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He Talks in Maths: Why Geeks Love Radiohead
- user2459 15y agoIt's the music. If nickleback did all that stuff, as a geek, you wouldn't care.
- th0ma5 15y agoI personally believe when an artist or group starts being taken seriously by the Jazz world, that's a sign that they're doing something right. Highly recommend Jonny Greenwood's recent other work: http://www.npr.org/2012/03/04/147668709/first-listen-krzysztof-penderecki-and-jonny-greenwood http://www.npr.org/2012/03/04/147668709/first-listen-krzyszt...
- bch 15y agoSee also Brad Mehldau's treatment of Radiohead: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brad+mehldau+radiohead http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brad+mehldau+rad...
- eXpl0it3r 15y agoIt's probably from the better part of modern orchestration but it's not something you'll enjoy listening to when sitting in a bus driving to work in the morning, at least that's my opinion.
- zerostar07 15y agoOK Computer came out at the peak of the electronica period, so the use of text to speech and dub production wasn't really novel. Plus the album was more about urban alienation rather than just technology. I don't think they appeal specifically to geeks though, they are widely critically acclaimed.
- sayemm 15y agoLove Radiohead, they're an intellectual group. They're also competitive bridge players too, cool piece on them: http://www.followmearound.com/presscuttings.php?year=1993&cutting=15 http://www.followmearound.com/presscuttings.php?year=1993...
- m0th87 15y agoRadiohead is my favorite band, but it has nothing to do with math or pop geek references or their distribution methods. They just make damn good music.
- zackzackzack 15y agoSame here. I would argue that most of their songs that I like have a certain melancholy to them. They invoke a mood that is like the feeling I get after reading the bipolar lisp programmer: http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm
- jtheory 15y agoI admit I'm a Radiohead fan. But music theory isn't much rooted in math -- I mean, sure, there's a bit of math involved, there are composers (mostly within the last 60 years) who've decided to build lots of math into their music (but much of it is aggressively unlistenable, OR they did lots of extra work dressing up the mathematical stuff in "kind on the ear & brain" regular old music to make it sound nice...), and if you dig into the acoustics of music, or DSP, there's math there. But music theory itself is mostly the somewhat-arbitrary documentation of what music is doing (not in mathematical terms), and sadly even the terms that involve numbers don't even do it consistently. The easter eggs are cool -- but I wouldn't listen to the music regardless if I didn't like the melodies, orchestration, "feel" and so on in most of it. (Radiohead is quite melodic, on the whole).
- MartinCron 15y agoI agree that the math connection is pretty... loose, although it always impresses me when a good musician (like my guitar instructor) can transpose on the fly. "Oh, I wonder what this would sound like in A Major instead of C Minor?" The same guitar instructor re-introduced me to Radiohead, and some of the most joy I've ever had as an aspiring musician was hearing some of those chords come together in unexpected and beautiful ways.
- gnaritas 15y agoTransposing on a guitar is trivial, it's not like piano where changing keys changes fingering. On a guitar, you can just move to a new position and play the same fingerings, bam new key.
- MartinCron 15y agoThat doesn't work if you're going to do a minor/major change, though, and it also doesn't work if any of your chords have open strings in them. Not all chords are "moveable" chords.
- gnaritas 15y ago
- ilamont 15y agoRe: the reference to Fibonacci numbers. Five years ago I stumbled upon a video that connected Fibonacci to a song off of Tool's Lateralus album: http://www.ilamont.com/2007/09/tool-math-rock-and-fibonacci-sequence.html http://www.ilamont.com/2007/09/tool-math-rock-and-fibonacci-... FWIW, Lateralus and 10,000 Days (also by Tool) are among the few rock albums I can listen to while working at night. It's very methodical. I love OK Computer (and Radiohead's "Airbag/How Am I Driving" EP, released around the same time) but it's hard for me to concentrate while listening to them -- too many hooks.
- arrakeen 15y agoWhy Geeks Love Radiohead? because they're not very big music fans. Radiohead has a song called "Palo Alto"? Well here's an album called Chip-Meditation by a group called Software: http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=132407 http://www.discogs.com/viewimages?release=132407 Radiohead uses a mathematical basis for composition? Try an album by Autechre and try and let your brain parse the mathematical precision and complexity of the music. That's not to say that Radiohead aren't a decent pop group: they have proven that they are. I'm just sayin that based upon the points brought up by the author, Radiohead are pretty entry-level
- polshaw 15y agoI don't agree at all with this article, imo loving music has nothing to do with the things in the article. But to claim Radiohead fans aren't big music fans is massively closed-minded. You might not like them, and that's fine. However, Radiohead are highly acclaimed by music lovers (OK computer topping lots of respected 'best of the 90's' lists etc).
- jtheory 15y agoI got the impression that arrakeen is saying, if the article were correct, then that would mean geeks don't know much music. Because if they went searching for music that ticked off all of the boxes listed in the article, they'd fine other stuff that did it far more. But the article isn't really on the mark (I don't think so either), so the conclusion about geeks doesn't hold water either.
- kylemaxwell 15y agoFlip side of the proposition: many geeks don't love Radiohead. No disrespect those who do, because everyone certainly has their own set of tastes. But the statement is just as false as claiming that geeks love Bach (I do, but you may not).
- juiceandjuice 15y agoI don't like radiohead hardly at all. I think, besides a few songs, they are boring. Same with My Bloody Valentine. I do love math rock though.
- juiceandjuice 15y agoKnuth has written (and talked) about interesting mathematical/algorithmic takes on music.
- polshaw 15y ago> OK Computer and In Rainbows are 10 years apart and are intended to be listened together, a binary joke on the rest of us. This is just a myth, and it's wrong. And none of these things have anything to do with why anyone likes Radiohead or not.