Is There a Link Between Music and Maths Skills? Calculating The Number Pi at the age of 4

“F again!” Math test flunked. My son is standing in front of me drooping his head. “I just can’t remember this stupid multiplication table! What do I even need it for? There’s a calculator on my cell phone!”

So many hours spent doing homework and exercises. So much money spent on tutoring. I was desperate to find out how to improve my son’s math skills and help him become smarter in maths.

Does this sound familiar to you? Are you also searching for an answer on how to get smarter in maths? Then you will totally understand me. Math can sometimes be real torture for both kids and parents. If you can see yourself in my shoes, then you will be happy to know there’s a way to deal with this trouble. Recent research has discovered a strong connection between music and brain development, especially the parts that are responsible for math and calculations. Sound intriguing? Read further to know how music can help be more intelligent in maths.

Music? Does it really help?

You know how important it is for your kid to get smarter at maths. Maybe you don’t need your child to be able to calculate Pi at the age of 4, but you want them to be smarter and easily acquire math from the basic 2+2 at school to integrals in college. So how do you get smarter in maths?

After another F in his report card, I complained about my son’s math problems to one of my old friends who worked as a music teacher, and she recommended to start practising music.

I knew that music was important for brain development. And exposing a kid to music from an early age has a positive effect. But when I heard it can develop math skills, I was very skeptical. What can music do that’s so special that a professional tutor and a few additional exercises can’t? How do you become more proficient in maths with the help of music?

I did some preliminary research and found that music and mathematics  actually have a strong connection. They are usually considered two distant categories. But think about how widely math is used in music as we use numbers to describe and learn to play music. Fractions are commonly used to describe a note’s length. The Fibonacci sequence of numbers is used in piano scales. However, even if your kid does not study music theory, he will be able to understand math through music.

Recent research has made amazing breakthroughs in understanding how music affects the brain and particularly how to become stronger in maths. One study that observed students at an elementary school in San Francisco showed that students who took part in a 6-week music program  had 50% better results than those who didn’t.

When you play music, multiple areas of your brain are active simultaneously through processing sound, distinguishing melody and rhythm, and then combining them all back together to perceive music as a single signal. Playing music activates the motor, visual and auditory cortices and improves cognitive skills.

When one is playing music, the same parts of the brain are activated as when you’re doing maths. And it really makes sense as music is all about the number of beats and time signatures.

Why have I chosen RAV for my kid to start practising music?

A few years ago, I saw a few musicians jamming with tongue drums in a park and instantly fell in love with the mesmerizing sound they created. I started searching around and found RAV – a uniquely crafted tongue drum that stands out among other steel drums. So I purchased a RAV Vast drum for myself. I love the instrument because it has a deep soothing sound. I had already tried playing some tank drums before, but RAV became a real passion of mine. Playing RAV is like a musician’s dream. Unlike many other drums, all the tongues are harmonically tuned in the RAV, so there’s no way you can play off-key. All the notes go well together in a perfect symphony, no matter which note sequence you choose.

I had the RAV for a while just playing it to myself while my son was sitting nearby. Then one day I decided to introduce it to him. Unlike many other instruments, RAV is totally kids-friendly. It’s durable, so you can be sure your young experimenter won’t damage it. Children can be highly creative when acquiring something new. But their experiments can sometimes lead to some havoc. I can leave my kid alone with the RAV without the need to keep an eye on him all the time.

We started playing the RAV drum a little, and after a while I decided to buy one for my son so that he has his own instrument and we can enjoy jamming together.

How to practise music regularly with your child. Music activities to improve maths

Actually, you don’t even need to do anything special. Simply practising music will put the grey cells to work. Just set aside 2-3 hours a week in your kid’s schedule to play music. You can move these hours closer to bedtime as tongue-drum music has a great ability to calm the mind. This will help the child get ready to fall asleep and get better rest during the night.

But if you don’t really believe in the innate connection between music and the brain, here is a great music activity that is sure to improve math skills.

Give your child the task of creating a music composition by calculating numbers! Label the tongue drums with some numbers. You can come up with different types of sequences, for example, only even numbers (2-4-16-48), odd numbers (11-17-39-77), or random numbers (5-17-42-68). You can write the numbers on pieces of paper and attach them to the tongues of the drum. Provide a concrete number to the child so that the composition will need to add up to this number as a sum or multiply to it as a product of all the numbers on the tongues. It will require creativity from the child as they will not just be able to create a random melody using an open-ended number of notes, but will have a specific goal in mind.

We’ve also invented our own game to train multiplication. For each note he plays, he has to recite some calculation from the multiplication table.

We started doing this activity weekly with my son, beginning with easy melodies and numbers and making the task a little bit more interesting and complicated each time, and I was really impressed. Here was a creative task that my son didn’t mind doing, because it was fun to take a break in the endless amount of maths exercises. He was really involved and started designing his own rules, searching for music compositions and creating his own awesome experiments.

After a short time, I noticed my son’s improvement. Soon A was the only mark he got in math.