Beethoven’s Music was Simple, Rhythmic Modes, Automorphs and Middle Eastern Music

The one above the greenish one is a rhythm probability chart which assumes melodic rhythms cluster around the eighth note.

Time Cube

Sorry, I just had to.

Maybe not a totally fair response, but I still went:

I have absolutely no idea why you keep posting things like that. I assume that after the great acceptance and immensely positive reviews and comments of the first kind of attempt to analyse sound and pitch and language, you thought "why not, I'll do it again".

Well, I didn't bother reading through this one either - again, due to the fact that presentation does matter, and the subject you're talking about is of little interest to me. For one thing, if I wanted to read an analysis of Beethoven's music (apart from studying Beethoven's works on my own), I would go read a book by someone whom I know has some idea about what he's talking about. And whose handwriting doesn't look like a 11-year old's.

I did enjoy the drawings though. I loved the flowers and the pies the most, I didn't quite understand the "5G Meludic Solutions Most Common" one, but hey, what do I know..


To SSC: Time cube pwnage

Well... I'm not intelligent enough to want to read this one either, I'll admit. And the only reason I bother to point it out again is that I hope you might eventually see the point in writing more structured essays with headings, some kind of abstract, and so forth, because there's a possibility that I might find this interesting, if you even try to make it look worth reading.

Get over yourselves. You're never going to structure the internet. It's presented in an understandable form. You think you're going to make people jump through whatever hoops you want them to just so it arrives the way you want it? If everyone did that, there would be a need to provide it a million different ways for each person.

For future reference; my posts say what is in them in the title. That's all you get. If that's not good enough for you, too bad. They're not on staff paper. They're in my notebook. They're not in felt tip marker. They're in pen. There's reality and then there's you guys.

And you can stop wondering why they're posted. They're posted. That's all you need to know. If you don't like it, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it except whine publicly or click the red "x" in the corner.

You think you're going to make people jump through whatever hoops you want them to just so it arrives the way you want it

Do you think people are going to jump through whatever hoops to read your nonsense? I read it, it's nonsense. Time Cube type nonsense.

Originally Posted by Gongchime

Mozart and Beethoven’s music was simple. Check out this article on their compositional approaches.

Chapt. One, IV.4, Mozart, Beethoven

I also just had some insight into rhythm permutations. Random permutations are not musically meaningful the same way random note permutations end up sounding meaningless, hence the need for some structure such as inversions and retrogrades provide.

I remembered that, in Africa, master drummers cycle through rhythms. So, if you’ve got the one played all over Africa 2+2+1+2+2+2+1, when you want to play something different but related to this, you can play through one of it’s rhythmic modes. For example starting on the second rhythm event and using that as the beginning aka 2+1+2+2+2+1+2. This is musically meaningful/useful permutations of the rhythm.

Notice also that the first one I gave mirrors the intervals in a major scale M2 M2 m2 M2 M2 M2 m2. Because of this we can say it is the Ionian rhythmic mode. Another interesting thing about this is that the other two most prominant rhythmic modes in Africa are part of the cycle of this one. It shouldn’t perhaps be surprising then that they are in fact the Lydian and Mixolydian modes. I, IV and V. Creepy, I know.

Another more abstract but still musically meaningful permutation is to sort notes in ascending and/or descending order of length or perhaps rhythmic cells sorted in ascending order of probability, just like in my chart on my MySpace.com - Greg - Las Vegas /Bali, Indonesia - Ambient / Electronica / Experimental - www.myspace.com/gongchime page in the Music Comps folder under pics.

I was looking at the chart in the other post about Probability and was thinking about how that data is similar to a zip file and that every melody used to create it is still stored in the data and we just need to unpack it. That lead me to think about a phenomenon called Automorphs. Maybe you’ve heard of them.

You can take any kind of series melodic or rhythmic and then just continue to expand or contract it so, for example, if you move up an interval of a m2 then the next time you can move up the interval of a M2 and after that a m3 etc...

Rhythmically, it might go a sixteenth followed by an eighth followed by a sixteenth morphed using rhythmic augmentation into an eighth followed by a quarter followed by an eighth and morphed again the same way into a quarter note followed by a half note followed by a quarter. Then played back to back. You can also alternate such as moving UP a m2 DOWN a M2 UP a m3 etc...

I wanted to mention that not every culture thinks about things the same way we do and what they’re thinking about can be very surprising to us. Specifically I’m thinking about the first comment in the article made about Mozart that said he used just a short list of melodic patterns that he composed from. I suspect this may have come from his father Leopold encountered somehow by way of Middle Eastern musicians.

Before explaining, it should probably be pointed out that when Europe was wallowing in the dark ages, all of the mathemtical and scientific advancements were coming out of the Middle East of those regions at that time.

When improvising, many musicians coming from Middle Eastern countries don’t just go up and down the scale or hop around the way we might. They have been taught by a teacher to join fairly short melodic patterns together. There are three kinds for ease of memorization; upper tetra-chord, lower-tetrachord and one’s that bridge the tetrachods.

You can start on any pattern that you learned at any position, it doesn’t have to be the first pitch and you can end on any position, then if you want to continue a melodic line you have to either superimpose the last note you played onto another of the basic patterns at the place where it has that pitch or to an adjacent pitch aka conjunct or disjunct respectively. This seems to be similar to what Mozart had done.

Their teacher’s teacher’s teacher going back thousands of years had already worked out the most common solutions and taught improv using this method. And this has become the basis for much of the Middle Eastern tradition. Using my handy dandy chart recently acquired, I’ve made a list of the common solutions through the pitch series that are the most effective in the Western tradition.

Again, interesting. But, the rhythm cycle that you gave...do you have any proof that it is played "ALL over Africa"? Is was the rhythmic cycle of your creation as an example for your presentation?
The rhythm you gave almost seems like a western or European take on African rhythm concept. There are many African rhythms that cannot be played as an alternate rhythmic mode due to the nature of the construction of the cycle. In such cases only augmentation and diminution are possible. Then again, if u understand the concept behind African rhythm and drumming it is easy to understand the availability or non-availability of morphed or varied rhythmic modes.

Originally Posted by Gongchime

You think you're going to make people jump through whatever hoops you want them to just so it arrives the way you want it? If everyone did that, there would be a need to provide it a million different ways for each person.

That's absolutely irrelevant to either your post or mine. Or anyone else's, in fact.

Originally Posted by Gongchime

For future reference; my posts say what is in them in the title. That's all you get. If that's not good enough for you, too bad.

Again, that's irrelevant. I never criticised your titles or their relation to the content, but how you present what you want to say and how the topic you've chosen is uninteresting to me personally.

Originally Posted by Gongchime

They're not on staff paper. They're in my notebook.

That's your problem, not mine.

Originally Posted by Gongchime

They're not in felt tip marker. They're in pen. There's reality and then there's you guys.

I am afraid that I (and everyone else on the internet) am as real as you are. Accept that, and get over that "omg everything on teh intrawebs is not real", because everything on the internet is real, it was written by someone who sat behind a computer, a screen and a keyboard (and a few other things, like a mouse, an elephant etc), and typed it. Or drew it (if it's graphics). Or uploaded it (if it's a video/image). Or created a website. Someone did it. Whether with the help of a program or not, someone did it. You might not be able to touch the internet, and thus claim that everything on the internet is "fake" or "virtual", but on the other hand you can't touch music either. And the internet is as much waves as music is.

Originally Posted by Gongchime

If you don't like it, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it except whine publicly or click the red "x" in the corner.

I am whining publicly, and I did click the red "x" in the corner, and then you're bashing me for whining publicly and clicking the red "x" in the corner, before telling me in the end of your anti-rant that I should whine publicly and click the red "x" in the corner. I think this is one of the things Oscar Wilde would have loved to witness...

In any case, I won't bother anymore, I've got other places to spend my time on. Unless you care a bit for the readers, the readers won't care for you (at least I won't).

You know? this all just looks like bullshit to me. I'd be considerably more interested in hearing how YOU as a composer can use it in some logical or consistant fashion to actually create music.

Care to post something instead of your crudely done drawings?

By the way, you might not feel that much of the criticism levied against you regarding the quality of the images you've supplied with your wall-of-text is fair, however, you're posting a VERY difficult to substantiate theory, with very little to back it up, and the first thing you post as a sort of substantiation is drawings that look like they were done by a 4 year old.

if you want anyone to take the time to read through your theories, and maybe, just maybe, take you seriously, you are going to have to learn to format your material in such a manner as to make it understandable, and supply supporting material in a format that is legible.

until then, I reiterate: bullshit.