Phil Taylor writes:
>John Walsh wrote:
>> Roughly, this method will say that two tunes are alike if they have
>>approximately the same outline, and "same outline" means that the
patterns
>>of notes seen on the staff look about the same.
>>
>The trouble with this is that the shape of the tune is no real guide
>to how it sounds. To take a very artificial example, suppose you
>go through a tune, and every place where you see an interval of a
>fifth, you sharpen the second note to make that interval a tritone.
>The overall shape of the tune is very little changed, but it will
>sound totally and utterly different. Not that this variation is
>something you are likely to come across in the wild, of course:-)
>
I agree, this method won't be hard to fool. (Tho that's probably
true of all other methods too...) I suspect it is easier to distinguish
between different tunes than to find similarities in related tunes. I
started by wondering how it would ever be possible to figure out that, for
example, The Streets of Laredo and Saint James' Infirmary are related
_without_ knowing that they're both descendents of the Unfortunate Rake.
Actually, I don't know if it _is_ possible--different time signature,
different modes, so the differences are more pronounced than the
similarities--but if I put those obvious differences out of my mind, I do
hear a certain resemblance, and I thought one might try something like
this.
I'll put the rest of the explanation into a separate post.
Cheers,
John Walsh
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