6 ms·

Would add that this is a very low estimate because it's only treating rhythm as a a steady 16th note increments when many musical genres use "swing" timing and

Would add that this is a very low estimate because it's only treating rhythm as a a steady 16th note increments when many musical genres use "swing" timing and probably ways of interpreting the timing of the notes as well

owyn 4y ago
Definitely. Some bands work almost entirely with rhythm. For example what Meshuggah (the Swedish metal band) has been doing for the last 30 years. :) This is a video of a breakdown of two riffs from one song from their new album. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3_OjcLS3Jc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3_OjcLS3Jc
- gsinclair 4y ago
  Great link, thanks!
npmnm 4y ago
The largest number on this page is 8.25x10**19; a number essentially incomprehensible to human minds. It seems the message is: there’s a lot of room for creativity. Any increase in the rhythm resolution will only further balloon that figure. Agreeing with the message exponentially more.
dhosek 4y ago
Even in traditional Western classical music, you have triplets, 5-lets, 7-lets, etc. (I have a flute piece which opens with a 57-let iirc—I forget the exact number but it was large enough that there’s no way that any flautist could actually play it as written). Tempo also plays a big role. The soundtrack to Across the Universe includes slowed-down versions of “I want to hold your hand” and “Blackbird” which become almost unrecognizable thanks to a change of tempo (and instrumentation). Rhythmic variations can dramatically change the perception of a piece. I used to play a choral piece by Poulenc (“O Magnum Mysterium”) with a swung jazz rhythm and it takes a very different character when you do that (see also countless jazz reinterpretations of Beatles and other pop songs). One other piece of fun trivia: The rhythm of Hall of the Mountain King is exactly the same as the rhythm of Mary had a Little Lamb.
elihu 4y ago
Also worth adding another caveat that the 12-tone equal tempered musical scale that most of the world uses these days is used because those notes give you a pretty reasonable approximation of most of the small whole-number frequency ratios that sound most consonant. But there's no reason a melody has to restrict itself to just those notes. In particular, ratios that have a 7 in them somewhere are very poorly approximated in 12-tone equal temperament. The number of pitch intervals is theoretically infinite, but as a practical matter if a pitch is close to another it's likely to be mistaken for it. If we suppose that the threshold for a note to be different enough in pitch to be distinguished as a different note in a certain context is, say, five cents, then that gives us about 240 unique notes per octave. That's a bit of an oversimplification, but anyways the point is there's more than 12 notes, and music is like a vast continent with a thriving metropolis in one small corner but the vast majority of the land has never had more than a cursory exploration, if that. Here's a list of pitch intervals that were deemed interesting enough to be included in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pitch_intervals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pitch_intervals

owyn 4y ago

Definitely. Some bands work almost entirely with rhythm. For example what Meshuggah (the Swedish metal band) has been doing for the last 30 years. :) This is a video of a breakdown of two riffs from one song from their new album. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3_OjcLS3Jc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3_OjcLS3Jc

gsinclair 4y ago
Great link, thanks!

npmnm 4y ago

The largest number on this page is 8.25x10**19; a number essentially incomprehensible to human minds. It seems the message is: there’s a lot of room for creativity. Any increase in the rhythm resolution will only further balloon that figure. Agreeing with the message exponentially more.

dhosek 4y ago

Even in traditional Western classical music, you have triplets, 5-lets, 7-lets, etc. (I have a flute piece which opens with a 57-let iirc—I forget the exact number but it was large enough that there’s no way that any flautist could actually play it as written). Tempo also plays a big role. The soundtrack to Across the Universe includes slowed-down versions of “I want to hold your hand” and “Blackbird” which become almost unrecognizable thanks to a change of tempo (and instrumentation). Rhythmic variations can dramatically change the perception of a piece. I used to play a choral piece by Poulenc (“O Magnum Mysterium”) with a swung jazz rhythm and it takes a very different character when you do that (see also countless jazz reinterpretations of Beatles and other pop songs). One other piece of fun trivia: The rhythm of Hall of the Mountain King is exactly the same as the rhythm of Mary had a Little Lamb.

elihu 4y ago

Also worth adding another caveat that the 12-tone equal tempered musical scale that most of the world uses these days is used because those notes give you a pretty reasonable approximation of most of the small whole-number frequency ratios that sound most consonant. But there's no reason a melody has to restrict itself to just those notes. In particular, ratios that have a 7 in them somewhere are very poorly approximated in 12-tone equal temperament. The number of pitch intervals is theoretically infinite, but as a practical matter if a pitch is close to another it's likely to be mistaken for it. If we suppose that the threshold for a note to be different enough in pitch to be distinguished as a different note in a certain context is, say, five cents, then that gives us about 240 unique notes per octave. That's a bit of an oversimplification, but anyways the point is there's more than 12 notes, and music is like a vast continent with a thriving metropolis in one small corner but the vast majority of the land has never had more than a cursory exploration, if that. Here's a list of pitch intervals that were deemed interesting enough to be included in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pitch_intervals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pitch_intervals