Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!crdgw1!jupiter!kassover
From: kassover@jupiter.crd.ge.com (David Kassover)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: Fractal Music Generation (summary)
Message-ID: <6749@crdgw1.crd.ge.com>
Date: 11 Apr 90 15:11:34 GMT
References: <562@bilver.UUCP> <1990Apr9.151958.26859@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <9613@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Sender: news@crdgw1.crd.ge.com
Organization: Aule-Tek, Inc.
Lines: 38

In article <9613@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> mu298ac@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (Philip Marlowe) writes:
| In article <1990Apr9.151958.26859@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> george@shumv1.ncsu.edu (George Browning) writes:
| | In article <562@bilver.UUCP> alex@bilver.UUCP (Alex Matulich) writes:
| | 
| | 	I have an article from the book Fundamental Algorithms for
| | Computer Graphics written by Richard F. Voss that talks about fractal
| | music.  Voss says "One of my exciting discoveries was that almost all
| | musical melodies also mimic 1/f noise."  He gives some pictures and
| 
| 	This is an incredibly obvious statement to make.  Stepwise
| motion is an important attribute of many tonal melodies,and 1/f
| noise
| generates stepwise motion.  So why can't you program 1/f noise to
| produce good tonal melodies?  Because tonal melody is not random; it
| has very strong directionality, and any programmer who wants to
| have an algorithm that would produce good tonal melodies has to take
| goal-oriented motion into account, which I don't believe is possible
| with fractals.
...

About a year and a half ago, I was at a lecture given by
Mandelbrot.  Someone asked him about fractal music.  He replied
to the effect that he had heard the output of some experiments in
that area, and that they didn't "sound good".
(Whatever that means)

We in the audience were not given references, nor the opportunity
to hear similar musical pieces and thus form our own opinions.

De gustibus non est disputandum.  Or as my father would say,
"Sahzeechizone"


--
===================================================
David Kassover
kassover@ra.crd.ge.com
kassover@crd.ge.com