View Single Post
  #22 (permalink)  
Old May 11 2008, 2:52 AM
Gardener Gardener is offline

Gardener's Avatar

Elite Composer
Group: Members
Joined: 29-November 07
Posts: 1,003
Member Number: 3849
Quote:
Originally Posted by cygnusdei View Post
Definition is a tricky thing because implications follow it. In this case you are alluding to a consensus approach (using a panel of observers) to ascertain (a)tonality. I believe this is very useful for a lot of things, including determining the value of a piece of music (by way of public reception). But I don't think it is necessary to resort to consensus to define (a)tonality. If anything the very same program used to generate the random samples can run an evaluation algorithm, thus providing objective, unbiased statistics.
That is totally correct, but note that I didn't -only- say that the majority of listeners would classify it as atonal, but also that such randomly generated music wouldn't have a tonal centre. Would you classify totally random music as tonal, yourself?
Reply With Quote