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Music Based on Fibonacci Sequence and Stock Market
Gary Franczyk writes "A band named Emerald Suspension has made an album named Playing the Market that is, as they put it: "structured based on patterns created by the stock market, economic indicators, algorithms". They have some songs based off of the Fibonacci sequence, the misery and consumer confidence indices, and the national debt. "
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
The first one sounds kind of like Pyramid Song by radiohead, but really this data doesn't make great music. You can make disjointed noise easily enough, and I'd guess no-one has any pressing need to listen to the stock market.
Maybe Philip Glass could make a symphony out of this stuff, but these guys unfortunately can't (from the samples). It isn't musical enough to not be background noise.
Experimental: yes, music: no.
Interesting idea, though. I think this could make a great backing noise to a Godspeed You Black Emperor! song or something.
"Zero one one, two three five eight./Thir-teen t-wenty one..."
Don't you just hate it when people reply to your signature?
the song Lateralus by Tool is based on the Fibonacci Sequence
there's even been discoveries of the whole album Lateralus having some type of relationship with the sequence
THe drum line in Lateralus is a fibonacci sequence. Some folks thought that it was a clue that you should listen to the album in a different order.
http://www.bofe.org/overthinking.htm
While I have no idea if this is valid or not (the band has been quiet), I do listen to the album in that order. It's actually a better album, I believe, in that sequence.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
But the silliest feature of all was that if you wanted your company accounts represented as a piece of music, it could do that as well. Well, I thought it was silly. The corporate world went bananas over it." Reg regarded him solemnly from over a piece of carrot poised delicately on his fork in front of him, but did not interrupt. "You see, any aspect of a piece of music can be expressed as a sequence or pattern of numbers," enthused Richard. "Numbers can express the pitch of notes, the length of notes, patterns of pitches and lengths. . " "You mean tunes," said Reg. The carrot had not moved yet. Richard grinned. "Tunes would be a very good word for it. I must remember that." Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective agency. :-D
I thought it was proven that the stock market figures were self similar and fractal in nature.
That is, if I display a graph of results but neglect to indicate the scale, it could apply to any scale from seconds to days to years.
Its like looking at a coastline, from 100miles up it has rough egds and curly bits just like if your looking from 1 metre up on the beach.
liqbase
Back in 1991 Fiorella Tirenzi created music based on radio astronomy data. I'm betting she's easier to look at than the folks who produced the stock market music.
Just because you start within a system does not make your music random. I don't know how their algorithms worked but they certainly made aesthetic choices.
Every composer starts within some system, and these can of varying degrees of confinement. Most pop music uses the system of I, IV, and V chords and the form of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. Mozart used the system know as tonality to compose, and he used many classical forms. Schoenberg used the system of serialism, one that he invented. Serialism is of course a more restrictive system than tonality, but in both you make many many many choices.
These guys just invented their own system, and unless they write about their compositional process we can't know how restrictive their system is or what aesthetic choices they made.
It's certainly understandable to not like this music, however you must at least respect it. I'm guessing these guys worked a lot harder on this album than most pop stars work on their stuff. If you've been listening to classical and early romantic music or top 40 all your life this sounds really foreign; that can be disturbing, but don't dismiss them because you don't like it.
Just out of curiosity, what music do you like? Don't just say 'rock' or 'classical' (both oft-abused terms), be specific.
Help I'm a rock.
Ummm, It is sunday afternoon and you manage a first post on slashdot....
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