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I am objectively intellectually superior to you.
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Koveras

Joined: 09 Oct 2008

Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:03 pm Post subject:

Globutron wrote:

Oh and in regards to microtonality, of course that isn't a dead end.
This can and is used in pop music (Tangerine Dream, Porcupine Tree, Joe Satriani to name a few)

here's an example that revolves around the Bohlen Pierce Scale.

http://www.ziaspace.com/elaine/BP/BPmusic/LoveSong_BPscale_EW.mp3

But do you really consider this song nonsensical and morbid sounding? It's just as lovely as any great song I've heard.

This scale, which has no octaves, and 13 unequal intervals is programmed into very expensive musical software now, such as Omnisphere that I have, for people to use. It can't be that much of a dead end if Software creators are depending on it.

Also in the programme are many equal temperament scales - 12 tone, 24 tone, Arabit 22-tone, Pythagorean 17-tone, Carlos Gamma 35 -tone, 48, 31 and so on-tone scales.

No, microtonality isn't a dead end. Untempered microtonality is an invention of the remotest antiquity, and makes perfect mathematical sense.

Globutron

Joined: 13 Feb 2010
Location: England/Anyang

Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:06 pm Post subject:

Commonly understood limits are necessary for meaningful expression. &blech*v ymbbblaiiiiii schschsluoegof nibbni kKkKkC garfield?? But the latin-based alphabet is nowhere near as universal as music, with much less symmetry. It's a bad analogy... However if aefuihaeifneafi became an art form, it could be possible that humans would come to appreciate it to a certain extent. Art is a funny thing.

Steelrails

Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System

Posted: Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:52 pm Post subject:

Louis VI wrote:

Using jargon can be a pompous cover for mediocrity or simply a rhetorical gaff when used with those Aristotle called the uneducated (those without formal knowledge of the given subject). As Einstein claimed, any idea worth its salt ought to be explainable to a reasonable intelligent 12 year old child. As C. S. Peirce puts it, a clear idea is one that is not mistaken for another, however technical and artificial one's language need become to express it. The point here is: tomato is not intellectually superior, he just knows about an academic subject within which ideas are defined in a clearer way.

Tomato just informed me of some stuff I had absolutely no clue about and did it in a very accesible way. This thread has goen in good directions thanks to him (with help from Globutron and Koveras) and his post has given me AT LEAST a good 2 hours worth of wikipedia reading to do.

He isn't using jargon. He is giving a specific defintion to a unique phenomenon.

Hate to break it to you, but a reasonably intelligent 12 year old would understand tomato's explanations. Well the old standard for a reasonably intelligent 12 year old. Now the new standard for a reasonably intelligent 12 year old is one who can find Iraq on a map and knows the Presidents back to Reagan.

The thing is back then instead of complaining about not knowing something and blaming the speaker, people would open up a book and learn what it meant.

you're an English teacher right?

The prefixes
hepta-
penta-
a-
poly-
micro-

should have at least given you a vague idea of what they meant. Back in the day 12 year olds knew that. Now College grads don't even know that.

That and the reasonably intelligent 12 year old during Einstein's time would have been aware of the different scales of music, most of the basic musical terms used in this discussion, and been familiar with the composers mentioned.

It's not snobbery, it's not being dumbed down.

On a side note yesterday an (American) NET I knew did not know where Stonehenge or Big Ben was. Or what Hadrian's Wall was.

Serisouly, we fail to 12 year olds of 70 years ago. Sad.

djsmnc

Joined: 20 Jan 2003
Location: Dave's ESL Cafe

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 12:49 am Post subject:

Steelrails wrote:

Louis VI wrote:

What was the actual population of "reasonably intelligent" children at that time as compared to today? How many children were able to attend school? How did race or nationality affect the capacity to be educated at that time? How many "reasonable intelligent" people were part of a social elite? How many people became farmers, factory line workers, or miners at that time compared to now? Are children really that much dumber, or has there been a demographic shift which has created more educated populations in countries with growing/exploding economies? How many people were "reasonably intelligent" in China, India, or even Korea at that time compared to now?

itaewonguy

Joined: 25 Mar 2003

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 4:25 am Post subject:

snobs are just people with real passion for something.. good on them!

Globutron

Joined: 13 Feb 2010
Location: England/Anyang

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 5:30 am Post subject:

Quote:

No, microtonality isn't a dead end. Untempered microtonality is an invention of the remotest antiquity, and makes perfect mathematical sense.

Right, yet people will complain the moment it's used because it hurts the ears. But you at least appreciate it as a musical technique it seems.
So of course it's not too hard to imagine people appreciating the use of a-tonality, or the movement of serialism (serialism for those who don't know was the conscious movement of musicians to the realms of mathematical systems in music that Tomato speaks of, where they treat each note equally, no note has priority over the next).

Anyway, I very much understand that modern music can be hard to listen to.
But if people keep on playing the same 17th century babble in concerts to get the money in from people who want to act upper class rather than trying to appreciate music (harsh assumption I know, still bitter about university colleagues), then people will never get the chance to really explore and become accustomed to what the world currently has to offer, which I believe is absolutely fantastic. For anyone interested in modern music, I would lead you towards James MacMillan and Thomas Ad�s. They are not 'difficult' sounding composers, they are just very... very good at what they do and use polytonality, microtonality, micropolyphony and so on in their music. Their music is never 'polytonal' in a whole though.

Even nicer would simply be John Adams or Steve Reich. Steve Reich went the other way and went for simplicity of a simple key signature.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHVMVDhC-UA

This goes on in the same way for 72 minutes. But I can't count the amount of times I've listened to it through. Even this modern music seems to completely lack in performances. Not just because the choice of musicians, I know for sure, since this is just one example. But the Romantic and Baroque rules over all, regardless.

Underwaterbob

Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Location: In Cognito

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 9:22 am Post subject:

Koveras wrote:

Commonly understood limits are necessary for meaningful expression. &blech*v ymbbblaiiiiii schschsluoegof nibbni kKkKkC garfield??

Extremism aside, have you read A Clockwork Orange? It's nearly unintelligible at first because of a bunch of made up slang, but once you get past the language you find a great piece of literature underneath. Music is the same way. Sometimes you have to dig a little harder to find the meaning.

Easy access entertainment has proliferated throughout the twentieth (and 21st) century, because that's what the majority wants, but history has shown that it's not what stands the test of time. Bach, Mozart and Beethoven are remembered because they tested the boundaries of what was accepted in music in their time, and each ended up defining an era.

The majority of Garfield deserves to be forgotten because of Jim Davis' refusal to make a joke he hasn't already made a hundred times before.

Underwaterbob

Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Location: In Cognito

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 9:36 am Post subject:

Globutron wrote:

Quote:

No, microtonality isn't a dead end. Untempered microtonality is an invention of the remotest antiquity, and makes perfect mathematical sense.

Right, yet people will complain the moment it's used because it hurts the ears.

I think he's talking about Bach's "Well-tempered Clavier". Written in 1722, Bach actually did away with microtonality then and set the standard for the past 300 years of music.

Up until "Well-tempered Clavier", C# and Db for example, were not the same note. And indeed mathematically, they aren't. The difference is just too small for the average person to hear, so Bach made them the same note for simplicity's sake. What he did essentially enabled the key change and western tonality exploded right up to Shoenberg's 12-tone serialism nearly two hundred years later.

Some forms of microtonality are a throwback to tonality how it was before Bach's time: when C# and Db, properly, weren't the same note. Modern microtonality is more experimental mucking about with things like quarter tones (like tomato mentioned.) The microtonality you and Koveras are talking about are two separate things.

Koveras

Joined: 09 Oct 2008

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 9:57 am Post subject:

Globutron wrote:

Quote:

Tonality isn't just a single aspect of music. Trying to write a song without a tonic is like trying to draw a circle without a centre

.

Hardly. A circle without a centre is impossible. Music with no tonal centre is just not always agreeable to the listeners because they feel the need for it to 'make sense' in the traditional form, because they are not acclimated to the alternative.

I think it's a fairly good analogy. One could *try* to draw a circle without a centre, and the result might convince audiences who don't know what a circle really looks like. Hearing is a more rarefied and intellectual sense than sight, so it's correspondingly more difficult to understand music than to understand visual art, and less obvious (a) that it obeys natural limits akin to colour and shape and (b) that music can be as precise a symbolism as visual art. Trying to liberate music from modes and tones is like trying to liberate a circle from its centre, or like trying to liberate a painting from shape and colour. It's not really possible, and you only end up with confusion.

Globutron wrote:

Quote:

The tonic is the foundation for the relations of all the other notes. That means that without a tonic, there are no meaningful relations between the notes, and thus no music.

That entirely depends on your definition of music. As far as I'm concerned, all Music is really defined as is a set of sounds that are organised. You can restrict this more in saying they are organised by humans. Obviously it would be being picky to suggest, say, the sound of an engine must therefore be music, but the general idea is there.

There is no such thing as a personal definition of music. There are various contingent systems which are more or less effective approximations of the music of reality.

Globutron wrote:

Also, if music was unchanging, say, V I V I V I V I V I in C maj for 78 minutes - no dynamics, no pause, just smooth, plain playing, would you listen to it at a concert? Saying the tonality - in fact saying the TONIC is the foundation is implying that nothing else is of real value.

I didn't say only tonality is of value. I compared tonality to the centre of a circle. We know there's more to a circle than its centre. In the case of a repetition like the one you suggested, I would not listen to it, because the entire sense of such a piece would be contained in a single interval. Stretching it out through time would add nothing to its meaning, and I would lose patience.

Globutron wrote:

The mood, story and/or language is the only outcome truly necessary.

Try writing a story with your own personal arbitrary language, and see how it goes. Or try writing a story that doesn't adhere to such limiting conventions as plot and characterization and setting.

Globutron wrote:

Quote:

If you find atonal music meaningful, either you have a vague, dissociated notion of meaning, or you are instinctively projecting a tonic onto what you hear.

It may be true that humans instinctively project a tonic. It may not. But even so, the music isn't written to 'hide' from a tonal centre. It was in the early experimental days, but now it's just a musical technique. It's being used to create an effect or a feeling. If this means for a person to automatically resolve notation in their mind, then so be it. This is no different than a sustained 4th note in a root cord of Bach. You automatically try to resolve it down to the Major 3rd, whether it happens or not, and thus a feeling of restrain occurs.

Intentionally manipulating the human need for a tonic is a nice trick, but basing an entire musical system on that?

Globutron wrote:

Quote:

The experiments you mentioned are all dead ends.

They really aren't. Saying that is the same as saying 'classical music is at a dead end'. Or how physicists 80 years ago and again 50 years ago would say 'physics is at an end, we understand everything about the universe now'.

The experiments have led to considerable musical advancement of the likes that are quite popular amongst modern composers. Go to most, perhaps 90% of universities in England and they will ALL consist of modules of modern composition. It is very unlike America, where I was told they will generally have to go through all the classical processes such as bach chorales and the like, first, in order to 'get a grip' on composition. Let me know if I'm wrong on this though, but it ain't true here. At my university it was standard for all composers to join the module of modern musical techniques. This would never be the case if it was a 'dead end'.

Universities offer courses on all kinds of dead ends.

Underwaterbob

Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Location: In Cognito

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 10:04 am Post subject:

Let's talk physics for a second. The tonality Koveras is advocating is based on the perfect cadence. That's when you go from the fifth note of the scale to the first (soh to doh). What's interesting physics-wise is that this resolution is appealing because the tonic (doh) is the only note absent from the harmonic series of the dominant (soh.) For example, A (440Hz.) Its harmonic series is 440, 880 (440x2), 1320 (440x3), 1760 (440x4) and so on technically to 440 x infinity. Never will you encounter D (293&2/3Hz), (dominant A's tonic) or any multiple thereof in the harmonic series of A. (This is all assuming a perfect resonator, string or tube, which literally does not exist.) What this mumbo jumbo amounts to is that when we hear a note, the next note we want to hear is the one that is missing. Most western music essentially boils down to withholding and supplying this resolution sufficiently to have us perceive meaning. If there's a psychological or evolutionary reason for this, it's beyond me.

Underwaterbob

Joined: 08 Jan 2005
Location: In Cognito

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 10:21 am Post subject:

Koveras wrote:

There is no such thing as a personal definition of music. There are various contingent systems which are more or less effective approximations of the music of reality.

What is the "music of reality"? Yes, there are certain conventions that the ear wants to hear, but do they have to be present for something to be defined as music?

At risk of beating a dead horse, I want to mention John Cage's 4:33. The "music" isn't what you hear, since it's written to be silent, but what the audience makes of it. In music-as in any form of communication-what's said is only as important as what isn't.

Globutron

Joined: 13 Feb 2010
Location: England/Anyang

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 10:34 am Post subject:

Quote:

Hearing is a more rarefied and intellectual sense than sight, so it's correspondingly more difficult to understand music than to understand visual art,

Can you elaborate on this at all? Sounds interesting if it's actually been studied rather than just a notion of thought. for me, looking at a painting and hearing, say, a piece of music by chicane are just as immediately appreciated. Obviously the Chicane is less instant because time is a rather important aspect of music.

Quote:

There is no such thing as a personal definition of music. There are various contingent systems which are more or less effective approximations of the music of reality

Well actually My definition came from Var�se, which is a generally widely accepted definition, but the definition of music becomes a whole lot cloudier when one mentions, dare I say it, 4'33. In this case, Var�se's definition still works out.

Quote:

I didn't say only tonality is of value. I compared tonality to the centre of a circle. We know there's more to a circle than its centre.

Yes of course, but I simply meant that one doesn't necessarily have to see the Tonic as the centre of the circle. As many are doing so now, other aspects of music are pushing the tonic out onto the ring, or at least in the lower mantle. (I just noticed you also go with 'centre' rather than 'center'. English, Australian?)
This doesn't make the tonic pointless, per se. It's just giving other aspects more of a chance to shine through. Aleatoric music may have a strong tonal centre, but because of the random shifts that may occur, it maybe become blurred and less obvious in replacement for rhythm and texture.

In the same way that the Ligeti piece I showed you was largely about dynamics and layers. To many this is a masterpiece of beauty, rather than a centreless hole.

Quote:

Try writing a story with your own personal arbitrary language, and see how it goes. Or try writing a story that doesn't adhere to such limiting conventions as plot and characterization and setting.

I see your point here, but Music is known as the universal language. You don't need to 'learn' it, just as you don't need to learn how to look at a picture. It would do you well to do so, but it isn't a necessity.
Programmatic and through-composed music is generally the way I write, and It's often my preferred choice of listening (in the classical world, at least)

Quote:

Intentionally manipulating the human need for a tonic is a nice trick, but basing an entire musical system on that?

But that's what I'm saying, the experimentalists may base an entire system on such a thing, but the composers of today will just use such things as a standard technique, maybe a few minutes in a piece, maybe less. Like a glissando on a violin. I can only think of one piece that does nothing but glissandi.

Quote:

Universities offer courses on all kinds of dead ends.

Still, saying it's a dead end is a little harsh.
Ennio Morricone of the film world has become a huge success, having written up to or over 600 film scores, using a system that was entirely inspired and designed from the original Schoenberg 12-tone grid.

The only difference is that Morricone made it tonal. This way he is able to produce prolific amounts of appealing music at great speed, by following a simple system created by a dead end experimentalist, who is now known as a historical figure.
The influence these dead ends have on the future generations is endless.

Globutron

Joined: 13 Feb 2010
Location: England/Anyang

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 10:36 am Post subject:

Quote:

At risk of beating a dead horse, I want to mention John Cage's 4:33.

heh, ditto post. Let's not go down that route, though.

tomato

Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: I get so little foreign language experience, I must be in Koreatown, Los Angeles.

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 9:51 pm Post subject:

Did anyone else have to look up Hadrian's Wall after reading Steelrails' post? Or am I singular in my stupdity?

Globutron

Joined: 13 Feb 2010
Location: England/Anyang

Posted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 10:02 pm Post subject:

tomato wrote:

Did anyone else have to look up Hadrian's Wall after reading Steelrails' post?
Or am I singular in my stupdity?

*insert snobbery here*

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