A girl sets the dials on the organ function grinder, while her friend inserts a number ticket.	Making a balloon octahedron wand (orange), watched by a girl who just received one (light blue). In the background, people ride square-wheeled tricycles.

Learn more about the other exhibits at the Math Midway on their website.

Click to play (1 min 43 sec)

I will be twisting balloon octahedra for children of all ages at the Math Midway premier next Sunday (June 14th)! There is a small green one in the photo, but I can make you any color you like.

The 12,000 pieces are for an "organ fuction grinder." You choose a number to input, and set some dials to various mathematical transformations. Not only does the number get put through the transformations, but a musical theme also! For example, if you add three to your number, the melody gets transposed up three steps. It's very cool to play with, and I plan to get an online version up in the future.

The rest of the Math Midway exhibit promises to be really fun too. There will be a tricycle with square wheels which, as you can try for yourself, gives a perfectly smooth ride! There will also be giant puzzles and other cool stuff.

Click to play (4 min)

A bunch more paper-instrument stuff is coming soon, so stay tuned!

1.	Storm	Click to play (1 min 55 sec)
2.	Didgeriduel	Click to play (1 min 37 sec)

Before we burned all the instruments, I made some studio recordings. Here are three short pieces for paperwinds and paper tube xylophone:

1.	Dance	Click to play (56 sec)
2.	A3 A4	Click to play (1 min 32 sec)
3.	Floo-ee-oo-ee-ute	Click to play (1 min 38 sec)

Related to this paper is a seven-movement piece in which each movement is inspired by and contains the symmetry of each of the seven frieze patterns. The piece will ultimately be a piano trio, but three movements of the piano sketch are now available:

1.	Dizzy Hop	Click to play (1 min 28 sec)
2.	Hop	Click to play (1 min 26 sec)
3.	Sidle	Click to play (2 min 18 sec)

1.

Altitude Beta Theme

Click to play (2 min 9 sec)

A commission like this is a collaboration between the game designer and composer, and we have to work together to get the feel of the music to be just what the game designer envisions. The first draft of the music contained three different ideas I was playing around with. We ended up going with something more serious, but you might enjoy listening to the original:

2.

Altitude Theme Draft

Click to play (3 min 9 sec)

1.	Storm	Click to play (1 min 43 sec)
		A piece for paper xylophone and assorted paper winds.
2.	Didgeriduel	Click to play (1 min 16 sec)
		A piece for two dueling paper didgeridoos, paper tube harp, paper drum, and--unintentionally--dog.

Read on for photographs.

1.	Dizzy Hop	Click to play (1 min 28 sec)
2.	Hop	Click to play (1 min 26 sec)

1.

Nothing Has Changed

Click to play (5 min 19 sec)

Vi Hart, a Stony Brook University senior music major, has been wild about Harry since she was about the same age as the adolescent wizard in J.K. Rowling's first novel, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.” Hart will conduct the premiere of the “Harry Potter Septet” she composed for string quartet, violin, piano and two female voices. It's based on all seven Rowling books in the series.

The book that launched a thousand marketing schemes has now spawned a classical chamber piece, composed by a Stony Brook music major with a flair for mathematical wizardry. The Harry Potter Septet [is] an ambitious but accessible composition for string quartet, piano, and two female voices... It's the work of multi-talented senior Vi Hart, whose obsession with J.K. Rowling's adolescent sorcerer dates back to the sixth grade.

“I'm a composer and I've been composing for as long as I can remember. I got inspired last year by none other than the Harry Potter series. The project started off as a cute idea and then I just ran with it. It took about 14 months. But I completed a septet—originally 2 hours of music, which I've cut down to one and one-half hours.”

“I think there's definitely a connection [between music and mathematics]. Maybe I'm biased because those are the two things I know how to do, so they're the only things I know how to see connections between. They're similar in that sense of discovery, having things fit together. When I'm composing a piece, I often feel that I know what has to come next and what makes sense. Certain notes work and other notes don't work. If you can figure it all out and put it together, you end up with a beautiful piece. Mathematics is often the same way where you're on this trip of discovery. Certain things work, certain things don't. And when you're done, you have something beautiful, elegant.”