Math & Music: The Severed Alliance. Some Recent Academic Approaches (Do Not Read If You Hate Drums)

I've had some interesting conversations about this kind of thing recently, perhaps I will provide you with some cherce nuggets

western-centric way of reducing the rhythm to where it falls in a set of 4/4 bars. The "essence" of the beat is treated as the particular 3/2 pattern as it can be translated into western notation

Also, I read somewhere recently, can't remember where, that in Africa, in the transcription of African drumming, they are aware, like everybody else, of the limits of Western musical notation, but it is still used. Guido d'Arezzo built to last.

"Inside a Master Drummer's Mind: A Quantitative Theory of Structures in African Music," by Willie Anku
http://www.redalyc.org/pdf/822/82201105.pdf

heh. i do like that i've never heard anyone say the word clave in new orleans, it just...is. aural tradition for sure.

Be careful what you whistle in Mexico: http://www.furious.com/perfect/bodiddleybeat.html

Hurting's initial approach reminds me of discussion long ago I watched between a relative and a friend, who are born exactly one day apart, in which, surprise, both of their most annoying qualities were at the forefront. My relative is one of those guys who learns some kind of fact a little after other people, like me, and then enlightens the savages with it, or his brother put it "educates another partygoer unto the magicks of science." My friend is one of those people who doesn't like to be pinned down or come clean, when he's going to make a decision tells you every reason why he shouldn't do it and then does it anyway, leaving you holding the bag in some kind of way, and finally, as is relevant to this discussion, in any aesthetic discussion is prone you make all the propositions and then shoot down what you say as being too limiting, missing the mark, too literal-minded, always ending up with the question "But don't you think there is something more?" What that more is however, he ain't saying (I may allow you to guess what professions these two ended up in)

Anyway, now that I've dispensed with these initial ad hominem advisories, the story was that the one guy said "did you now that all sound can be broken down into a series of overtones and that this completely describes what is going on?" The other guy got annoyed and said "But when Miles Davis is playing a melody or a solo is that really all there is, I don't think that can be the whole story?" First guy: "Yes, that's all there is to it." Second guy: "But don't you think there is something more?" Rinse and Repeat.

I was annoyed by the two of them because it seemed to me that basically they wanted to have an argument, they didn't want to see the merit in what the other guy was saying. Both ways of describing something can be valid if used appropriately, both can have explanatory power if applied correctly, one doesn't rule out the other one, unless you really feel you have to choose a side. Years later I asked the second guy, "Do you remember that conversation?" and, as Jordan said earlier he replied "I think about it all the time!"

More Songs About Chocolate and Girls Songs About Buildings and Food links from the other thread:

That guy has lots of papers with those kinds of diagrams.
A Mathematical Analysis of African, Brazilian, and Cuban Clave Rhythms: http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~godfried/publications/clave.pdf
El Compas Flamenco: A Phylogenetic Analysis http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~godfried/publications/winfield.pdf
The Euclidean Algorithm Generates Traditional Musical Rhythms http://archive.bridgesmathart.org/2005/bridges2005-47.pdf

― In Walked Sho-Bud (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, February 14, 2014 5:30 PM (2 weeks ago)

Did we link this paper yet? http://poisson.phc.unipi.it/~fidanza/matemusica/papers/Toussaint%20-%20The%20Geometry%20of%20Musical%20Rhythm.pdf

― In Walked Sho-Bud (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, February 15, 2014 2:29 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This review seems to get it just about right: http://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.13.19.2/mto.13.19.2.gotham.php

― In Walked Sho-Bud (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, February 15, 2014 2:43 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.00.6.1/mto.00.6.1.anku_frames.html

― In Walked Sho-Bud (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, February 16, 2014 10:21 AM (2 weeks ago)

that mind of the master drummer article is cool, I need to give that one some time

Hm. One of those links seems to break Zing

And now most have these have gone off the net because of crüt

what did I do!!!

Sorry, j/k. Didn't really think it was you, you just had the right vowel sound in your name to complete the expression.

Here is review of the Tymoczko book in case you are interested: http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.11.17.3/mto.11.17.3.hook.html

Ah, it's been a while since I read anything in this vein! I'm both interested and sceptical.

anything in this vein

meaning "mathematical modelling of pitch", which used to be a major area of interest for me, not what Tymoczko himself is doing specifically, which is probably fairly distinctive.

Ah, it's been a while since I read anything in this vein! I'm both interested and sceptical.

― EveningStar (Sund4r), Tuesday, March 11, 2014 11:46 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My understanding is most of the history of math as applied to music up to and even after equal temperament had to do with finding various rational numbers to divide up the scale pleasingly. I believe Galileo's father had a big success in this. Then every once in a while somebody throws some group theory at musical structures such as guy named Riemann -Hugo, not Bernhard, but I don't know too much about this

Actually the book Musimathics: The Matematical Foundations of Music, by Gareth Loy seems to be an interesting overview of a bunch of different topics, moving from equal-temperament and just intonation through the physics of sound, along with psychoacoustics and acoustics, finally ending up at various methods of composition, stochastic and aleatory.

Not a lot of posters on this thread but those that are are choice.

Anyway feel like the approach taken in that one book of building up a big theory and just plucking the low hanging fruit of the chord sequences from the theory tree is kind of not quite the most useful. More interested in simple ways to enumerate or generate the various facts related to the usual scale suspects.

Anyway the other thread reminded that I found an interesting if verging on eccentric book about
modal music that I can link to. I think one of the authors has a technical degree but I am tempted to say in this case it falls more under the rubric of polymath and music. By the other thread I mean worst music writing of course.

http://www.modalogy.net/

Feel bad for saying "verging on eccentric." Should have said "original" instead.

I want to post in this thread but want to read more Tymoczko first.

Loved the part in the MTO review of his book that said "if it seems that Tymoczko may overestimate his radicalism, it is not because he is doing so in the spirit of self-promotion, but because the bar for radicalism is set so low"

Schneidermann typed:

Three overlapping goals of music theory are to explain why music sounds the way it does, find good ways to listen to music, and describe how to create music.

I am 100% on board with #1. Of #3 I think "but this only describes how to create specific kinds of music, I mean, it's useful for film composers I guess? but otherwise no?" Of #2 I think "ohhhh I get it, you're an asshole!!"

Not Schneidermann specifically, I agree with that guy, I'm referring to that notion

Just read his section addressing that second point which was pretty otm.

Yeah I like that guy, I like this thread! I gotta read this Tymoczko book

Better you than me ;)

Seriously the part I read was kind of interesting but I didn't want to follow him all the way into Chopin's Tesseract. I think the Modalogy's Chromatic Cube concept might be more useful.

http://www.modalogy.net/ask.html

I've been listening to Beethoven symphonies a lot lately actually and was thinking about how "square" (not necessarily in a bad way) the rhythms often are, and I was thinking about how unlike the rhythms of most of the world's other cultures these rhythms are, although they still tend to be a westerner's frame of reference for interpreting other culture's rhythms (even the fact that we think of a son clave as "3/2" is evidence of this.) I'm guessing there's some explanation that stems from the invention of the clock and from militarism (marching rhythms).

― james franco tur(oll)ing test (Hurting 2), Monday, March 3, 2014 4:11 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/was-beethovens-metronome-wrong-9140958/
http://www.ams.org/notices/201309/rnoti-p1146.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvJAgrUBF4w

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/but-seriously/2013/06/13/chladni-figures-amazing-resonance-experiment/

Which links to http://skullsinthestars.com/2013/05/02/physics-demonstrations-chladni-patterns/

Just was in contact with a guy who played on Dmitri T's record but he didn't have to read the book first.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/the-enduring-myth-of-music-and-maths-2307387.html

Exactly

http://docstudio.tvo.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/masterseries_620x350/The-Man-Who-Saved-Geometry%5B1%5D_0.jpg

^H.S.M or Harold Scott MacDonald "Donald" Coxeter, musically inclined mathematician, Bourbaki antagonist and King of Infinite Space.

http://www.amazon.com/Music-Mathematics-From-Pythagoras-Fractals/dp/0199298939
Know nothing about this book except I have enjoyed one of the editors writings on graph theory.

http://galileospendulum.org/2012/06/29/galileo-was-a-kickin-lute-player/

(Warning, considered posting on worst writing about music thread)

Could have sworn one dj on WKCR Bachfest was introduced as Terry Tao.

Right now, listening to Rob Schneiderman playing with his old buddy Brian Lynch's Unsung Heroes. Pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MzKx0fKg5o

Had this discussion the other day and it almost got a little heated.