Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!emory!mephisto!gatech!artsnet!mgresham From: mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) Newsgroups: comp.music Subject: Re: A Philosophical question about music. Message-ID: <683@artsnet.UUCP> Date: 7 Feb 90 06:06:18 GMT References: <1990Feb1.074731.19127@intacc.uucp> Reply-To: mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) Organization: ARTSNET Atlanta, GA USA Lines: 188 In article <1990Feb1.074731.19127@intacc.uucp> zog@intacc.UUCP (Scott Lepore) writes: >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. [...] 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. Yes, this is where your problem begins... Why assume 'note = event'? Ask yourself: What is a 'note'? Define it clearly; see what you exclude from that definition. Other possible events: phrase motive consonant (i.e. the voiced bilabial: 'b') timbral shift silence inhalation recaptulation variation etc.... What's an 'event'? >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. One of the objectives in orchestration is to obscure the perception of certain individual events. Can you come up with some examples of what you think I might mean by that? >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. If one events on one level are obscured or anonymised, ask yourself what might be emphasised, individualised or clarified (perhaps on another level)? Can you likewise come up with some examples of what you think I might mean by this? >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. If an 'event' is exclusively perceived as an isolated, unique event, then there would be no such thing as 'wrong notes.' Is the sound of a cymbal struck and then partially dampened with, say, a finger one event or more? Is a single call of a nuthatch one event or a series of events? (Or pick your favorite songbird.) What is a sonic event? Is the sound of a piano string struck and then quickly loosened with a tuning hammer one event or more than one event? >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. Well, this is a new one for the composing community to hear about. What constitutes 'identity' of an event? >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... Picture instead a rope of intertwined multicolored threads, or a group of such ropes, each thread changing color along its length, each rope intertwining with others, sometimes thicker, sometimes thinner, intertwining indifferent ways, some dissappearing altogether at times and others appearing apparantly out of nowhere, waving up, down, and across in other directions. Follow this interplay of ropes, threads, colors, textures and thicknesses along its length with your eyes. This is far more like music (as a metaphor) than Leggo blocks. In fact, these images (continuous varied rope; stack of bricks) has been used for some time among singers as images for 'how to' and 'how not to' approach singing. Guess which is which. :-) >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. When you 'make a mistake' in performing, you go on rather than stopping and starting all over because one 'note' was 1/3742 of a second too long or short. I think the issue of 'time' in actual performance practice is quite a bit more flexible than your giving it credit for. How long is long? What is the absolute duration of a 'fermata'? When a tempo is marked 'ca. 80 mm' how much faster or slower do you have to go to play the 'wrong' tempo? when the tempo is marked 'Andante'? What role does 'rubato' play in all of this? >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. I really don't understand your problem, unless the only experience you've had with music and time is a sequencer that demands events be located by when they begin (in seconds or whatnot) after the beginning of the piece. This is, except for a few contemporary scores, completely unlike how duration is handled in either musical notation or performance. Historically, it's been a matter of proportion: the relative durations or notes to each other, and not to some fixed unit of time. Combine that with the notion of 'pace' or 'tempo'--the rate at which these propotional units occur (x beats per minute), the rate being flexible. There is no reason an event's duration cannot be given a quantity in relationship to event that preceeds it (hence, one pulse or beat followed by an event of two pulses or beats, followed by... which are only given an absolute duration (in seconds or whatever) when the tempo or pace of the piece at that moment is taken into account. >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? Polyphony is no problem. You simply have to give the 'impression' of simultenaity, not actual simultaneousness. (How quickly must the beginning of one event follow that of another in order to sound simultaneous?) (Again, though, what is an 'event'?) >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 (:-)). How to handle the information? Simply as a database with one event per record and as many fields as you need to describe it. You can manage the information in that form, and translate it if necessary into a form your simple sequencer can understand. >- 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. Cheers, --Mark ======================================== Mark Gresham ARTSNET Norcross, GA, USA E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham or: artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu ========================================