What Is The Documentary Math: Who Needs It?

Math is not just a subject taught throughout school. Math is used in almost every job, activity, and hobby. In the documentary “Math: Who Needs It?” the main goal is to show the viewers how math is used in almost every job the world has to offer. One point that stuck out in the documentary was the “Rockstar” portion. Music is a big part of my life and many people do not take a moment to think about all the work put behind the process of making a song, creating the instruments, and producing the song (making it sound good). On a page of sheet music there are many various symbols and numbers that a non-musician may not know the meaning of. Most likely the first thing noticed is the wide variety of stick looking drawings with a oval on it, painted
across the page in many different forms. These are notes. The most basic note is the “quarter note” . This signals the musician that this note is only one beat long. An average song is a 4/4. Which means that there are four beats per measure. In one measure you can play a variety of notes, from 4 quarter notes, 2 half notes, 1 whole note, 8 eighth notes or any combination that adds to 4 and the list can keep going on. As the amount of notes increase the length of the note shortens. The name of the note is based off of the fraction of a whole beat in a 4/4 measure. To put this in the perspective of fractions, one eighth note is ⅛ of the measure. If there are two eighth notes in a measure that will be ⅛ +⅛, which equals 2/8 which is the same as ¼ . Now that is the same amount of time as a Quarter note, but instead of playing one note that is ¼ of the measure the musician plays two eighth notes which equals the same ¼ . If a musician played two eighth notes, one quarter note, and a half note this will equal one measure of 4 beats. ⅛ + ⅛ + ¼ + ½ = 4 beats. Popular musicians pay for new instruments. Some are custom made, some name brand, and some have no specialty. Making instruments takes precision and skill. Pianos come in all shapes and sizes. From small child keyboards to giant grand pianos that are played by professionals. The sound of each notes is created by a felt hammer that hits upward when the key is pressed on the piano. The hammer hits up to three strings at once. The longer and thicker the strings the lower the note. When building the big grand pianos these strings have to be measured perfectly so that the correct note is being played. If a string is too thick or too long and is placed in the wrong position it could leave the piano out of tune and sounding horrendous.
In the final process of creating a song comes sound engineering and editing.
Now sound engineers not only make the song sound clean but they produce the song we will hear on the radio, Spotify, iTunes, etc. They are also the people that travel with the artists and makes sure while they are on stage there are no frequency spikes (which causes the really annoying high pitched sound), and also keeps everything equal so one instrument does not overpower the vocals or other instruments. They also protect everyone's ears at concerts. Yes, concerts usually go 100 dB which is past the “Too Loud” line, but they keep it from going so loud that it causes people to go deaf. Rock concerts range from 100-110 dB, which is very loud but it is still 50-60 dB below instant perforation of the eardrum. They have to use equations that deal with frequency, wavelength, and period. For example: to find the wavelength they would use the equation: L= V/f. V is the velocity of sound and f is the frequency of the sound. These engineers use huge sound boards to equalize and combine separate parts of a song together. Each knob changing a different wavelength/pitch. Making each song
perfect.
The documentary “Math: Who Needs It?” shows the usefulness of paying attention in math classes now, since almost every single job uses math.
Music is a part of just about everyone's life and if there were no sound engineers, skilled piano makers, or mathematics in music it would sound terrible. Humans ability to make and enjoy music is all here because of the people who listened in math class and aspired to do great things. The Earth is full fun activities that are full of math, but not many people know this. They don’t know that math is the reason that they can go to concerts and not go home with popped ear drums or even be able to play
music!