Im a bit of a analytical person, so I tend to seek patterns in music.

Do you think math is a large factor in composition or not?

Just curious what people think, and im leaving the statement vague to invite abstract replies.

Well if you knew that I got started on electronic music thanks to Aphex Twins - Girl Boy mix, the assumption is harder to end up at then most.

Music Theory is a collection of the mathematical formulas of music. That's why it's not necessary to learn - it just provides the explanations for what already exists (and it doesn't even explain all of it!).

Math plays a huge role in music, but through physics. Each note pertains to certain frequencies in which musical scales were built off of. This is very vague but I can't remember much of what I learned in physics class.

Tbh, even though math is huge in terms of intervals, time signatures, harmonic analysis, synthesis (double so for additive), and even arrangement, I'd say that it really doesn't help you write better music hardly at all. An octave higher note is twice the frequency of the note before it. Great. Now go use that information to write better melodies. Doesn't really work lol

Music is applied mathematics. Is it a "factor" in composition? What does that really mean? Are notes, intervals, & rhythm a factor? They're intrinsic to the medium, so yes. Do composers balance their music like a formula in chemistry? Not that I've ever heard of, but maybe there's someone out there doing something that obscure .

Hypothetically, if one were to add psychoacoustic resonance to a kick drum, they'd need to know the math of music theory to do so appropriately. When creating your own scales (rare!), or placing accents in meaningful places to blend duple with compound triple meter, you'll be doing some elementary math.

Also, some pieces of music are explorations of math in composition... different parts playing rhythmic structures based on prime numbers to create dissonance or harmony at predictable times throughout the piece. I've heard similar things done with multiplicative factors to create interesting counterpoint.

Specifically about electronic music, some sound design applications require a solid familiarity with math to get your hands dirty. Csound & Reaktor come to mind, and I'm sure there is a healthy ecosystem of similar tools. Also, since computers can precisely generate sounds between the notes in traditional western music, harmonizing these sounds will require the math of music theory (back to the rarity of custom scales).

Then there's programming DSPs (which I'm separating from Csound for some reason), and other computer sciency things... but think that's out of scope for a statement regarding composition.

I'd say that it really doesn't help you write better music hardly at all.

I wanna disagree with this statement. While it probably doesn't help to know music math as much as, say, listening to a lot of music and analyzing it, it does help to understand where we get intervals, and their relationships with each other. For example, lower harmonics are generally more consonant, like the third harmonic, which is a 5th, and the 5th and 6th harmonics, which are major and minor thirds. Understanding these facts may help to explain why people see these intervals as consonant, or at least give a partial explanation. Maybe this isn't a direct benefit from understanding math, but it definitely helps.

I would also look into Fourier analyses, which are cool if you understand the math behind them (which, tbh, I still don't understand)

Maybe not explicitly in composition itself, but there are very cool mathematical representations of the way synths work! The harmony between mathematics and sound design is astounding

Definitely. Just take FM synthesis as an example. It's crazy stuff.