Musicians and mathematicians have long maintained that there is an inherent and indelible connection between the two fields. They say that music is intertwined with math and vice versa and that it is impossible to separate the two.
Charles, L. Perkins, Sr. is the director at the Music and Math Masters Studio near Waco, Texas and runs an after-school music and math program at his facility. He offers individual and semi-private math tutorial classes as well as instrument and voice music instruction for youngsters in grades four through twelve.
Perkins’ studio has been open for about a year now and has drawn enough interest from adult clients to warrant him offering tutoring for older age groups too.
Perkins claims that music and math comprehension and understanding as well as skill development is tremendously accelerated by the intimate learning environment. He says that traditional math classes suffer from “information gaps” in which teachers work through lessons at a one-size-fits-all pace. He has observed how students who may be having trouble understanding the material and keeping up with their classmates are forced to simply keep moving forward even though they have not established a thorough understanding of foundational material and concepts.
Perkins and his team of accomplished instructors work with each student individually to ensure that the lessons are absorbed and understood and that no student moves on to more advanced concepts until they fully understand previous ones.
The innovative math and music instructor has called math a “universal language” and says that his studio accepts children as young as four. He believes that general learning is best done during early childhood and that this is particularly true when it comes to math and music.
He is especially interested in working with children who have what he calls “math anxiety” – those who have a low level of confidence in mathematics because they haven’t experienced much success in their classes, but who Perkins believes really just lack the proper foundation in basic math concepts.