David Kung

Professor Kung, an accomplished violinist who is the concertmaster of his community orchestra, provides excellent insights into the mathematical nature of music, while never losing sight of music's true power, which the math only supports. Along the way, we learn a lot of interesting things about sound, why different instruments sound different, and why pianos are never in tune. (This was one of the most interesting episodes.) This is much more playful than other Teaching Company courses, as the Professor makes good use out of some of the special effects available to him. In each episode, he plays lots of the examples on his violin, which is always close at hand. I highly recommend this course to musicians who have a math aversion. Some of it will go deeper than they care for, but it always returns to the music, and it is a very enlightening course.… (mais)