Exploration of the Applications of Trigonometric

Functions in the World of Music

How is trigonometric function applied in the world of music?

Contents
Introduction...........................................................................................................................................2

Theory...................................................................................................................................................2

Analysis.................................................................................................................................................3

Sound wave of guitar:........................................................................................................................6

Evaluation..............................................................................................................................................8

Bibliography..........................................................................................................................................9
Introduction

As grown under a musical family, I wondered if there was a connection between

mathematics and music. This topic was especially appealing to me since I have a great
personal connection with it. I was grown under a mom who was a piano teacher and a dad
who really enjoyed music. Therefore, I had more chance to be exposed to an environment
where I could experience various kinds of music. Since I was young, I had opportunities to
learn different kinds of musical instrument. Due to a mom, who was a piano teacher, I was
able to learn how to play a piano and I enjoyed seeing my skills improving as I practiced.
Then, I encountered a guitar when I was in the middle school. My friend, who was a member
of the band group in our church, offered me to be a part of it as well. As a result, I decided to
play a guitar in the band group. Therefore, I was able to earn some interests in music. After
encountering two different musical instruments, I had an inquiry about the shape of sound
waves that the two different musical instruments will produce. As a result, I decided to
investigate on a topic for my Mathematics Internal Assessment that had a close connection to
music.

I would be investigating on how music, especially considering different musical

instruments like piano and guitar, could be expressed by using trigonometric functions.
Mathematic is closely related to the field of music. It is used to communicate and express the
concepts in musical field. Mathematics can be used to describe and explain the concepts like
how strings vibrate at certain frequencies, and sound waves that are used to describe these
mathematical frequencies. Trigonometric function is one of the topics in mathematics that is
largely applied in the world of music. It is significant to find out how a trigonometric
function could be applied in the world of music since all sound produces waves, which is
called a sound wave. These sound waves will be expressed as sine waves in the world of
mathematics. Trigonometry could also be used in measuring the level or a pitch of a sound
wave or musical note. Throughout my Internal Assessment, I will be comparing the sound
waves, using sine graphs, produced by the chords in the piano and guitar.
Theory

The simplest model of a musical sound is a sine wave. The formula for a basic
trigonometric equation for sine wave, which can also be called as sinusoidal wave, is
presented as:

y=a sin ( bx+ c )+ d

In this equation, ‘a’ represents the amplitude, ‘b’ represents the period of the function, ‘c’
represents the phase shift, and ‘d’ represents the vertical shift of the graph. In the
trigonometric equation, the amplitude is the maximum height of the graph that is reached
from the x-axis. The period is the distance along the x-axis that is needed for the function to
make one full oscillation. The Figure 1 shown below represents a basic sine graph:

y=sin(x)

Figure 1. Screenshot by myself of basic sine graph, courtesy of https://www.desmos.com/

There are four properties of sound that we must be aware of before constructing a
sound wave, which are frequency, amplitude, duration, and timbre. In the world of music,
frequency is represented as pitch, amplitude as dynamics, duration as tempo or rhythm, and
timbre as the tone color. Frequency refers to the number of cycles per second of the sound
wave. It is measured in Hertz (Hz), where 1 Hz equals one cycle per period. The musical term
for a frequency is pitch. The higher the frequency, the higher the pitch. The lower the
frequency, the lower the pitch. For the case of a piano, the fundamental frequencies for the
notes on a piano range from 27.5 Hz to 4186 Hz. The next thing that we must look out for is
the amplitude. The amplitude of a sound wave determines its dynamics, which shows how
loud or soft a sound is. The amplitude of a sound wave is shown by the height of the sound
wave. The lower the amplitude, the softer the sound. The higher the amplitude, the louder the
sound. The amplitude is measured in decibels. Decibels are a logarithmic, with a base 10,
ratio of the relative amplitude levels between two sounds. For each decibel change by 10
units, the sound intensity increases by powers of 10. As mentioned previously, musical term
for amplitude is dynamics. There are eight levels of loudness commonly used in music
notation with symbols (from loudest to softest): fff, ff, f, mf, mp, p, pp, ppp. Next property is
the tempo. The tempo determines how fast or slow a music is. Tempo in music is expressed
as the number of beats per minute (BPM). If you see M.M. <note value>=<number> at the
beginning of a piece of music, the number indicates the number of beats per second, and the
note value indicates what type of note equals one beat. The last property is the timbre. Timbre
refers to the tone color of a sound. It is what makes a piano sound different from other
instruments. The sounds with different timbres would have different waves shapes.

Analysis

Throughout my analysis, I will be investigating on the sound waves of a specific note

produced by a piano and a guitar. A note is a single sound played in a music. The note that I
chose to analyze in two different musical instruments is the note A. This was because note A
acts as one of the base notes for several different musical instruments, including piano and
guitar.

Note A function produced in a piano

 Try to put all the calculations in the middle

1. Normal chord A function (normal sine wave)

 2. Compare with chord A function produced in a piano
3. Compare with chord A function produced by guitar
- Different timbre -> different sound wave
- Find what will be the function of those sine graphs (with the same chords)

Fig 2. Sine wave of the note A of a piano, courtesy of http://www.desmos.com

The diagram above shows a sound wave of a piano from chord A (do you want to use
the word chord or note? What is chord and what is note). The music note “A” produces a sine
graph of y1=sin(880πx), according to the findings from the University of Minnesota. The
sound wave of a different A note (how did you get it? What is different note A?) could be
1
modeled as y2=sin [880π ( x + ¿ ¿.  (How do you get this? Why do you need this?)
440
When these two notes are played at the same time (the function will look like: put a diagram.
From the figure 2, it looks like the waves are added together. In math, the addition of sine
graph can be formulated …), two of the sound waves should be added together using the
formula:

sin ( α + β )=sinαcosβ + cosαsinβ

This equation is used to see the sound wave that is produced when two different notes
of A is played:
 [ (
y1+y2¿ sin ( 880 πx ) +sin 880 π x +
1
440 )]
y1+y2= sin ( 880 πx ) +sin ⁡(880 πx+2 π )

y1+y2=sin ( 880 πx ) +sin ( 880 πx ) cos 2 π +cos ( 880 πx ) sin 2 π

y1+y2=sin ( 880 πx ) +sin ( 880 πx ) ∙ 1+cos ⁡(880 πx )∙ 0

y1+y2=sin ( 880 πx ) +sin ( 880 πx )

y1+y2=2 sin ⁡( 880 πx )

1
Since the period of the sine wave is found using the formula: period=b ∙ , the period
4
for the sound wave produced by the chord A would be:

1
period=880 ∙
4

period=440

Therefore, the working above shows that this sound wave of the chord A would
complete 440 cycles every 1 second.

Diagram 2: Sound wave of an octave higher chord A

If you want to find out the equation for the sound wave for the chord A with a higher
note, we can double the frequency:

period=440 ∙ 2

period=880
 Therefore, this shows that the sound wave for an octave higher chord A will complete
880 cycles every 1 second. As a result, the period of this sound wave will be reduced to half
compared to the original sound wave of the chord A. This is true for higher notes because
higher pitched sounds will have higher frequencies. This is due to the shorter wavelength,
causing the frequencies to increase.

Chord A function produced in a guitar

The guitar string rests on the nuts and the bridge of the instrument, defining boundary
conditions, and providing length L for open strings. The length L and reality are the scale
length of the guitar, which differs in physical length, depending on the model of your guitar:
Les Paul’s have a shorter scale length and Stratocasters that has a shorter scale length than
bass guitars. However, I will be using the generic length L because it applies regardless of the
specific string length, which means you can also apply all of this to any fretted note. We the
string is stroked; it begins to vibrate and sets up standing waves on the string, but it can only
vibrate, and a few very specific ways as defined by our boundary conditions. Both of the knot
and bridge form fixed node points on the string not as places where no movement of the
string can occur. Therefore, the only waves that can manifest themselves on the string are
ones that match up to these fixed nodes.

The wavelength of each harmonic on a guitar could be calculated using the following
equation:

2L
λn=
n

In this equation, ‘n’ represents the number of the harmonic we wish to calculate. From
there it is easy to work out the frequency of each harmonic:

V
fn=
λn

In the equation of the frequency of harmonic above, V represents the speed of the
wave. Note that this is not the speed of sound in air but the speed of the wave propagation in
the string, which is derived from the tension and mass per unit length of the string.

By combining both equations, we can see that:

V
fn=
2L
n

n
fn=V ∙
2L

vn
fn=
2L

If we assume that the string tension remains constant, not banding strings, diving the
Wiley bar, or applying vibrato of any kind, then ‘V’ should also remain constant. In fact, so
does everything else end the equation. Therefore, if we only change ‘n’, which is the order of
the harmonic, then frequency must be a function of ‘n’. This is shown by the equation:

V
=K
2L

In this case, K will be a constant, which can be any number.

For example, if our fundamental frequency was 100 Hz,

fn=1¿ 100 Hz

Then, the second harmonic would be:

fn=2¿ 2 ∙100 Hz

fn=2¿ 200 Hz

This will be followed by: fn=3¿ 300 Hz , and so on. Therefore, the frequency of the nth
harmonic would be:

fn=nf1

The combination of frequencies of the guitar are integer multiplies of the

fundamental. If this were not so, the guitar would be less of a musical instrument, but more of
a noise generator. The guitar is musical because of mathematics.
 Diagram 3: Sound wave of the middle note A in guitar

The frequency is measured in wave cycles per second and has units of Hz, which is
short for Hertz. The middle note A in guitar has a frequency of 440Hz. Setting the
fundamental frequency to 100Hz: fn=1¿ 110 Hz , the middle note A will be the 4 th harmonic in
the guitar. Also, by setting the length of the string of the guitar to be 1 m, we can calculate
the wavelength of the harmonic:

λ 1=1m

λ1
λn=
n

1
λ 4= m
4

According to the reaction above, the wavelength for the 4 th harmonic, which is the
1
middle note A, will be m.
4

Evaluation

Referring to the research question, “How is trigonometric function applied in the

world of music?”, after the exploration, I found out that mathematics, especially for
trigonometric functions, had a close relationship with the world of music. The mathematics
could describe various phenomena and concepts in music. As an example, musical notes
could be expressed as sound waves. This was possible because mathematics explains how
certain note has certain frequencies, and sound waves are used to describe these mathematical
frequencies. As explored in the analysis, trigonometric functions play a major role in musical
theory and production. Trigonometric functions are used when measuring the level or pitch of
a sound wave of musical notes. While working on my investigation, I was able to visualize
the music in the forms of trigonometric function. Even though I do not study physics, I was
able to find out the connection between physics and music as well since physics was also
closely related to mathematics.

In my investigation, I compared the note A in piano and in the guitar. It was

interesting to find out how they showed both similarities and differences. Both instruments
produced sound waves, but the guitar was more focused on the harmonics. There were also
some limitations that I have encountered during the investigation. For calculating the
wavelength of the 4th harmonic, which is the middle note A in guitar, I had to assume that the
wavelength of the 1st harmonic is 1m. This is because the wavelength varied due to the
differences in the scale length, L, for different types of guitars.

On the other hand, it was interesting to visualize the notes in musical instruments,
including piano and guitar, which were the musical instruments that I had the most time
enjoying playing. It was also interesting to find out that the world of music also had a
connection between physics, since the sine waves were found by a combination of
mathematical methods and the concepts in physics.

Bibliography

1. “Chapter 16 - Sound Waves Speed of Sound Sound Characteristics Intensity

Instruments: Strings and Pipes 2 Dimensional Interference Beats Doppler Effect. - Ppt
Download.” SlidePlayer, https://slideplayer.com/slide/6282882/
2. Technical Information - Sine Waves - Combined Waves of Tone (IBS),
http://www.barillaroguitars.com/tech-info-sinewave.html
3. Sound, http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/212_fall2003.web.dir/nick_sloat/sound_htm.html