Hi Graham, > IMO, the world would be a better place if we were more precise in > our musical judgements.
Fair enough. > If you don't specify that something is a personal opinion, then "go objective > or go home". Some philosophers would say that every statement is subjective, even "The sun rose today" or "I'm currently typing on a computer" -- it's just that it's easier to convince other people that such subjective statements are "truth". ;) > The easiest objective judgement is popularity -- or rather, > "amount of CDs sold", "amount of tracks downloaded from a legal > free music site", or even "amount of tracks downloaded from any > source, including quasi-legal (i.e. not legal) and > not-even-quasi-legal sources". Yes, quantitative data is more objective than qualitative data. > Judgements like "harmonic complexity" or "melodic construction" > can be objective, but you need to specify which algorithm you're > using to determine the harmonies (or melodic stuff). And then use > that algorithm strictly. Which, for practical purposes, means > using computer score analysis. I like it! > I think that the only objective judgement we can make is popularity. Well, it's the easiest anyway. > (or at least, in objective algorithms, using some constants that > were derived from collecting listening data from hundreds of > people in music psychology experiment -- that would be a good > balance between completely subjective judgements of musicologists, > and completely mathematical analyses) +1. Kieren. _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
