attempts to imitate on his own failed.

“You have to let the Master Conductor play the tune on you,” his friend Melody explained.

Jammy was taken aback. “You mean we were designed to be played?”

Melody nodded. “Yes! Instruments aren’t supposed to play themselves or make up their own tunes. We were all designed to be played! Only in the Master Conductor’s hands can our proper music soar.”

To Jammy’s great delight, as he yielded himself to the Master Conductor, the Master Conductor poured out his beautiful song through Jammy’s strings.

Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. Romans 6:13

(The Greek word in this passage probably referred to an instrument of war or work instead of music, but the point remains that we’re to yield ourselves for God to wield.)

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Math at a Concert

math-at-a-concertMusic—it’s probably not the first thing you think of when you think of math. Yet God has hidden order in every sound wave, and math helps us express, utilize, and enjoy that order.

A recent trip to a chamber ensemble left me in awe—not only at the heart-stirring music, but also at how much math applied in an orchestra hall. Here are a few ways math applies:

  • The Music Itself – Harmonics, the arrangement of notes, the arrangement of sections within a piece, the rhythm—math helps us describe and work with the order God placed within sounds.
  • The Instruments – Instruments come in all sorts of shapes and sizes…and math helps us understand the relationship between the shape, size, and sounds produced.
  • The Room – The acoustics in the room make a big difference in how the audience hears the sound. And how can the builders figure out how to build a room with good acoustics? By using math!
  • Recording – Modern technology allows us to record music and enjoy it over and over again. How? By mathematically describing and reproducing sounds, of course.
  • The Business Side – Ticket prices, facility maintenance costs, artists’ schedules—math helps out in multiple ways behind the scenes of a concert.

The list could go on, but hopefully you get the idea. Math helps us both describe the order God placed within sounds and proves useful in making music and sharing it with others! Next time you find yourself staring at a math problem, remember that those apparently meaningless numbers in the textbook really represent real-life quantities and consistencies—such as aspects of music.

P.S. (Added 05/13/15) – I spent the morning researching more details about the harmonics and math in music itself and now really can’t wait to guide students through exploring some aspects of it in Book 2 of Principles of Mathematics: Biblical Worldview Curriculum. (Book 2 is scheduled to come out later this year/early next; Book 1 should ship by the end of the month.) The order God has placed in the very sounds around us is simply amazing!