Speaking of math and music... Phil Moriarty recently did a "Sixty Symbols" video[1] about a recent paper[2] that investigated the subtle timing fluctuations that distinguish well-played drums from the "correct" quantized-to-the-exact-beat rhythm produced by a drum machine.

    ... fluctuations of hi-hat amplitudes and interbeat intervals ... have clear
    long-range correlations and short-range anticorrelations separated by a
    characteristic time scale.

As a follow-up, Prof. Moriarty is asking for recordings of drummers playing Rush's "Tom Sawyer"[3], so he can continue the analysis on a much broader set of data.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyLeBMdI_HU

[2] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

[3] https://muircheart.wordpress.com/2015/10/19/the-rhythm-metho... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGH6-BcKCME