Xref: utzoo comp.music:1073 rec.music.classical:13025
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From: music@batman.moravian.EDU (music)
Newsgroups: comp.music,rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: Fractal Music Generation (summary)
Keywords: music theory, composition, Meyer
Message-ID: <1435@batman.moravian.EDU>
Date: 12 Apr 90 19:38:04 GMT
References: <562@bilver.UUCP> <1990Apr9.151958.26859@ncsuvx.ncsu.edu> <12859@venera.isi.edu>
Followup-To: comp.music,rec.music.classical
Organization: Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA
Lines: 61

But is it MUSIC?    ;-)

I personally believe that all you've discussed regarding the
algorithmic process of producing (or attempting to produce) "good
tonal music" is rather more of a verbose punishment to the reader than
the gleaning of any insight to the process being attempted (no offense
intended!). I have worked around with algorithmic composition off and
on for many years, but "gave up" on attempting to create an artificial
musical learning base from which an algorithm could draw upon to
produce anything more interesting than (and this is a bad example) the
Mozart "Dice Minuet". So I personally decided that the goal of
creating "good tonal music" through "pure math" was a non sequitur to
the nature of the beast known as "tonal music". I therefore treaded
into the teritory of composers such as Xenakis (and Cage from a
philosophical, more than "technical" sense). In certain works of
Xenakis, Herma (piano) for example, the music is about as far from
"tonal" as it is from "12-tone serial" (we limit ourselves here to a
system of 12 notes; if we were to explore beyond to the reaches of
quarter-tones, arbitrary systems (i.e. Partch) we would be streaching
the mind beyond most peoples comprehenshion, something I REALLY WANT
TO DO (but that's another story!)). Xenakis uses algorithms to plot
his pitch classes, tempi, dynamics, etc. in a way that is more or less
"highly organized randomness". Personally, I think his advanced math
has little to do with the ultimate outcome of the music, but I like
what he does regardless. The music produces more of a gestalt
experience than a profoundly complex serial work (like Boulez'
Structures and any number of other works by strict 12-tone
serialists). The music comes from that great unknown: CHANCE. By
carefully controlling the elements of CHANCE on many levels (a grain
of sand to an astroid) we can then begin to produce CHANCE-based
organization, letting "nature control the music" (think of all the
combined chaos and symetry in the universe) and the "composer" guide
nature either via algorithms (serialization of chance structures) or
by subjective reasoning (nurturing nature). 

Regardless of the outcome, "tonality" will be replaced by something of
a higher order: music that exists etearnally just waiting to be
"guided into place". This may smack of musical anarchy, but is the
UNIVERSE anarchic? It may seem so on certain levels but ultimately
"GOD" controls the "laws of nature" the way I like to control the
"laws of the music of nature". Strict tonality/serialism is
UN-natural. Only out of cultivating chaos can we deliver the truth of
music. Humans have too long restrained themselves into believing that
man-made rules about tonality (in the Western world at least) they
have unwhittingly enslaved themselves into a very narrow "band" of the
musical spectrum (as visible light is to the entire electromagnetic
spectrum). We must explore the outer limits of sound and learn to
appreciate them as we now appreciate "tonal" music. 

(Think (philosophically) of the music of the Krell in the film
"Forbidden Planet" from the '50's. Think of 4'33". Think of the cosmic
background radiation. Think of the Universe as "music in the making".
And, finally, you'll probably think of ME as a raving lunatic...)


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