Numeracy at Music School

My son has been taking piano lesson at a neighborhood music school. They recently sponsored a recital at the church down the street where many of the students made their parents proud by singing, playing various instruments and generally looking extremely adorable.

My son was the youngest little one of all and I was truly impressed by the composure and grace

he exhibited while he sat at the enormous grand piano and tickled the ivories. While thining about examples of numeracy in daily life, I got to thinking about music and all the numeracy exhibited in interpreting a piece.

I decided to look at the simple piece my son played at his recital, a variation of the 'Mary had a Little Lamb' melody.

This is whay I came up with in a sort of list form:

Child needs to know how to count to understand notes and note length

Child needs to understand idea of fraction (whole, half, quarter and eighth notes)

Child needs to understand syllables (ie counting them out) in a world to be able to match the words and the notes

Child needs to be able to grasp connection between symbol and what it stands for, in this case, what does a note mean? how does this symbol relate to how long this sound should last?

Child needs to understand the ideas of 'slower/faster', 'louder/softer' in relation to what is played, using a type of scale to measure (using a song as the scale to measure against - ie I play it, now you pay it faster/slower/softer/louder)

I can see why music is considered closely to mathematics, the concepts are clearly related. I keep telling my little guy that he likes math, so it is logical that he likes music and he agrees!