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The article opens with the claim that "Albert Einstein and John Coltrane had quite a lot in common" but then hardly addresses that further. Did Einstein have a
by ams6110 10y ago
The article opens with the claim that "Albert Einstein and John Coltrane had quite a lot in common" but then hardly addresses that further.
Did Einstein have any musical talent/interests?
- agumonkey 10y agoThere's a quote about music and Einstein, don't know more. Also feynmann liked percussions a lot and maybe music in general. What I find in learning music alone, is that it's highly relative, there's no real absolute, so the space of combination is huge, yet very regular in principles; what's not to like for a scientist.
- jedimastert 10y agoI'm both a musician and developer, and people usually look at me weird when I say that. But really, there's a great overlap if you just look.
- agumonkey 10y agoProgramming can be very "artistic" too, but I bet not in your day to day job. Most people want war-like efficacy.
- aczerepinski 10y agoSame for music. There are a handful of famous composers who get paid to just do their thing, but for everyone else the gigs are "give me a 70 second song that sounds like X and has a big dramatic peak at the 55 second mark, due Friday".
- agumonkey 10y agoVery good point. I tend to only think about music as timeless pieces of harmonic bliss :)
- abhirag 10y agoYou should definitely try Overtone (http://overtone.github.io http://overtone.github.io) and Sonic Pi (http://sonic-pi.net http://sonic-pi.net), if you haven't already.
- funkaster 10y agoSonic Pi looks great! Thanks for the suggestion! Overtone looks interesting, but Sonic Pi being ruby seems more approachable/easier to install and run.
- abhirag 10y agoI see you are using emacs :) Setting up Overtone isn't that difficult and Overtone + Emacs Live(https://overtone.github.io/emacs-live/ https://overtone.github.io/emacs-live/) makes for a great live coding setup :) Both of them are by Sam Aaron, I find his work inspiring. Anyways, have fun with live coding!
- psyc 10y agoI have always said that when I'm deep into composing, the brain activity seems extremely similar to when I'm working out an algebra problem, or a big code refactor.
- agumonkey 10y agofitting pieces together and not breaking the invariant and relationship between them ? #harmony
- tchaffee 10y agoI'm surprised people think that's unusual. https://teamgaslight.com/blog/why-are-so-many-software-developers-also-musicians https://teamgaslight.com/blog/why-are-so-many-software-devel...
- zengid 10y agoThis fills me with joy; I was itching to write a similar blog post. Quoting article above: Music is an abstract medium — the printed note requires interpretation and execution. Like the written line of code, there is often much more than meets the eye.
- agumonkey 10y agoThat's why I dislike classical education, which put notation and theory first before intuition.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoWhat I love about music is that whenever you think you can reduce it to a formula or algorithm, it slips through your fingers. I've been studying theory for a while now, and it's become obvious we know a lot less about music than we think we do.
- agumonkey 10y agoI've read maybe, say, 2 chapters of theory. A bit of names and patterns. In a way I agree with you, the more you dig the less you know. But at the same time, I have this feeling that .. I do know music. I know because when I'm on it, the few times it happened, it wasn't a theory, but more like a sense of spaces. A sense that fills you in a way that is impossible not to notice. Things are simple, borderline automatic, a very thin closed loop of sensation and action. A bit like an ODE ;) If you're tuned, you can now "see" that space [1] path, lines and curves and glide on them through the movement inertia. It's not a static space, it's more like a slightly viscous fluid that also responds to your changes of momentum. If you decide not to glide smoothly anymore, you're welcome to do so, but the ground, the space will now change shape, so you have to know how to stay tuned and react to that. Then you can keep on gliding and it will feel musical. My most used word when speaking about music is sensitivity. [1] seeing in the abstract geometrical sense, a notion of direction, distance, scale, that we use to move, but can be used to organize any kind of sensory inputs I believe.
- chillingeffect 10y agoYes people today treat music as if the sound were an end product (consumerism), but music is a medium through which major areas of experience are communicated. E.g. scales could be thought of buildings. One can hardly make one without inflecting it in some way that reflects values. To the point where evading this inevitability invokes meta-communication.
- karmakaze 10y agoI have read that Einstein lied to improvise on violin iirc when coming up with new ideas
- brooklyn_ashey 10y agoHe played violin.
- brooklyn_ashey 10y agoPerhaps the writer meant that while they both studied structures, they both had a personal style that was powerful and served to advance the thinking in their fields. Both were more concerned with leaving those structure to adventure toward philosophical comment through their work.
- olivermarks 10y agoI think the author is alluding to Einstein and Coltrane having quite a lot in common conceptually around envisaging the universe, sacred geometry and spirituality http://upliftconnect.com/spiritual-wisdom-of-albert-einstein/ http://upliftconnect.com/spiritual-wisdom-of-albert-einstein...
- tyingq 10y agoThis Psychology Today article goes pretty deep on that front: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/imagine/201003/einstein-creative-thinking-music-and-the-intuitive-art-scientific-imagination https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/imagine/201003/einstein... Talks about musical talents, but also some other things where you might see similarities if you read it, then stories about Coltrane.
- sn9 10y agoEinstein was a fairly talented amateur violinist as I recall.