The Music is...MATH ! series was created by 2 award-winning composer/musicians in Los Angeles in late 2004. William Lenihan, international composer/musician and Director of Music Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, and Jay Oliver, world-renowned pianist and composer/producer.

Ever since the Mozart effect was discovered by Dr. Gordon Shaw and Dr. Francis Rauscher, William Lenihan and Jay Oliver spent the following years exploring the Math/Music connection and how it might influence brain function. They focused their efforts on exploring WHY Mozart's music had such a profound effect on the brain.

They first studyed the progression of Mozart's music, from his simple lullabies (Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) to his later and more complex works (Sonata for 2 pianos in D major). The next step was to begin the process of dissecting Mozart's music down to it's basic components.


"The way Mozart relates to Math is not that different from the way ALL music relates to math", says Lenihan, "except that Mozart, along with Bach, Beethoven and other classical composers used logical, precise, and common sub-divisions of both pitch and rhythm."


These sub-divisions are - in affect - basic math, and have been found to help bolster the brain's ability to perform in any way that requires the brain to operate mathematically.

"Mozart - in it's completed form - may be mathematically precise, but the music is way too complex for the early pre-cognizant brain", says Oliver. "Building on the math/music principal, we have created the basic building-blocks of this classical music, and presented it in a form that can be absorbed more easliy by the baby's brain."

Lenihan and Oliver went to work studying the structure of Mozart and other late 18th century classical composers and how their music related to math., They examined all possibilities, starting with the basic elements of classical music:
1) pitch, 2) rhythm (cadence) and 3) timbre.

They discovered that 2 of the 3 elements indeed defined an outline of basic mathematical precision: pitch & rhythm.

They decided to consult with Eric Braswell, a computer and software expert from Sun Microsystems and MySQL, and together they came up with a formula for converting the intervals of pitch into it's precise equivalent in rhythm, thereby "mapping" one to the other.

In this formula, the basic mathematical elements can be streamlined down to a simple "lesson" and understood on a core level much easier than conventional 'pulse-based' music.

Lenihan and Oliver are continuing their work on math/music and the brain and will soon be working with other researchers to bring new educational music products to the marketplace.