Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!ists!yunexus!intacc!zog From: zog@intacc.uucp (Scott Lepore) Newsgroups: comp.music Subject: RE: A Philosophical question about music. Message-ID: <1990Feb1.074731.19127@intacc.uucp> Date: 1 Feb 90 07:47:31 GMT Reply-To: zog@intacc.UUCP (Scott Lepore) Organization: Inter/Access Lines: 124 In article <11805@cs.yale.edu> beck-chris@CS.YALE.EDU (Chris Beck) writes: >I have a philosophical question for anyone outhere: > >I was wondering if anyone could recommend some books, or, preferably, had >some of their own thoughts, about possible representations for music that >can be understood by a computer (other than standard notation and MIDI). > >What constitutes a musical event? What would be a good strategyfor >representing not only the music itself but also all (if possible) aspects >of a given musical performance? > >- Chris This question is obviously very complicated. The first suggestion I can offer is to look at the quarterly, Computer Music Journal, published by MIT press. There is some fascinating work being done by its contributors on how to more completely define a sonic or musical event and how to place it in time. It's very speculative but it is based in practice. I am working on project which relates somewhat to this question: I am trying to design a powerful (ie. high level), yet flexible, music composition environment based on David Betz's XLISP for the IBM PC. In order to do this I have to do just what Chris is curious about - I have break *music* down into what I feel are its representative elements. The first major problem I have encountered in this process is how to structure time in a composition. I figure... Let's assume each musical event has a number of basic characteristics: fundamental pitch (for tonal events), timbre, volume (ie. loudness), duration and so on... Each event must also have an *absolute* starting time within the piece, that is, each *note* must start at an easily identifiable time relative to the beginning of a composition. This is where my problem begins. In traditional notation the composer and musician are required to count bars, consisting of x number of beats, in order to track their position in a piece. The counting of the bars is obviously relative to the beginning of the piece and the biggest thing differentiating one bar from another is its number. This system is fine and has worked for a very long time but one always has the feeling that this is not the most intuitive, and therefore easiest, way of working with music. I believe that humans perceive each sonic event as a distinct experience - each creating an individual feeling or sensation in the listener. In conjunction with their placement next to one another, a series of notes creates the experience of music. But each note/event is fundamentally perceived on its own. Traditional notations and composition techniques *anonimyse* individual notes and sonic events in a piece by placing too much emphasis on their start time and position. The musician makes mistakes while playing anonymous notes. After all when a *note* is not considered a unique event, but as something to be played at such and such a count, it is a simple matter to miscount and play it at the wrong time. Composition should be the process of intuitively identifying one sonic event from the next and arranging each accordingly. Each event should not lose its identity within the structure of a piece. In MIDI notation, a system very similar to traditional notation has been adopted. Bars and beats are preserved but each beat now consists of a quantum number of *ticks*. Now you can not only find where you are in a piece by counting the bar number but also by looking at the number of *ticks* elapsed. This is a good system to use from a computer's perspective because now there is a quantifiable time referent for each note. However the problem with this system remains the disproportional consideration of timing. In computer composition, because abstraction can be more creative (eg. unique visual note/event symbols - see Coda's Finale and some of the new software for the NeXT), a composition system can be developed to allow more easily recognisable and intuitive note/event *tags*. Imagine each note/event as single-hue Leggo block... If all music was monophonic, then the problem of absolute note placement in time (as the chief *anonimyzer* of sonic events) would be less serious. All events would follow one after another and would only require a duration, or note length, to place them in a piece. Silences between notes would be musical events similar to rests in traditional notation. Picture a stack of different coloured Leggo blocks... A musician playing such a piece would still have to count time, to play for the correct duration of a note (this seems unavoidable), and would therefore still suffer the *take it from the top!*, anonymous note/event timing. But composing and playing back such a *serial* or *string* composition on a computer would simply require an arbitrary choice of time unit (ie. CPU clock cycle, date clock second, MIDI pulses per quarter note, etc.) that relates to the computer and that could be assigned as the duration of a note/event. The composer could gauge the length of a note/event by listening and let the computer take care of figuring out the timing. A point and click, stretchable Leggo block... Each sonic event would be unique. Each note wouldn't need a *starting time* relative to the beginning of the piece. The apparent problem is that music is not this simple. It is not monophonic, it is polyphonic. Notes *occur* in *parallel* as well as *serial* streams. What to do? How can we deal with time in music and make it simpler and more intuitive? In a computer environment we have the freedom to (conceptually) overcome this problem. I invite your suggestions, comments, thoughts and snottiness (:-)). - Thanks for reading. | Let's have more ideas! - Be seeing you. | These are powerful tools for powerful times. - Scott. | New tools require new techniques for using them.