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

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.