“No! It’s not too late to change majors.” Chet angrily left the room after telling his family that he’s giving up the free ride for applied mathematics for a new interest. It was the first time his grades have dropped his academic career. Late nights were being taken up at a local bar with a piano that was once only used for novelty.
It started with a dare. The argument was simple enough, not everything was derived from math. This kind of thing happens when outnumbered by friends from the psychology department.
“Come on. You can’t really believe everything is numbers.” slurred Carl. Fritz was quiet because he could see the scientific method in his work. He usually was the quiet one letting ideas have time to roll around before making a conclusion.
“Of course it is. It can be applied to all arts. Fractals were only the beginning.”
“So you can learn how to be a master pianist simply by creating formulas?”
The challenge was set. Chet was given two weeks to learn and create music from math. All classes were missed for this. It wasn’t just a challenge to him but to his craft. At the end of the two weeks he début his formula of sound. Every one was so surprised that the bar tender asked him to come by next weekend. The deal was sweetened with free drinks.
Chet showed up and put on a show. The crowd wanted an encore but he couldn’t go on. There was nothing left of that formula. It takes too long to make the calculations eliminating the ability to improvise. After another month he realized there was nothing that could be done about this.
Thanks to the past time of reading and contributing to science posts he was contacted with an unusual opportunity. There was another university where they discovered how to record a map of a brain in digital form. They wanted to help his goal. He wouldn’t be improvising but creating the formulas as he played.
It was a success. Chet sat playing in a bar as empty as it started. He had removed the human element and was left with only science. This made his music faster with a precision never before achieved. But that wasn’t what the people were coming to see.
