Rephlex which aspects of electronic muc do you tend to focus on / appeals to you most?si

[beerwolf]

I can't tell you it's classified.

[vertsk8er419]

beats

[Wyern]

Math is just a form to represent things (including music) in a more convenient way to operate with them. We could try to calculate physics using music or colors, but it would be quite difficult to follow up.

 

On the topic I think it depends on the song, I usually like music in which I think the artist has paid a lot of attention in all its aspects. Aphex Twin usually does that in my opinion.

[Guest ryanmcallister]

 

 

i'm completely oblivious to sound structure, don't like maths in music. i've always had a thing for composition, harmonies and melodies and greatly appreciate novel progressions and unique melodies. but they shouldn't be meandering or random. i prefer steady beats, organic sounds, imaginative and colorful themes. i like music that takes you somewhere.. not elevator music. make it as weird as you like, just don't let it be boring.

 

Music is math though. Harmonies? math all up in those bitches. The sounds produced by bits of electronic kit, fed through DSP, transcoded as an MP3/FLAC whatever...all thanks to math.

Rhythms - math

Counterpoint - math

time signatures - math

 

http://mathtourist.blogspot.com/2008/09/fractal-in-bachs-cello-suite.html

i understand where you are coming from with this, but i tend to hate that philosophy "everything is math". i actually prefer to think of it backwards: "math is everything". math is only a set of rules and theories to try to explain the workings of the universe, so really, math is music. math is the scenery outside. math is the way your brain works. etc, etc, etc.

I don't understand how you're trying to differentiate these two statements:

1) Math is the scenery outside.

2) The scenery outside is math.

 

I should state that I am terrible at maths, the algebra that I have to do for my econ classes makes me want to curl up into a ball and smoke opium. When I say "music is math", I'm merely stating that math is behind a lot of music, whether consciously or not. Like the fibonacci sequence in the intervals which make up a sequence of harmonics. Now obviously part of what makes great music is being able to apply those mathematical relationships in aesthetically pleasing ways. But to me when someone says "I don't like music in maths" (especially in reference to electornic music, my god) it's showing some willful ignorance.

 

And here's an interesting paper which shows exactly why it's important to choose the relationships in an aesthetically pleasing manner:

http://www.ist.rit.edu/~jab/Fibo98/

wasn't really discrediting your statement, it really is the same thing. i just personally know a lot of people that think they are such deep thinkers because they found the "algorithm to the universe" and that they are upper level thinkers because they realize that "oh my god, there's actually math behind the way plants grow". i'm just saying "duhhhhhh! stuff isn't math...math is stuff, ya know?" math isn't just a random set of complex equations and shit, but it was designed to describe real-world happenings. hence "math is everything!", not the other way around.

 

i just find that subtle re-thinking of math in this proposed way is much more liberating than disconnecting it from it's organic origins and then trying to reconnect abstract equations to the world again later. i wasn't at all saying you're wrong chenGOD, just a little pet peeve of mine, sort of along the lines of hearing someone constantly pronounce a word wrong you know?

[Guest ryanmcallister]

the music was there before the mathies said aha look this is fibonnaci its all maths!

i think that is what he meant or something

 

Just because one cannot see behind the curtain, doesn't mean the wizard isn't there.

and see this here in fact is false i think. you are proposing that math transcends human existance, when really humans invented math to fit their understanding. it's just a language, are you saying that english was there before we realized it? this is kind of what i'm getting at with my previous point, you kind of are associating it backwards by comparing things to the standard of math, where you should really compare math to the standard of things.

[chenGOD]

I would argue that we didn't invent math anymore than we invented music. We merely invented a means to describe what we observe in the physical world. Think of it this way - music has always been there, we've merely invented ways to record what we can hear in our heads. Both math and music transcend human existence (if we take into account that any sound can be considered music), but music can be described in mathematical terms because it exhibits certain physical properties.

 

Your reordering of the words doesn't change anything - math is everything, i'm not comparing music to the standard of math, i'm saying the physical properties which are observable in music can be described by math.

[Guest ryanmcallister]

I would argue that we didn't invent math anymore than we invented music. We merely invented a means to describe what we observe in the physical world. Think of it this way - music has always been there, we've merely invented ways to record what we can hear in our heads. Both math and music transcend human existence (if we take into account that any sound can be considered music), but music can be described in mathematical terms because it exhibits certain physical properties.

 

Your reordering of the words doesn't change anything - math is everything, i'm not comparing music to the standard of math, i'm saying the physical properties which are observable in music can be described by math.

you are missing the point completely.

[kaini]

language is a construct developed partially so we can understand maths. i can point at one orange and say 'one', but if i didn't have a word for one, it would not detract from the 'one-ness' of the single orange.

 

or take the mandelbrot set, produced by iterating z_n+1 -> z_n² + c over the complex plane:

this has always existed. we didn't invent it. we discovered it.

[Guest Blanket Fort Collapse]

The wheelchairs

 

troloLOL

[chenGOD]

I would argue that we didn't invent math anymore than we invented music. We merely invented a means to describe what we observe in the physical world. Think of it this way - music has always been there, we've merely invented ways to record what we can hear in our heads. Both math and music transcend human existence (if we take into account that any sound can be considered music), but music can be described in mathematical terms because it exhibits certain physical properties.

 

Your reordering of the words doesn't change anything - math is everything, i'm not comparing music to the standard of math, i'm saying the physical properties which are observable in music can be described by math.

you are missing the point completely.

 

No, you think that math is everything, so math is music, math is wheelchairs, math is leaves on a tree, math is sound waves, math is bits of information quantized and run through some software built out of math to produce the aforementioned sound waves. Math is the background.

Now reverse all of those things - the sound waves are math, they are run through software, which is math, quantized, turned into bits of informations (which are really simple math, can't much simpler than 0 and 1), produced as sound waves which strike your ears following mathematical laws, while you are walking and you see trees which have leaves on them which follow mathematical patterns, you see chris clark, who is scooting around town in a wheelchair (with wheels derived from math), and chris clark makes great, mathematical music. does chris Clark understand the math behind his DSP software? Who knows - but he instinctively knows the math required to push his wheelchair around. Math is still the background, so your semantics don't mean jack.

 

Now, just because math is music, or music is math - it doesn't mean that if one is good at one thing, one will be good at the other. It simply means that there is an inescapable relationship between the two. There is an inescapable relationship between math and everything, everything is math. Which is why I'm frustrated that math doesn't come easily to me (of course the fact that I'm lazy as fuck about it doesn't help matters).

 

Music is the pleasure of the human soul experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting. - Gottfried Leibniz

[Guest ryanmcallister]

I would argue that we didn't invent math anymore than we invented music. We merely invented a means to describe what we observe in the physical world. Think of it this way - music has always been there, we've merely invented ways to record what we can hear in our heads. Both math and music transcend human existence (if we take into account that any sound can be considered music), but music can be described in mathematical terms because it exhibits certain physical properties.

 

Your reordering of the words doesn't change anything - math is everything, i'm not comparing music to the standard of math, i'm saying the physical properties which are observable in music can be described by math.

you are missing the point completely.

 

No, you think that math is everything, so math is music, math is wheelchairs, math is leaves on a tree, math is sound waves, math is bits of information quantized and run through some software built out of math to produce the aforementioned sound waves. Math is the background.

Now reverse all of those things - the sound waves are math, they are run through software, which is math, quantized, turned into bits of informations (which are really simple math, can't much simpler than 0 and 1), produced as sound waves which strike your ears following mathematical laws, while you are walking and you see trees which have leaves on them which follow mathematical patterns, you see chris clark, who is scooting around town in a wheelchair (with wheels derived from math), and chris clark makes great, mathematical music. does chris Clark understand the math behind his DSP software? Who knows - but he instinctively knows the math required to push his wheelchair around. Math is still the background, so your semantics don't mean jack.

 

Now, just because math is music, or music is math - it doesn't mean that if one is good at one thing, one will be good at the other. It simply means that there is an inescapable relationship between the two. There is an inescapable relationship between math and everything, everything is math. Which is why I'm frustrated that math doesn't come easily to me (of course the fact that I'm lazy as fuck about it doesn't help matters).

 

Music is the pleasure of the human soul experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting. - Gottfried Leibniz

no, i agree with what you are saying. i am speaking of something different all together, which is why i say you are missing the point and you are being sort of redundant with your claims here.

 

i don't even know how to say it again any differently so i'm just going to let the argument be, cause i don't know if it'll do any good.

[chenGOD]

Of course I'm being redundant - I'm trying to argue my point.

Would love to know what your point is - try explaining it a bit more clearly...sorry I'm a bit thick you see.

[Muflontillah]

something like that:

 

1. - textures

2. - song structure

3. - structural dynamics (long, exaggerated "break downs" and "build ups")

4. - musical composition

5. - beats

6. - tricks & hooks (all he fanciness)

7. - instruments

8. - production

[psn]

Vibe.

[marian]

"language is a construct developed partially so we can understand maths." eh, no. language is far older than that. but maths is a construct developed partially so we can understand the universe.

 

"i can point at one orange and say 'one', but if i didn't have a word for one, it would not detract from the 'one-ness' of the single orange."

if by word you mean "concept of one-ness", in whatever form it may float through your brain, then yes, it would detract from the 'one-ness'.

 

"music has always been there, we've merely invented ways to record what we can hear in our heads".

no. something only becomes music when somebody calls it music (e.g. by listening to it and getting a feeling of music-ness).

[ericsosh]

I hate math and I hate music.

[o00o]

mood (scale), idea, melody, arrangement, mastering, production, composition, playfulness, sound-texture, tension, instrumentation

[chenGOD]

 

 

"music has always been there, we've merely invented ways to record what we can hear in our heads".

no. something only becomes music when somebody calls it music (e.g. by listening to it and getting a feeling of music-ness).

 

I prefer the realist approach - something can exist independently outside my mind. Many people would get no sense of music-ness from Cage's 4'33" for example, or Varèse's "Déserts" - does that make them less musical to those who can appreciate them for being pieces of music?

[Guest theSun]

math is the relative measurement of things. it's the language we use to describe our environment. it's silly saying that math is somehow like english because their goals are different. spoken language tries to communicate in social terms, math is communication in explicit terms, but of course everything is arbitrary without the proper context. "i'm going to the store" and "4+3=954" can be just as "wrong" if you don't go to the store, but one is absolutely wrong no matter what. there is no grey area.

 

when you apply math to music, there are hidden patterns in the rhythm or melody that the human brain isn't generally akin to. it can be really complex and full of things that look great in theory, but it's just shitty music (to you). that's the problem when you combine something absolute like math and music. the same thing happens in any creative discipline when people think they've found some formula but for some reasons it isn't hailed by the public.

 

math is a language but it's not a language like english, more like a programming language

[vertsk8er419]

Flow

[acidphakist]

do you guys usually cum when you are philosophically masturbating?

[chenGOD]

do you guys usually cum when you are philosophically masturbating?

 

Do you usually cum when you're making shitty derivative music?

 

 

theSUN: absolutely, you can't just apply math and expect it to be great music, see the link I posted earlier. I would argue that it is not even necessary to understand math to produce music of great beauty and depth. But it is there, whether we are conscious of it or not.