What Math Actually Sounds Like

cellophane writes "If Verdi had a math fetish and a computer, would he be John Greschak? Greschak composes music based upon the mathematical properties of various mathematical objects (e.g. a six-sided die or pentominoes). He writes computer programs to realize devised algorithms and uses the results of these processes as source material for musical pieces. Greschak's newest addition, Platonic Dice: Dodecahedron for 12 woodwinds, was created by using musical material derived from the mathematical properties of one of the Platonic dice. Well, its not Verdi, but its definitely interesting."

Comments

Great, now can we expect...

[gregwbrooks]

... to see thousands of web-porn banners screaming "see Dodecahedrons in hot back-stage action now!!!"

I don't like it as much as mallcore

[SexyKellyOsbourne]

It's not as good at the latest crazy town album, but in case it's slashdotted -- it sounds very strange, twangy, almost random, and VERY, VERY dissonant. However, it's quite beautiful.

Fractal Music is quite interesting, as well, and oddly it still sounds more orderly than Platonic Dice.

Yup, pretty much like I thought

[McCart42]

I anticipate that Hilary Rosen and Jack Valenti will spend the hereafter listening to this, if there is any sense of justice in the afterlife.

Re:Yup, pretty much like I thought

[awfwal]

If there was any justice in the afterlife, the would be listening to boy bands.

Reminds me of a star trek Voyager episode...

[CoolVibe]

...where the EMH was teaching some alien race about music and art. Also "music" from mathematical models were played with...

Julia sets would sound pretty cool I gather :)

What die do I use

[teamhasnoi]

to make a saving throw against the MIDI sounds coming out of my speaker?

Please hook up a sampler and record it that way.

I like the music, its just that the MIDI kills me.

Re:What die do I use

[CoolVibe]

Then get a decent wavetable synth capable sound card. Geez.

Re:What die do I use

[dubiousmike]

Try Roland's software synth.

I think its free and has pretty decent sounds.

puhhhlleeeassseeee

[Monkelectric]

Music has mathmatical patters, that does not mean math makes good music. People have been trying to discover algorithims which can generate music for years, and this guy has not advanced the science any.

This is truely one of the worst things i've ever heard. And I own a gravel album so thats saying quite a lot.

Re:puhhhlleeeassseeee

[tomstdenis]

I agree. Man was that horrible. I could make better music by dropping a drum set down a Tibetan mountain side.

Tom

Re:puhhhlleeeassseeee

[namespan]

The aesthetic qualities you hear in music are all in the functions you use to map a mathematical pattern to sound. One that corresponds to your aesthetics will sound good. One that doesn't won't.

I've been doing this sort of thing since high school, on and off. The conclusion that I came to about five years ago is that there might actually be a reason why most scales/tonal systems people have come up with have some basis in the harmonic series. Since then, it's been interesting trying to come up with algorithms that work with it.

Why am I not posting links? Because this is done in my spare time, and what I've come up with is still crummy. But I think the idea might be significant...

Where's the emotion?

[manly_15]

The poster was right - this is not Verdi. Music is not just an expression of mathematical equations. What these compositions are missing is the feeling, the tension, the journey that music should take you on. Serious music lovers like myself all would say that the best music is that which is filled with emotion. That includes classical music like Beethoven and Handel; it also (at least IMHO) includes newer music from bands like The Tea Party, Our Lady Peace, or my favourite indie band, Das Radio.

The true breakthrough will be when equations can be used to create music with emotion. Unfortunately, that will probably be years away...

Re:Where's the emotion?

[MagPulse]

Even if software was written to create music that fooled people into believing a human wrote it, would people want to listen to it? When I listen to music, I want to know there's a real person behind it, who is going through the human experience just as I am. Maybe if a robot, or even body-less artificial life, some day composes music it will be worth listening to, but true human-composed music will always have some appeal to it.

for 12 woodwinds?

[Drunken Coward]

Sounds like "for 12 monkeys with kazoos."

No, I take that back. It didn't sound that good.

Roll your own...

[Black Parrot]

I haven't tried it yet, but a couple of days ago a message went out on guile-user saying that the Common Music composition language has been ported to GUILE. (It is a Lisp-based program that already worked with several varieties of Lisp; see the link for more info.)

It supports ordinary composition, but its toolbox supports stuff like random selection and interpolation into envelopes, which ought to make exploitation of the mathematical properties of objects pretty easy.

Re:You want math and music?

[hitzroth]

Bach. Not Mozart.

I've heard this music before

[dfn5]

I used to hear this every day in high school during band practice.... while everyone was warming up.
I wouldn't exactly call it music though...

A good use for this music, except...

[Alsee]

I would propose making monsterously huge speakers and blasting this into Iraq, but in my oppinion it would be a violation of the Geneva Convention.

-

Confucious says...

[Dr. Cody]

The truely wise man posts his music in MIDI before summiting his webpage to Slashdot.

This sounds very much like...

[Aiwendel]

...the music of Arnold Schoenberg. He was a german composer in the early 20th century who wrote very atonal pieces using what he called "tone rows" - a particular note could not be used again until all of the other 11 notes in the chromatic scale had been used.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

[Politas]

Didn't Douglas Adams come up with this idea? It was a program called Anthem, which turned a company's financials into music, rather than geometric shapes, but the idea's the same.

Already been done

[GuyMannDude]

I would propose making monsterously huge speakers and blasting this into Iraq, but in my oppinion it would be a violation of the Geneva Convention.

Actually, we've done stuff like that before

GMD

Too bound by the math.

[erik_fredricks]

Schoenberg tried the same sort of thing in 1921 or so. He invented the "twelve tone" system, in which the twelve chromatic tones were arranged according to mathematical sets. He even remarked to one of his students that he had come up with an idea that would, "ensure the domination of German music in the 20th century."

The basic idea was neat in that it removed conscious choice from the equation and resulted in melodic and harmonic combinations that wouldn't normally occur to a composer. Serialism, as it's called, is still being taught and used to this day, even if I find it tiresome myself. Basically, this is just another facet of that serial system.

It has a unique kind of icy, remote quality, but music isn't really meant to be appreciated on an intellectual level so much as an emotional one. True enough, you can have a satisfying balance of both (like Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier), but purely intellectual stuff like this just isn't all that interesting outside of certain circles. Schoenberg's students, Alban Berg and Anton Webern did a much better job of writing listenable music with the system, mostly because they allowed some human influence in the model.

Re:Too bound by the math.

[melquiades]

The basic idea was neat in that it removed conscious choice from the equation....

That's not really accurate. Scheonberg was trying to force composers into thinking of sounds they wouldn't have otherwise, but for him, conscious choice was still very much a part of the picture. He was an expressionist -- meaning that he was still interested in expressing, not merely generating.

The real philosophical bullet of twelve-tone was not the removal of conscious choice ... quite the opposite, in fact: it was the idea that composers could make a conscious choice of what formal musical system to follow, and in fact, one could consciously invent a whole formal system out of thin air. Prior to Schoenberg, music had been philosophically rooted in a sort quasi-religious of sense of cosmic order, and he said, "No, look, I can just make up a system! No cosmic order to it -- just conscious choice."

The aesthetic problem that 12-tone faces is that music theory is usually a model, a post-hoc way of dissecting music, more than it is a way of constructing it. Traditional "functional tonality" (Bach, Beethoven, Beatles) evolved very organically out of basic physics and human perception, and seems to resonate more easily with listeners than Schoenberg's consciously concocted system.

However, I think Scheonberg actually did a fine job of making conscious aesthetic choices that produced some excellent music. It was really other composers who took serialism to its absurdly deterministic extremes. Now Webern ... Webern I find horribly cold and dry, more interesting to read on paper than hear. So there's individual taste for you! :)

This dodecahedral thing doesn't really turn my crank, but dumb old MIDI will suck the soul out of most any classically composed music ... so it's had to say what it might be like with live players.

Fractal Music

[weird mehgny]

Makes me think of this artist. Some of the MP3's are nice.

How about just...

[jonman_d]

...`cat pi.txt >> /dev/dsp`?
Am I the only one that finds catting random things to the sound device[s] amusing?

Playing at this since Plato

[rochlin]

Non-musical types have been playing and producing mathematical music since Plato. I can't say any of it ranks up there with "twinkle twinkle" (even). But it never hurts to try...

Milton Babbitt

[gmaestro]

Ok, this is interesting, but nothing new. Composers hava been using math and science for centuries in their music. Guillame Dufay used the architectural proportions of Brunelleschi's dome in Florence in the mensural changes in his Nuper rosarum flores in the 15th century. Polish composer Yannis Xenakis saught to explain the music of J.S. Bach with geomentry. American composer and mathmetician Milton Babbitt focused on algorithmic composition decades ago. And John Cage used the I Ching to randomize his music. The last two are often seen as extreme ways of composing music more objectively, though from different ideological perspectives.

Granted, no one is writing about my music anywhere :-]

What does music look like

[lost in place]

This is not completely relevant, but people here might be interested in the converse question: What does music look like when viewed as a sequential, mathematical structure. This guy has analyzed a number of musical pieces and shows their structure. He also shows what sequential data look like.

Platonic Dice??!!??

[Graff]

John Greschak probably should do a bit more research on the subject of "Platonic Dice". What he is referring to are the Platonic solids.

In order for a solid to be a Platonic solid, it needs to be convex and have all its vertices (corners) to have the same number and size of regular polyhedrons touching them. For example, a cube is a Platonic solid because all of the vertices have 4 of the same size squares touching. There are only 5 Platonic solids possible: the Tetrahedron (4 sides), the Hexahedron (cube, 6 sides), Octahedron (8 sides), Dodecahedron (12 sides), Icosahedron (20 sides).

There is also a class of related solids called Archimedian solids where the solids are convex, all vertices are identical, all faces are regular polygons, but not all of the faces are identical to each other.

If you remember math class

[phorm]

You would already know what math sounds like

Teacher: Class, today we're going to have a pop quiz

Students: Groaaannn, whiinne, snifffle

Depends on the audience though, a room full of geeks with a math fetish would probably make much more disturbing "music"...

Disclaimer: I like math, but it's not a fetish - phorm

Cage? Schoenberg? Varese?

[dogfart]

Edgar Varese did some very strange, percussion-based music in the 1920's inspired by mathematics - such as Hyperprism and Integrales. Not 12-tone in the sense that Schoenberg did, but very different in its own way.

He was incredibly an early influence on Frank Zappa.

I'm not a music student, just an educated listener. Maybe someone better versed in 20th century music than I am can comment on the relevance of Varese to mathmatically-inspired music.