6 ms·

Other commenters here have done a good job picking out specific problems with the author's arguments. It's always frustrating when someone who is capable and kn

Other commenters here have done a good job picking out specific problems with the author's arguments. It's always frustrating when someone who is capable and knowledgeable about one subject decides to try their hand in a different field without having bothered to do any real research or study in it. And it's doubly so when they proceed to then dismiss, literally, the entire field as "superstitions," and "unscientific" even as everything they've written betrays that they haven't bothered to familiarize themselves with basically any of the work that's been done in music theory or psychoacoustics in the last 100 years. I usually love it when articles about the intersection of music and computation show up on HN, but in this case it's really unfortunate. At least it's sparking some good discussion, I guess.

gardano 10y ago
You know -- you're right. Music is incredibly complex, and I'm so glad to have a conversation about it. Perhaps I've been too strenuous in my objections to the article, but at the same time, music to me is an intersection between theory and practice; science and art, and I just hate to see it simplified on one side or on the other side. I look forward to the day where theory and practice can be brought together. It will take someone smarter than me to do such a thing.
toomim 10y ago
It's telling that the top-ranked comment is an ad-hominem attack on the author and his style of writing, without critiquing the content at all. Your comment is stuck in the lowest 3 levels of Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement: DH1: Ad-hominem DH2: Responding to Tone http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy... You haven't come close to addressing, or even acknowledging the central point of this paper. You can't even reach level DH3 without acknowledging the point. DH3 is where "we finally get responses to what was said, rather than how or by whom." (Paul Graham) > It's always frustrating when someone who is capable and knowledgeable about one subject decides to try their hand in a different field without having bothered to do any real research or study in it. It looks to me that the reason you're frustrated and offended is that he critiques your field. You're clearly flustered; using black-and-white language like "always" that is factually incorrect, and saying "real research" as if his research didn't happen in reality -- but I assure you it's real. This is not a dream. He actually did just critique your field. Calling it unreal is a tactic of denial. This is groundbreaking work, and the establishment can't have it. You're no better than the Catholic Church.
- fapjacks 10y ago
  I have no horse in this race, but you are being extremely obtuse. You specifically are making me want to read or engage with this less.
- soundwave106 10y ago
  This is not the first paper to link the harmonic series to Pythagorean / just intonation style music, Google brought me this from 10 years earlier for instance: http://in.music.sc.edu/fs/bain/atmi02/hs/hs.pdf http://in.music.sc.edu/fs/bain/atmi02/hs/hs.pdf In fact, this paper references Paul Hindemith in the 1940s, so I suspect that the notion of linking the harmonic series to music has been around a very long time. I think the real problem is the very dismissive topic in section 4. That's what completely turned me off this paper. Dissonance (in Western music terms) has a huge role in music, and even that 20th century purely dissonant music has a place. (Take music like Penderecki's early stuff eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp3BlFZWJNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp3BlFZWJNA . It sounds "awful" in a sense, but that's really the point, and certainly has its place -- The Shining wouldn't have been the same if Kubrick had used Thomas Tallis instead. :) ). Beyond fully atonal music, a lot of Western art music relies on "dissonances" of some sort to advance melodic development (even in standard pop there's a little of it sometimes). I don't know many pieces based solely on the tritone. A lot of Western composers in the past used the tritone in key places because it was rather nasty sounding, and it was condemned as "the Devil's interval" culturally. Thus it could easily represent "evil" or "sinister" in your tone poems and operas. Voice leading is a huge core principle behind the circle of fifths or the reverse circle of fourths; from the paper (in bashing the circle as a "red herring") it sounds like he doesn't understand the core behind why the circle exists at all, or has chosen to ignore the principle of voice leading for some reason. The circle of fifths is more melody than harmony, I personally felt puzzled why he felt it would be a criticism for a harmony paper. I also found the dismissal of other cultural scales (which indeed generally are less, with pentatonic probably the most common), er, tone deaf. The best way I think to explore the scales of a large portion of music cultures (there are exceptions) is to think more on Pythagorean terms, not on chromatic terms. Saying that "their culture has simply never made use of the rest of the available parameter space" is looking at it the wrong way.
- 10y ago
rhizome 10y ago
It's always frustrating when someone who is capable and knowledgeable about one subject decides to try their hand in a different field without having bothered to do any real research or study in it. Engineer's Disease https://twitter.com/sayrer/status/238473563399659520 https://twitter.com/sayrer/status/238473563399659520

gardano 10y ago

You know -- you're right. Music is incredibly complex, and I'm so glad to have a conversation about it. Perhaps I've been too strenuous in my objections to the article, but at the same time, music to me is an intersection between theory and practice; science and art, and I just hate to see it simplified on one side or on the other side. I look forward to the day where theory and practice can be brought together. It will take someone smarter than me to do such a thing.

toomim 10y ago

It's telling that the top-ranked comment is an ad-hominem attack on the author and his style of writing, without critiquing the content at all. Your comment is stuck in the lowest 3 levels of Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement: DH1: Ad-hominem DH2: Responding to Tone http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_Disagreement.svg https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy... You haven't come close to addressing, or even acknowledging the central point of this paper. You can't even reach level DH3 without acknowledging the point. DH3 is where "we finally get responses to what was said, rather than how or by whom." (Paul Graham) > It's always frustrating when someone who is capable and knowledgeable about one subject decides to try their hand in a different field without having bothered to do any real research or study in it. It looks to me that the reason you're frustrated and offended is that he critiques your field. You're clearly flustered; using black-and-white language like "always" that is factually incorrect, and saying "real research" as if his research didn't happen in reality -- but I assure you it's real. This is not a dream. He actually did just critique your field. Calling it unreal is a tactic of denial. This is groundbreaking work, and the establishment can't have it. You're no better than the Catholic Church.

fapjacks 10y ago
I have no horse in this race, but you are being extremely obtuse. You specifically are making me want to read or engage with this less.
soundwave106 10y ago
This is not the first paper to link the harmonic series to Pythagorean / just intonation style music, Google brought me this from 10 years earlier for instance: http://in.music.sc.edu/fs/bain/atmi02/hs/hs.pdf http://in.music.sc.edu/fs/bain/atmi02/hs/hs.pdf In fact, this paper references Paul Hindemith in the 1940s, so I suspect that the notion of linking the harmonic series to music has been around a very long time. I think the real problem is the very dismissive topic in section 4. That's what completely turned me off this paper. Dissonance (in Western music terms) has a huge role in music, and even that 20th century purely dissonant music has a place. (Take music like Penderecki's early stuff eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp3BlFZWJNA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp3BlFZWJNA . It sounds "awful" in a sense, but that's really the point, and certainly has its place -- The Shining wouldn't have been the same if Kubrick had used Thomas Tallis instead. :) ). Beyond fully atonal music, a lot of Western art music relies on "dissonances" of some sort to advance melodic development (even in standard pop there's a little of it sometimes). I don't know many pieces based solely on the tritone. A lot of Western composers in the past used the tritone in key places because it was rather nasty sounding, and it was condemned as "the Devil's interval" culturally. Thus it could easily represent "evil" or "sinister" in your tone poems and operas. Voice leading is a huge core principle behind the circle of fifths or the reverse circle of fourths; from the paper (in bashing the circle as a "red herring") it sounds like he doesn't understand the core behind why the circle exists at all, or has chosen to ignore the principle of voice leading for some reason. The circle of fifths is more melody than harmony, I personally felt puzzled why he felt it would be a criticism for a harmony paper. I also found the dismissal of other cultural scales (which indeed generally are less, with pentatonic probably the most common), er, tone deaf. The best way I think to explore the scales of a large portion of music cultures (there are exceptions) is to think more on Pythagorean terms, not on chromatic terms. Saying that "their culture has simply never made use of the rest of the available parameter space" is looking at it the wrong way.
10y ago

rhizome 10y ago

It's always frustrating when someone who is capable and knowledgeable about one subject decides to try their hand in a different field without having bothered to do any real research or study in it. Engineer's Disease https://twitter.com/sayrer/status/238473563399659520 https://twitter.com/sayrer/status/238473563399659520