Summer of Math Exposition

It was am very interesting video about a topic i’m really interested in, but unfortunatly the background music was most of the time too loud to actually follow the video.

Nice animations

I enjoyed your video, it’s very hard to distil and explain all of the facets of musical theory and translate it to mathematics within 15 minutes. I did miss a lot of details about the relationship between harmonic overtones and the different temperament systems that determine the ratios of the intervals. But I liked your animations and the way you explain things with the sound. The background music was a little bit distracting though.

Editing and video and everything was soo fine. Amazing work. New topic which no one chooses. I’m inspired.

The visuals combined with the sounds helped explain in the concepts in a very accessible way.

The topic is good, and you do a good job showing the connection between math and music. When you explain the parameters of the wave, it might help to play a tone and show how each parameter affects it. Also, the background music is too loud, and it shouldn’t be playing when you’re showing how tones interact.

The actual craftsmanship of your video, with the editing, audio, and visual design, is quite good. That said, a lot of your explanation of the math dips a bit hard into “tell don’t show”: it shouldn’t be hard to explain why multiplying by a sine wave impacts the amplitude, or changing f changes the frequency, or changing $\varphi$ changes the phase. You drop the sum-to-product rule, which is a rule with a specific background and justification, which many of the students won’t know, but give very little way to find how to get there from facts they would know, like the angle sum formulas for sine and cosine. I also think that discussing harmony from the perspective of pure sine waves and entirely neglecting the concept of the harmonic series actually perpetuates common misconceptions about how the math of harmony on strings and pipes works.

I can tell you have an ear for music, your chords at the end are very nice. And I can tell you’re passionate about math as well. I think you’ve got what it takes, some of those explanations could just use a bit of punching up. Keep at it, and have a nice day

Initial Thoughts

That’s a fun topic! Thanks for sharing! I enjoyed the parts about the circle of fifths and representing chords visually with the Lissajous Curves.

What Went Well

I thought your explanation of the formula for sound was really good. I like how you showed the physical shape of the string too, showing how the sin shape shows up there. The formula showing how two frequency combine to produce what we hear was interesting too.

Ideas for Improvement

The main thing that stood out to me was that there was some jargon used that middle school and high school viewers may not be familiar with. The two in particular that come to mind are Lissajous Curves and Fourier Transforms. You showed the final results of those two well, but I think a little more explanation of what those are and how they work would be helpful for younger viewers.

This video was a pleasent surprise for me. While the technicalities are not up there (audio is a bit too loud, ironically, the visuals could be improved since a few mistakes can be seen like the “background” grid being above the circle around 1:50 and the quality of voice recording could be improved) and the topic itself is not very novel (I’ve seen similar videos over time), your explanation and the chill that you have when explaining stuff is very rewarding. Your video is kinda addictive to watch. If you raise the level of your technicalities and choose maybe more original topics, you’ll create magnificent explainers, I’m sure of that. Good job!

The most engaging part of this video for me was your explanation of what makes certain combinations of notes sound dissonant vs harmonious, using ratios of frequencies and Lissajous curves. I also liked the extension of this section to explain why there are different tuning systems due to the Pythagorean comma.

I think what motivated me was the visuals, as it was animated very well. However, I feel like I’ve seen a lot of videos on the topic, so that held me back a bit.

Ah yes, reconstructing DTMF from first principles. Even if that wasn’t the goal.

The background music is distracting , especially since it continues to be played when other sounds are playing.

Fascinating topic, clear delivery and very good supportive animations!

The topic of this video on how mathematical wave functions explain musical sounds is extremely interesting. The visualisations and explanations are clear and well timed starting with simple equations and becoming more complex.

However the background music is a major problem. In a video about sound this is a major distraction. It would be much better if the video was silent apart from the relevant sounds.

Also the choice of starting note was harsh and the volume of the narrators voice was low. In video about sound these kind of mistakes are very unfortunate.