Thursday, August 3, 2023
MAA MathFest 2023

MAA Invited Paper Session and Jam Session (aligned with an MAA Invited Address)
Applications of Mathematics to Music

Mathematics and music have a long-standing affinity for each other. In this session, our speakers will talk about many topics, including vowel production and a question at the intersection of mathematics, music, physics, communication, and perception; the application of natural Pythagorean intervals to the closure for scales generated by three or more intervals; the circle of fifths and the twelve-tone scale on a torus; the Piano theorem; graphs for music events, including modulation; and a musical pythagorean theorem that Pythagoras missed.

Organizer:
Jason Brown, Dalhousie University
Ezra (Bud) Brown, Virginia Tech

Comparing Songs without Listening: From Music to TDA and Back Again
Katherine M. Kinnaird, Smith College

The multidisciplinary field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) is motivated by the comparisons that we, as humans, make about music and the various contexts of these comparisons. By defining tasks such as building better song recommendation systems or finding structural information in a given recording, MIR seeks to algorithmically make these musical comparisons in the same manner that a human being would, but on a much larger scale. In this talk, we will introduce the field of MIR, including popular tasks and cutting edge techniques. Then we will present aligned hierarchies, a structure-based representation that can be used for comparing songs, and new extensions of aligned hierarchies that leverage ideas from topological data analysis (TDA).

Every summer, MAA MathFest presents the latest in mathematical research and education to diverse audiences across the nation. As the largest community of mathematicians, students, and enthusiasts, MAA is proud to bring an interactive, accessible, and informative experience to you this year.