Instructive and thought provoking as usual, Dom. Not that I know a lot about it, but I wonder how fractal geometry would fit into this paradigm that seeks a third way in order to reconcile the dichotomy between mind and heart in music that uses digital means of composition. Also, the mp4 (if that's what it is) of white noise filtered by Perlin noise modulators also sound like a very windly spring night in North Texas.
That's a very good point about fractal geometry, Donald. It has a more organic feel to it than euclidian geometry. In music, I think it's still relatively unexplored. I did some experiments with it some years ago but could not get them recorded - I do hope to record them at some point.
Fascinating about the windy spring nights. I am glad you relate to it with something in your environment. What's interesting about the Perlin noise is that normally, if you want to model the sound of wind or rain or so forth, you build a model of how that sound works based on some theory. This was the reverse; a model was built that sounded like something from which perhaps you could build a theory.
There's some interesting fractal properties already built in to music. Rhythm and pitch are self-similar in a way, as you can consider rhythm as slow pitch or pitch as fast rhythm, the threshold being somewhere around 10-20hz.
Another self-similarity is in pitch and harmony. A harmonically-rich note contains within its first few overtones a major chord.
Another analogy with the straight lines of modernism is the rigid locking-to-pitch in pop vocals of the last twenty years. I remember one of Adam Neely's Q&A sessions where a viewer asked if Adele was singing microtonally at a certain part of one of her songs. The answer was no - she was just using pitch inflection as an expressive device.
Absolutely. I think both the quantisation of pitch and time in recent years are analogous to straight lines. It can be used well; I liked Arooj Aftab's use of autotune in a piece on her latest album. However, I was listening to the Beatles yesterday and enjoying the feel of Ringo's playing. I think people might currently be gravitating to music from an earlier era because there is a pleasure in less strict intonation and timing.
Instructive and thought provoking as usual, Dom. Not that I know a lot about it, but I wonder how fractal geometry would fit into this paradigm that seeks a third way in order to reconcile the dichotomy between mind and heart in music that uses digital means of composition. Also, the mp4 (if that's what it is) of white noise filtered by Perlin noise modulators also sound like a very windly spring night in North Texas.
That's a very good point about fractal geometry, Donald. It has a more organic feel to it than euclidian geometry. In music, I think it's still relatively unexplored. I did some experiments with it some years ago but could not get them recorded - I do hope to record them at some point.
Fascinating about the windy spring nights. I am glad you relate to it with something in your environment. What's interesting about the Perlin noise is that normally, if you want to model the sound of wind or rain or so forth, you build a model of how that sound works based on some theory. This was the reverse; a model was built that sounded like something from which perhaps you could build a theory.
There's some interesting fractal properties already built in to music. Rhythm and pitch are self-similar in a way, as you can consider rhythm as slow pitch or pitch as fast rhythm, the threshold being somewhere around 10-20hz.
Another self-similarity is in pitch and harmony. A harmonically-rich note contains within its first few overtones a major chord.
Excellent observation! Thank you.
Another analogy with the straight lines of modernism is the rigid locking-to-pitch in pop vocals of the last twenty years. I remember one of Adam Neely's Q&A sessions where a viewer asked if Adele was singing microtonally at a certain part of one of her songs. The answer was no - she was just using pitch inflection as an expressive device.
Absolutely. I think both the quantisation of pitch and time in recent years are analogous to straight lines. It can be used well; I liked Arooj Aftab's use of autotune in a piece on her latest album. However, I was listening to the Beatles yesterday and enjoying the feel of Ringo's playing. I think people might currently be gravitating to music from an earlier era because there is a pleasure in less strict intonation and timing.
Really fascinating and a good argument against black and white thinking and fear of the algorithm
Thank you!
Brilliant essay, thank you. Pairs nicely with Salomé Voegelin:
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/political-possibility-of-sound-9781501312168/