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The map is not the territory. Furthermore, the language of the map limits how the territory can be described. So "better way to annotate music" depends, at leas
by beat 8y ago
The map is not the territory. Furthermore, the language of the map limits how the territory can be described. So "better way to annotate music" depends, at least in part, on the kind of music you're annotating.
This really came home to me when I was studying frame drumming of the central Asian plains. In Western notation terms, this music has very complex and difficult "time signatures", but that's because it's not metric in the same way as European music. If you think of it in its own terms, it's actually pretty easy to understand. Just break the rhythm down into sub-beats of 2, 3, or 4 pulses. So for example, a 13 beat long line might be 23233. Try counting that out loud - one two one two three one two one two three one two three - and you'll immediately hear it. But it's hell to notate in Western notation. And it gets worse when pieces turn into meta-sequences that have "bars" of varying length.
I've long been involved with the free improvisation scene, and improvisation always happens within some sort of set of rules. How do you notate something that's made up on the spot, within a framework? Take blues guitar leads as an example. They tend to stick within pretty limited pentatonic scales, against the underlying triplet shuffle feel of American music, but they're not "notated", really.
This leads to other, alternative notation systems that more aptly describe the style of music at hand, like the Nashville Number System.
- microtherion 8y agoReminds me of a Charles Mingus anecdote I came across today: > The reed player Yusef Lateef recalled his own experience learning Mingus music: “On one composition I had a solo and, as opposed to having chord symbols for me to improvise against, he had drawn a picture of a coffin. And that was the substance upon which I was to improvise.” https://fdleone.com/2016/01/29/charles-mingus-the-jazz-workshop-concerts-1964-1965/ https://fdleone.com/2016/01/29/charles-mingus-the-jazz-works...
- 0815test 8y agoAdditive meter is actually a well-known concept even in Western music. It's clearly needed even to make sense of, e.g. "5/4" or "7/4" meter, which yes, are sometimes found in the repertoire - because these are already ambiguous in practice: does the 5 in "5/4" mean "3+2" or "2+3"? You need to know that in order to understand the music and figure out how it goes - to make it "meaningful" as someone else said.
- beat 8y agoAdditive meter just shows where the concept of "time signature" breaks down The pulse of the music is not apparent from the notation. So it doesn't even fully explain Western music, much less non-Western music. (That said, while 7/4 exists in the repertoire, it's exceedingly rare - European music tends to be very simple rhythmically, compared to Indian, Arabic, or most African music.)
- radiowave 8y ago"The map is not the territory." I'm stealing this phrase. Increasingly in music production, the map is the arrangement of rectangles on the screen, but it's a poor substitute for understanding the ebb and flow of the music. In getting past notation by internalizing our knowledge of the music, we build a mental map of how we feel about the territory.
- beat 8y agoFeel free; I stole it myself! It's from the Polish scholar Alfred Korzybski, who made many interesting observations about how language itself limits our understanding of the world.