Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!rex!wuarchive!udel!princeton!phoenix!eliot From: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) Newsgroups: comp.music Subject: "Only Amateurs" Re: Music-Research Digest Vol. 5, #34 Message-ID: <15312@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Date: 13 Apr 90 02:16:00 GMT References: <134123@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> Reply-To: eliot@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Eliot Handelman) Organization: Princeton University, NJ Lines: 61 In article <134123@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> music-research%bartok@sun.UUCP writes: ;Date: Mon, 2 Apr 90 10:51:11 EDT ;From: "David M. Chess" ;Subject: Only amateurs? ;To: music-research@com.sun.eng.bartok ;Message-ID: <9004021451.AA17888@Sun.COM> ; ;E. Handleman writes, in passing, ; ;> ...the kinds of things that amateurs find exciting, like generating ;> tonal music, or music "in the style of," or ways of making one piece ;> sound sort of like another piece, or trying to make music sound ;> "authentic" or "expressive," or arranging chords so that your tune ;> comes out moderately "happy" or "soul searching." I don't say this ;> sort of thing shouldn't be done -- I'm only saying that I don't care ;> about this kind of work at all. ; ;But you're also saying that "amateurs" find it exciting. Do you ;mean to say that professionals don't? Professional whats? *8) ;I admit that I am an amateur, and that I find at least some of that ;sort of thing exciting (I think there's still lots of good tonal ;music to be written, for instance), but might I venture that your ;reference to "amateurs" was more of a passing slap at stuff that ;doesn't interest you than it was a considered, rational, statement? ;Or is it really true that Professionals have all abandoned tonality? ;I suspect not! (Pls don't take this as a flame or an attack; I've ;been enjoying the discussion greatly, but just couldn't bring myself ;to let this get by without comment...) ; ;Dave Chess ;IBM T. J. Watson Research You're merely substantiating my point, Dave, as does some of the recent discussion here concerning fugues and fractal music. (Fractal music, incidentally, is another amateur preoccupation, as are most attempts to generate music algorithmically.) The statement "there's a lot of good tonal music to be written" is at least 50 years old and hasn't been demonstrated for much longer. Not to say that no good music has been written since that time, or even good music that's triadic -- the word "tonal" doesn't (and has never) referred to music, but rather to a theory of what holds a certain type of music together, and face it Dave, there's just very little evidence that the theory of tonality DOES accomodate the music that it's describing as tonal. Amateurs don't understand that point, and figure that by generating i-iv-v cadences via the computer they're on the road to "tonal composition," that this is the first step towards producing the next Beethoven symphony etc. The more you know about Beethoven Symphonies (for example) the less likely that proposition becomes. Now, as to professional interest: I see the NSF financing a certain amount of work being produced by amateurs, especially neural nets that produce "melodies" and that sort of thing. I also don't see that the NEA or other foundations to whom musicians can turn -- generally "peer panel" foundations -- are lending too much support to neural net research that generates melodies. For that matter, very few professional journals appear to even be publishing that sort of work, with a couple of exceptions. Looking over the proceedings of the AI/Music conference, none of the papers written by people in music departments have anything to do with tonal music (except for Cope's paper); those that do come out of psych/cs departments. -e.