#math music

octal expansions of integer reciprocals

Let’s make equations musical.  Instead of visualizing equations on a graph, let’s listen to them on the piano, merging all our math and music knowledge. You can make two-dimensional x-y math equations audible – or sonify them – by translating the x-values to time and the y-values to the keys of a piano.  If you can’t play them on the piano yourself, we can use the free web app Chordinates! by Pios Labs to do it instead.  Listen to the sound of coordinates, linear equations, polynomials, trigonometric functions, and random distributions of notes on the piano, and analyze their patterns. Then take the audio review quiz at the end, complete with extended creative and technical challenges.  Got your own reactions to this episode? Would love to hear your thoughts.

Related to this episode:  

• Chordinates! beta, a free web by Pios Labs: https://www.pioslabs.com/chordinates/

• Coordinate plane, from Desmos.com: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/q8mwzeylbk

• HCI Beyond the GUI, book by Philip Kortum: https://www.amazon.com/HCI-Beyond-GUI-Nontraditional-Technologies/dp/0123740177/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241987101&sr=8-1

For some reason the first thing that popped into my head was 'Thunderdome' -- although maybe that's because that was the title of my last band's first release.

Other than that, there are a lot of good band names out there. You could look for band names that a band has done a good job of claiming as its own (e.g. Blink-182 / Coheed and Cambria)

There's also the option of having a vague "type" or "situation" name, like a Ska or Britpop band

If you're in a science-themed band I would recommend looking up words in IUPAC. Try coming up with acronyms for elements that form part of a simple chemical compound -- for instance, "amphetamines" = "A.M.P.H.E.T.A.M.I.N.E.S.." You could also adapt the ending of a chemical compound if you find a good name but are lacking an "element": for instance, "H2O" is water, "O2" is air, etc. (You could also try deriving new compound names from established compounds, but I don't have many suggestions in that category.)

Then there's the James Joyce type stuff, of which I'm far from an expert, but it seems like you could pretty easily get a band name out of one of his works, like "The Grotesque" or "A Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man."

There's also "Irrational" which is the name of the math student group I used to belong to (and also the title of one of my favorite songs)

All of the above give you a lot of options without necessarily being too common. (It's much harder to get a common name if you go with a more obscure book title or a long chemical compound name -- unless the band is really successful, people are going to just call the band "Water" rather than taking the time to figure out what that name means.)

(I'm assuming you want a band name in English, if that's not the case let me know and I'll try to think of something)