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Introduction to Computer Music (2009) [pdf]

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Re: Introduction to Computer Music (2009) [pdf]

#71

Post by rcbdev »

DavidPiper wrote: post #34
arn3n wrote: post #3

I often see people frame music as mathematical manipulation or try to approach music making from a “first principles” approach, where those principles are mathematics and physics. But watching musicians talk about making music, I seldom see any discussion of the underlying math, and instead see discussions of timbres, instruments, and stylistic/historical influences; musicians who make good music seems to believe “fi…

It sounds pedantic, but I think it's important: maths and physics are often used to describe sounds, their relationships and emergent properties through combination. Maths and physics aren't ever really used to describe music. It's like telling someone they can paint a masterpiece because they understand Fe4[Fe(CN)6]3 makes an aesthetically pleasant blue pigment.

That's a very nice analogy, thank you.

Re: Introduction to Computer Music (2009) [pdf]

#72

Post by fassssst »

pwython wrote: post #19
Dusseldorf wrote: post #13

Amusing to see how attitudes toward AI change over time. On page 6, part of the original text has a footnote apologizing to readers far in the future for outdated speculations, then mentions that future readers "may even be an artificial intelligence rather than a human, how wonderful!" But just a bit before that in the foreword written in the present day, bars AI scrapers from reading or referencing the materials un…

> then mentions that future readers "may even be an artificial intelligence rather than a human, how wonderful!" My first thought seeing this post was, I need to find more literature like this, fine-tune a model with that + Logic Pro documentation, then give it an MCP to control Logic Pro and see if it can be my music production assistant.

https://github.com/ahujasid/ableton-mcp

Re: Introduction to Computer Music (2009) [pdf]

#73

Post by grg0 »

arn3n wrote: post #3

I often see people frame music as mathematical manipulation or try to approach music making from a “first principles” approach, where those principles are mathematics and physics. But watching musicians talk about making music, I seldom see any discussion of the underlying math, and instead see discussions of timbres, instruments, and stylistic/historical influences; musicians who make good music seems to believe “fi…

I'm no musician, but it sounds like trying to understand human psychology by studying the brain, or cells by studying physics, or the colony by isolating a single ant. Answer: no. It's the idea of emergent phenomena not being reducible to its parts.

Re: Introduction to Computer Music (2009) [pdf]

#74

Post by rerdavies »

arn3n wrote: post #3

I often see people frame music as mathematical manipulation or try to approach music making from a “first principles” approach, where those principles are mathematics and physics. But watching musicians talk about making music, I seldom see any discussion of the underlying math, and instead see discussions of timbres, instruments, and stylistic/historical influences; musicians who make good music seems to believe “fi…

Music is more like language. (This is profoundly true). There is very little that's mathematical about music; and even the bit that is, isn't really (since nobody actually uses just temperament).

Digital sound production, however. Yes. There's all kinds of thoroughly unpleasant mathematics, none of which you actually need to know unless you're writing computer music software.

(I write computer music software, and I am also a jazz musician).

Re: Introduction to Computer Music (2009) [pdf]

#76

Post by rerdavies »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #52
defrost wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but there are some universals such as the Octave Universal in the sense that a number of rocks or a number of sheep can be doubled just as a frequency can? The notion that there are 8 sub divisions to a doubled frequency interval isn't universal. Balinese Gamelan doesn't even neccessarily have an agreed number of "notes" in an "Octave" from one village to the next.

1.5**12 is about 129.74, which is as close as you can reasonably get to a power of two. So yes, the 12-tone scale is a universal thing - you want both octaves and fifths in your scale. (12 is actually too much, so usually that's pared down to something like 4 or 5 or 7 tones, this is where you get cultural variation.)

129.74 is not really close to a power of two. 31-tet scales have a better approximation of a 5th (and an impressively better approximation of a minor 7th).

The obvious exception in the western system would be the blues scale, which arguably has 9 tones (7 equal tempered notes, plus a just tempered 3rd and 7th).

And Indian ragas break all of these rules. They have scales that don't have 8 notes, scales that don't use equal temperament, and even a few scales that don't repeat on octaves.

Re: Introduction to Computer Music (2009) [pdf]

#77

Post by cat5e »

arn3n wrote: post #3

I often see people frame music as mathematical manipulation or try to approach music making from a “first principles” approach, where those principles are mathematics and physics. But watching musicians talk about making music, I seldom see any discussion of the underlying math, and instead see discussions of timbres, instruments, and stylistic/historical influences; musicians who make good music seems to believe “fi…

In my opinion, good music typically comes from the flow state. In other words, less thinking and more practice/exploration leads to the best results.

From personal experience, pattern-recognition is the most useful "applied math" skill when making music. I use it when identifying intervals between notes, and chord progressions, which you need when you're trying to get the idea out of your head and onto the instrument you're playing or song you're writing.

Re: Introduction to Computer Music (2009) [pdf]

#78

Post by maxbendick »

arn3n wrote: post #3

I often see people frame music as mathematical manipulation or try to approach music making from a “first principles” approach, where those principles are mathematics and physics. But watching musicians talk about making music, I seldom see any discussion of the underlying math, and instead see discussions of timbres, instruments, and stylistic/historical influences; musicians who make good music seems to believe “fi…

Theory and practice are both important. A few analogues:

- fundamentals on an instrument vs performance

- low-level graphics programming vs using a game engine

- comp sci vs software engineering

The theory side here gets to the root of things, is valid for any sort of DAW/DSP software, and has the benefit of being easier to teach. Practice is obviously more important though, especially in the arts. It's better to grope in the dark than do nothing.

Re: Introduction to Computer Music (2009) [pdf]

#80

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

tolciho wrote: post #69
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All scales in all cultures are based on octaves and fifths. (E.g., the ancient Chinese musical scale also has 12 tones.) Also the so-called "Western music" standardized on 12 tones very late in the process, long after the Chinese figured it out. > a 12-scale with 3 bits "missing" That's all scales, even the "non-Western" ones. Microtonality is added to the standard 12 tone to add tone effects. (Synthesizers in pop mu…

To confirm the claim that "all scales in all cultures are based on octaves and fifths" one might study the scales.zip scale files and find those that do not contain octaves and fifths, which should naturally be zero if the claim is true. https://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/ Note also that certain musical traditions were suppressed or eradicated due to their unfortunate habit of using dissonant notes such as minor se…

The 12 tone scale is a natural property of the world that has been independently discovered by many different cultures across the world.

The microtonalities or strange scales (like gamelan) are evolutions of the natural octave/fifths grid.

Every synthesizer has a "detune" knob.

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