Re: [LAD] Music, Undecidability, and the tiling problem (was Re: update: OT-ish: realtime 2d placement algorithms :-/)

From: Niels Mayer <nielsmayer@email-addr-hidden>
Date: Tue May 25 2010 - 22:31:57 EEST

Paul Davis <paul@linuxaudiosystems.com>:
> this might be how users of ableton live think about making music, and more generally, users of computer software aimed at pattern-based music composition/creation.
>
> but i would submit that if you offered this description of making music to musicians who play instruments or sing, they would find it unrecognizable.

Mathematics is fundamental to music -- everything from the
relationship of notes to frequency, to what people consider musical,
or rhythmic... has to do with math, group theory, etc.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what musicians "recognize"... what
matters is what music *is* -- and when that *is* causes an audience to
cheer, be moved emotionally, get up and dance, etc. Chances are,
anybody too close to their own subject will be unable to actually
recognize it's true shape and meaning -- due to "can't see the forest
for the trees syndrome."... Computer tools, pattern-based or not, are
there to help us see that forest, (but usually lead us down the
garden path instead).

Sources:

Book: David Wright's "Mathematics and Music"

Book: J. Fauvel, R. Flood, and R. Wilson (eds.), Music and
Mathematics: From Pythagoras to Fractals, Oxford,
New York, 2003.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5783/72/DC1
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/data/313/5783/72/DC1/1
"The Geometry of Musical Chords by Dmitri Tymoczko"

http://www.ams.org/notices/201001/rtx100100030p.pdf
"Music: Broken Symmetry, Geometry, and Complexity"
( http://www.uwec.edu/walkerjs/MBSGC/ )
............ excerpt .............
Example 15 (Melody and rhythm in “Unsquare
Dance”). In the 1961 Dave Brubeck Quartet’s
recording of “Unsquare Dance” [94], there is an
amazing performance involving hand claps, piano
notes, and bass notes all played in the unusual
time signature of 7 . In Figure 16 we show our
analysis of the melody and rhythm in a passage
from “Unsquare Dance”. We used three different
frequency ranges from the spectrogram to isolate
the different instruments from the passage. The
passage begins with a transition from rapid drum-
stick strikings to hand clappings when the piano
enters. The rhythm of the hand clappings plus
piano notes has a 7 time signature. Notice that the
bass notes are playing with a simple repetition
of 4 beats that helps the other musicians play
within this unusual time signature. In sum, the
analysis shown in Figure 16 provides quantitative
evidence for the “tightness” (rhythmic coherence)
with which these musicians are performing.
............

Niels
http://nielsmayer.com
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Received on Wed May 26 00:15:03 2010

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