What's Wrong with Western Music? Part III. "Passacaglia in Cm"

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/002490.html

by initself • 18 years ago

32 21 18 years ago

This is kind of rambling and idiosyncratic, but it turned into a decent discussion of temperment and tuning systems, and the associated design compromises.

mynameishere3• 18 years ago

The mathematical approach to music has one endgame, and it isn't pretty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACCAF04wSs

Goladus4• 18 years ago

Huh, I watch that and chuckle at how dated it is, and totally missing the point. Should we all point and laugh at how "Why So Serious?" from The Dark Knight soundtrack isn't something you can sing in the shower?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB5tbTpQvsM

And 12-tone music isn't the result of an especially "mathematical approach" to music. It's the result of the attempt to break the boundaries of the traditional tonal systems using the musical language that existed at the time. It's the primary endgame of atonality within equal temperament system. Traditional western music is all tonal. It's all in "keys." 12-tone music is an attempt to create meaningful, coherent music that avoids relying on tonality. It's an attempt to create music that can't be identified as being in "C Major" or any other key.

mynameishere3• 18 years ago

It's just a parody. The "point" is that 12 tone music is:

1. Not enjoyable or successful in the popular, "catchy" sense,

2. Stylistically uniform,

3. Suitable as incidental music for scenes of horror and carnage.

menloparkbum• 18 years ago

That's a funny video - thanks.

However, nearly all music with "scales" is mathemagical to a large extent. Anyone who is interested in this sort of thing should check out the 2-volume book "Musimathics" by Gareth Loy.

jcl2• 18 years ago

You're talking about a mathematical approach to the choice of notes in a piece, while the article is talking about a mathematical approach to the choice of frequencies for the notes... which, as the article points out, relates directly to how the ear senses sound. Rather than leading to twelve-tone music, the article gives a physical reason why people might dislike twelve-tone music: it doesn't favor any particular frequency ratios.

DaniFong• 18 years ago

Huh. I actually like that stuff...

bdr2• 18 years ago

It seems like laymen refer to any superlinear growth as "exponential". Newbs.

hc• 18 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Chazelle

jcl2• 18 years ago

I had a post prepared saying basically the same thing (Chazelle's algorithm work is awesome), but then I realized that bdr is, strictly speaking, correct: the number of combinations of notes you can play is a factorial of the number of notes, and factorials grow faster than exponential functions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factorial#Rate_of_growth

Of course, when you're writing an essay on the relationship of music and very simple math, I think it's forgivable to use "exponential" to mean "growing at or faster than an exponential rate". Using a more specific term like "factorial", "combinatorial", or "super-exponential" sounds pedantic and out-of-place.

ars• 18 years ago

It's so hard to understand this topic when I just can't hear it. I've tried to understand equal temperament, but I just don't hear the difference.

I'm not tone deaf as far as I know (I can tell the difference between different tones), and I enjoy music, but I can't hear when something is out of tune.

Or that 12 tone commercial that someone posted - the comments say it's funny - but what's funny about it? Presumably I'm missing something massive, but what?

Goladus4• 18 years ago

Here's a piece I found googling for "meantone temperament"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2XNAJPgqhU

You might be able to pick up the difference in tuning. As for being able to hear when something is "out of tune," everyone has a different ability to pick up on subtleties like that. In some cases, I'd guess you hear a pitch when it's wrong, it just doesn't bother you enough to make a judgment on it so you don't remember hearing it.

dejb• 18 years ago

Startup Task XXX : The western 12 tone music scale is limited and out of tune. Many of the reasons for it being useful (instrument construction, notational complexity) are no longer show stoppers. Anyone who can create software that makes it practical and intuitive to create good-sounding music using natural 'just' intervals or/and alternative scales could shake up the entire world of music. 'Scala' is a nice tool but it doesn't count. Bonus points for being able to automatically convert existing 12-tone music to just intervals in a way that makes it sound better.

lisper• 18 years ago

> "You lying cunt" is an eloquent affirmation of love.

Why am I suddenly reminded of Alan Sokal?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

omouse• 18 years ago

Heh. It only seems like bullshit because we're missing out on the visual and audio aspect, so we have to take this guy's word for it.

Has anyone seen that movie and can confirm that it's an affirmation of love?

What's Wrong with Western Music? Part III. "Passacaglia in Cm"

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