Paul Davis <[email protected]>: > 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 _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
