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We get a post like this every couple of weeks, it seems. Given the audience here, I understand the impulse - it's very fun to see the structure, and it really h

We get a post like this every couple of weeks, it seems. Given the audience here, I understand the impulse - it's very fun to see the structure, and it really helps you understand the framework upon which a lot of western music is built. But beware that this is not a way to actually understand what is interesting or compelling about "music", because you'll notice that the first step in all these articles is to reduce "music" to something you can analyze like it's computer code. This was tried in the early 20th century, with Schönberg etc. You get things like "12 tone music". It was tried in the mid 20th century onwards, when you had all kinds of flexibility to use crazy mathematical constructions with electronics and computers - you get things like Karlheinz Stockhausen. That is, things which don't sound any more interesting that any other arbitrary way of generating material with which to compose. These articles are fun, but don't think that they're about "music" any more than an article about the chemistry of a common pigment is an article about "painting".

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Yes - this is more like stamp collecting than composition. It can be interesting for generating unfamiliar colours, but that's all. It's certainly not a deep key to harmonic theory. And it ignores the fact that scales don't necessarily repeat at the octave, scale steps don't have to be equal, and there can be any number of steps in a scale.
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holri 5y ago
Yes this is so true. It is a sign of our general alienation from nature. We virtualize everything and think the simplified, abstract, intellectual picture is the reality. Nature is much more than a mental model of it. https://publicdelivery.org/magritte-not-a-pipe/ https://publicdelivery.org/magritte-not-a-pipe/
codeulike 5y ago
Cmon this is hacker news not 'art is ineffable news'. Yes the point of things like this is to help understand the framework that underlies (edit: most western) music. There's actually a lot of structure to western music that is obfuscated by the completely bonkers terminology. I find articles like this very intersting and useful, and there's no way you'll catch me listeneing to stockhausen. For example the explanation of modes vs scales in this article is the clearest I've ever seen.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  I thing the point of the GP is to remind us that this is not 'the framework that underlies music', it is 'a framework that is used to structure much European/American-inspired music'. That is, there are cultures that formalize or structure their music differently, and there are properties of music that are outside of these models. There are even many popular or niche songs that work against some aspects of this structure. And all this is not about the ineffability of art, it is simply about not confusing the map for the territory. Many people who wax poetic about the mathematical properties of music, and start deep theories about the human brain and our enjoyment of music from there, tend to forget that the mathematics are describing a particular formal system that some choose to use when making music; they are not mathematical properties of anything that a human being would recognize as pleasant music.
  - codeulike 5y ago
    Many people ... tend to forget ... I dont think thats true, especially on HN. We're perfectly capable of being interested in the mathy bits without losing sight of the arty bits e.g. the OP who wrote that very analytical piece about every possible scale composes music like this https://ianring.bandcamp.com https://ianring.bandcamp.com
VortexDream 5y ago
I don't understand the complaint here. The author writes music. He made this analysis out of curiosity and because he loves music. Isn't this perfect HN content?
kian 5y ago
So far, these posts are fluff, but this does not mean that just because humanity did not succeed in mathematically understanding harmony in the early twentieth century that it must be impossible.
Rochus 5y ago
Representing music in all of its relevant dimensions (scale, time, polyphony, melodic patterns, dynamics, etc.) is a very interesting and still not optimally solved problem. It is e.g. relevant for machine learning based systems for musical composition or improvisation; with transformers there was a big progress made compared to nearly thirty years of stagnation. And this is not about "exotic" compositions associated with the composers you mentioned, but about any kind of popular or classic music. The "necklace" representation of scales (also used in the referenced site) is an interesting one since it allows to e.g. represent modulation by rotation and/or mirroring. You rarely meet it in traditional music education. Such representations lead to useful insights about music if one wants to deal with it algorithmically. And there are many people here (including me) who do.
- thenoblesunfish 5y ago
  I completely agree that it's very interesting. But it's a Glass Bead Game you're playing. A fun game, a game which can make you a better composer, even but one should not be fooled into thinking that this is really essentially to how the music you love was created. One of the few things I think I know about music is that good way to make it is to take whatever system you have and subvert it a little bit.
  - Rochus 5y ago
    I'm a musician and composer myself (even used to work as a professional musician a couple of years). There are totally different approaches to composing music, from totally intuitive/non-intellectual to totally formal/rule-based. I would say that today the majority of composers compose music intuitively and directly on the instrument, without being aware of the exact processes involved. Formalizations in music are therefore mostly academic, arising from analysis of the compositions of others, as an attempt to explain how these compositions work. For algorithmic composition, such formalizations are necessary, but so far not sufficient to create a high-quality composition (just as one could not become a good musician just by studying music theory). Nevertheless, it is necessary to study such formalizations if one wants to advance the field of algorithmic composition. However, I consider most "classical" approaches to formalizing music obsolete for this purpose.
deleted 5y ago
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TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

Yes - this is more like stamp collecting than composition. It can be interesting for generating unfamiliar colours, but that's all. It's certainly not a deep key to harmonic theory. And it ignores the fact that scales don't necessarily repeat at the octave, scale steps don't have to be equal, and there can be any number of steps in a scale.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

holri 5y ago

Yes this is so true. It is a sign of our general alienation from nature. We virtualize everything and think the simplified, abstract, intellectual picture is the reality. Nature is much more than a mental model of it. https://publicdelivery.org/magritte-not-a-pipe/ https://publicdelivery.org/magritte-not-a-pipe/

codeulike 5y ago

Cmon this is hacker news not 'art is ineffable news'. Yes the point of things like this is to help understand the framework that underlies (edit: most western) music. There's actually a lot of structure to western music that is obfuscated by the completely bonkers terminology. I find articles like this very intersting and useful, and there's no way you'll catch me listeneing to stockhausen. For example the explanation of modes vs scales in this article is the clearest I've ever seen.

tsimionescu 5y ago
I thing the point of the GP is to remind us that this is not 'the framework that underlies music', it is 'a framework that is used to structure much European/American-inspired music'. That is, there are cultures that formalize or structure their music differently, and there are properties of music that are outside of these models. There are even many popular or niche songs that work against some aspects of this structure. And all this is not about the ineffability of art, it is simply about not confusing the map for the territory. Many people who wax poetic about the mathematical properties of music, and start deep theories about the human brain and our enjoyment of music from there, tend to forget that the mathematics are describing a particular formal system that some choose to use when making music; they are not mathematical properties of anything that a human being would recognize as pleasant music.
- codeulike 5y ago
  Many people ... tend to forget ... I dont think thats true, especially on HN. We're perfectly capable of being interested in the mathy bits without losing sight of the arty bits e.g. the OP who wrote that very analytical piece about every possible scale composes music like this https://ianring.bandcamp.com https://ianring.bandcamp.com

VortexDream 5y ago

I don't understand the complaint here. The author writes music. He made this analysis out of curiosity and because he loves music. Isn't this perfect HN content?

kian 5y ago

So far, these posts are fluff, but this does not mean that just because humanity did not succeed in mathematically understanding harmony in the early twentieth century that it must be impossible.

Rochus 5y ago

Representing music in all of its relevant dimensions (scale, time, polyphony, melodic patterns, dynamics, etc.) is a very interesting and still not optimally solved problem. It is e.g. relevant for machine learning based systems for musical composition or improvisation; with transformers there was a big progress made compared to nearly thirty years of stagnation. And this is not about "exotic" compositions associated with the composers you mentioned, but about any kind of popular or classic music. The "necklace" representation of scales (also used in the referenced site) is an interesting one since it allows to e.g. represent modulation by rotation and/or mirroring. You rarely meet it in traditional music education. Such representations lead to useful insights about music if one wants to deal with it algorithmically. And there are many people here (including me) who do.

thenoblesunfish 5y ago
I completely agree that it's very interesting. But it's a Glass Bead Game you're playing. A fun game, a game which can make you a better composer, even but one should not be fooled into thinking that this is really essentially to how the music you love was created. One of the few things I think I know about music is that good way to make it is to take whatever system you have and subvert it a little bit.
- Rochus 5y ago
  I'm a musician and composer myself (even used to work as a professional musician a couple of years). There are totally different approaches to composing music, from totally intuitive/non-intellectual to totally formal/rule-based. I would say that today the majority of composers compose music intuitively and directly on the instrument, without being aware of the exact processes involved. Formalizations in music are therefore mostly academic, arising from analysis of the compositions of others, as an attempt to explain how these compositions work. For algorithmic composition, such formalizations are necessary, but so far not sufficient to create a high-quality composition (just as one could not become a good musician just by studying music theory). Nevertheless, it is necessary to study such formalizations if one wants to advance the field of algorithmic composition. However, I consider most "classical" approaches to formalizing music obsolete for this purpose.

deleted 5y ago

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