4 ms·

A for effort, but as a programmer and musician, simultaneously makes me a little sad as an example of the all-too-frequent phenomenon of programmers trying to m

by wrs 9y ago

A for effort, but as a programmer and musician, simultaneously makes me a little sad as an example of the all-too-frequent phenomenon of programmers trying to model a domain without spending enough time actually learning the nuances of the domain first.

lodi 9y ago
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. > A chord is 3 notes played at the same time. It's not like you have to dig too deep to discover four-note 7th chords, diminished/augmented, inversions, etc...
- peterburkimsher 9y ago
  In the article: "There's also 7th chords, Augmented chords (+), and Diminished (º) chords. As far as we're concerned, there's a lookup table that lets us turn these chords into notes."
mb_72 9y ago
Nuances? Try basics. Worse, the author makes a number of general statements about music that I would have known to be wrong as a 6-year old with 1 year of experience in playing piano. Who am I kidding? This is the age of crapping some mangled mis-information out onto a blog or web page in the hope of raising one's profile and securing a job with the next hot startup creating $10k robots delivering $5 pizzas or whatever.
- jwfxpr 9y ago
  The author clearly and good-humoredly declares that he comes with no knowledge of music or music theory at all, and is clearly documenting his process of coming to grips with enough of those basics you may have known as a 6 year old with 1 year of experience, and is attempting to do so in order to do something interesting. So perhaps 'wrongness' is far less important to this than 'interestingness' and, though I am a multi-instrumentalist myself and know music well, I'd like to thank him for attempting to learn what he needed to to attempt this interesting thing. I really enjoyed the read and intend to have a little play with the data.
  - mb_72 9y ago
    Ok, perhaps you are fine with letting little gems like "Musicians never play notes one at a time. They always use chords." slide, but I'm not. If I can't trust the author about the basics and things that I know about, how can I trust their reasoning or thoughts on more complicated matters and items that are outside my own domain? I cannot, and hence don't read further because there is an opportunity cost in doing so, and there are many other interesting things I could be reading or otherwise doing with my time.
    - jwfxpr 9y ago
      Honestly I just feel like you may have wielded judgement too hastily at the expense of your sense of wonder and shared joy in someone exploring territory that is well trodden only to relatively few. Very few people have a solid grasp of musical theory. For most people, scaling what may to you be barely the foothills of knowledge is a great and challenging experience, and I think it should be celebrated. And sure, perhaps you and I can easily distinguish the subtle difference between 'Musicians always use chords' (obviously wrong) and 'Musicians always work, individually or together, within a key, which is an abstracted but well-defined set of tones that can be combined in time series or simultaneously to produce an inexplicably pleasant experience in the listener, by some neurological magic that has never been adequately explained' (non-obviously correct) but y'know what, I actually am willing to let little gems like that slide because they're adequate approximations of the truth that allow good folks to proceed on a journey that may one day lead them to, just maybe, have the arrogance required to belittle the uninitiated.
      - asdffdsa321 9y ago
        For me, the issue was that the writing style, like most articles written by programmers, passed off every thing as fact. Things like "they have the same chord progression" in section 2.a is patently false. This kind of writing is misleading to others, especially newcomers (blind leading the blind) I do agree though, that to do somethimg, learn something, have something almost correct is better than having learned and done nothing, but as Bill Evans points out in the youtube video about the learning process, it's much better to start with something simple, concrete, and which you know as true then build from there, than start approximating (incorrectly) lots of things at once. So it's a case by case basis, but it's not merely gratuitous arrogance that motivates people to call other people out on false statements.
- ajuc 9y ago
  Someone did a side-project in a new domain without studying it for a few years. Outrageous.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ajuc 9y ago
Good enough. Also - the notation in question is confusing and overcomplicated, and ignoring corner cases makes a lot of sense if you don't care about outliers. It's not like that notation handles all kinds of music well anyway.
- rmetzler 9y ago
  Yes, exactly. The well temperated musical tuning [0] is "good enough". it's an approximation. Some pitches for notes sound almost the same and that's why they today are represented with the same key on a piano. > For some reason I don't totally understand, some have 2 names (e.g. C#=Db, D#=Eb, F#=Gb, A#=Bb). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_temperament https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_temperament Some famous music for the well temperament: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tempered_Clavier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tempered_Clavier

by wrs 9y ago

lodi 9y ago

Yeah, my thoughts exactly. > A chord is 3 notes played at the same time. It's not like you have to dig too deep to discover four-note 7th chords, diminished/augmented, inversions, etc...

peterburkimsher 9y ago
In the article: "There's also 7th chords, Augmented chords (+), and Diminished (º) chords. As far as we're concerned, there's a lookup table that lets us turn these chords into notes."

mb_72 9y ago

Nuances? Try basics. Worse, the author makes a number of general statements about music that I would have known to be wrong as a 6-year old with 1 year of experience in playing piano. Who am I kidding? This is the age of crapping some mangled mis-information out onto a blog or web page in the hope of raising one's profile and securing a job with the next hot startup creating $10k robots delivering $5 pizzas or whatever.

jwfxpr 9y ago
The author clearly and good-humoredly declares that he comes with no knowledge of music or music theory at all, and is clearly documenting his process of coming to grips with enough of those basics you may have known as a 6 year old with 1 year of experience, and is attempting to do so in order to do something interesting. So perhaps 'wrongness' is far less important to this than 'interestingness' and, though I am a multi-instrumentalist myself and know music well, I'd like to thank him for attempting to learn what he needed to to attempt this interesting thing. I really enjoyed the read and intend to have a little play with the data.
- mb_72 9y ago
  Ok, perhaps you are fine with letting little gems like "Musicians never play notes one at a time. They always use chords." slide, but I'm not. If I can't trust the author about the basics and things that I know about, how can I trust their reasoning or thoughts on more complicated matters and items that are outside my own domain? I cannot, and hence don't read further because there is an opportunity cost in doing so, and there are many other interesting things I could be reading or otherwise doing with my time.
  - jwfxpr 9y ago
    Honestly I just feel like you may have wielded judgement too hastily at the expense of your sense of wonder and shared joy in someone exploring territory that is well trodden only to relatively few. Very few people have a solid grasp of musical theory. For most people, scaling what may to you be barely the foothills of knowledge is a great and challenging experience, and I think it should be celebrated. And sure, perhaps you and I can easily distinguish the subtle difference between 'Musicians always use chords' (obviously wrong) and 'Musicians always work, individually or together, within a key, which is an abstracted but well-defined set of tones that can be combined in time series or simultaneously to produce an inexplicably pleasant experience in the listener, by some neurological magic that has never been adequately explained' (non-obviously correct) but y'know what, I actually am willing to let little gems like that slide because they're adequate approximations of the truth that allow good folks to proceed on a journey that may one day lead them to, just maybe, have the arrogance required to belittle the uninitiated.
    - asdffdsa321 9y ago
      For me, the issue was that the writing style, like most articles written by programmers, passed off every thing as fact. Things like "they have the same chord progression" in section 2.a is patently false. This kind of writing is misleading to others, especially newcomers (blind leading the blind) I do agree though, that to do somethimg, learn something, have something almost correct is better than having learned and done nothing, but as Bill Evans points out in the youtube video about the learning process, it's much better to start with something simple, concrete, and which you know as true then build from there, than start approximating (incorrectly) lots of things at once. So it's a case by case basis, but it's not merely gratuitous arrogance that motivates people to call other people out on false statements.
ajuc 9y ago
Someone did a side-project in a new domain without studying it for a few years. Outrageous.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ajuc 9y ago

Good enough. Also - the notation in question is confusing and overcomplicated, and ignoring corner cases makes a lot of sense if you don't care about outliers. It's not like that notation handles all kinds of music well anyway.

rmetzler 9y ago
Yes, exactly. The well temperated musical tuning [0] is "good enough". it's an approximation. Some pitches for notes sound almost the same and that's why they today are represented with the same key on a piano. > For some reason I don't totally understand, some have 2 names (e.g. C#=Db, D#=Eb, F#=Gb, A#=Bb). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_temperament https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_temperament Some famous music for the well temperament: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tempered_Clavier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tempered_Clavier