With A Little Help From The People On This Board I'll Get My Query Answered

[Iron Horse-Apples]

We can of course take it further and say that all of your arguments and semantics are also  vulnerable to the whims of fashion, and by your own arguments, irrelevent.

I'm not entirely sure what this means. I mean, I suppose, there is a certain degree to which every person is forced to choose from a limited and constraining number of positions that are socially and culturally circumscribed but this is an altogether different thing from saying that what is conveived "acceptably" good music often works to privilege one thing over another. In this case, it happens that mostly Anglo critics devised a way for appraising music that mostly privileged white, Ango cultures and excluded others.

First, I love debating with you, I know you won't misread any of my replies as anything other than good natured sparring.

What I meant above is, your viewpoints are very much "of the age".

Music however is mathematics.

It can be - and it especially can be when you want to privilege some forms of music over others. In other words what could be called more "primitive" music, will often inevitably fail when you privilege the notion that music is mathematics. What succeeds is precisely what's supposed to succeed - white, European music.

What you don't take into account here is that music, like all art, like any expression, is inextricably bound to cultulre. And expression, even if it's, "Can I have a cup of coffee?" can only really be relevant if it attracts the right the listener, if it is said in the right place, and the right time. Same can be said about music - it can fulfill all the "right" or "appropriate" categories but what ultimately matters is whether or not it hits its mark. This is why genres work best in particular eras - because they almost inevitably spring out of a particular context in which there is just something in the air that makes it work and makes it important.

No, all music is maths, and it always has been. All we ever did was harness it. We didn't discover, or invent it. Primitive, complex, it doesn't matter. A hollowed out bone flute with regular intervals drilled into it creates the mathematical phenomenon known as the pentatonic scale, the starting block for all music, in all cultures, from way back.

Music is maths. That is a fact, not an opinion. I would not write that lightly.

Respectfully, Stephen

[AndrewHickey]

But Brian Wilson is someone who naturally understands music's five fundamental aspects. Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Counterpoint and, obviously most importantly, Structure, and, utilises all five in a perfect marriage, where the five become one. This puts him near the heady heights of the 18th century, where the science that is music reached it's apex and has been steadily dwindling since.

So they were exceptional compared to what? 50's rock 'n roll basically. As much as I love it, that's not  difficult.

See, this only works if you assume that European art music of the eighteenth century is the model all music should aspire to, which is arrant nonsense. Much as I love the work of Bach, and consider him easily the greatest composer who ever lived, to criticise the Beatles for not doing what he did *when that wasn't what they set out to do* is to fundamentally diminish both him and them.

One might just as easily say "the Beatles are a band who naturally understood music's fundamental aspects - the use of tape loops, electronic distortion of conventional instruments, percussion, the use of non-Western tonalities and irregular rhythms, and the use of recording technology. This puts them near the heady heights of the 1950s and early 60s, when the science that is music reached its apex with people like Edgard Varese and Delia Derbyshire, from which it has been steadily dwindling". If one were to use those as the standard by which to judge music (and I don't see it as an especially bad standard myself) then even Bach, let alone lesser 18th century composers like Zelenka or Mozart, would not stand a chance of being judged even a vaguely competent musician.

I could easily argue that in fact the Beatles were Brian's equal on the points you mention, but I'm not going to, because you're just asserting that those standards are the only viable ones, and that's just nonsense. They may be the only ones you care about, but all that means is they're the only ones you care about.

[Chocolate Shake Man]

First, I love debating with you, I know you won't misread any of my replies as anything other than good natured sparring.

Absolutely - and it's always the first assumption I make about the person I'm talking with. Now that you've said this, it's confirmed!  

What I meant above is, your viewpoints are very much "of the age".

I would agree with that.

No, all music is maths, and it always has been. All we ever did was harness it. We didn't discover, or invent it. Primitive, complex, it doesn't matter. A hollowed out bone flute with regular intervals drilled into it creates the mathematical phenomenon known as the pentatonic scale, the starting block for all music, in all cultures, from way back.

Music is maths. That is a fact, not an opinion. I would not write that lightly.

Well, let's put aside the rather lively debate in the academic world about whether math is a human construct or not.

It seems to me, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that you were suggesting at first that one could use mathematics to show rather objectively that some music is better than others. This is something entirely different from saying that blowing into a primitive flute is a mathematical phenomenon, which does not ascrbe any value to anything. My point which admittedly was worded somewhat ambiguously was not to say that sometimes music is math and sometimes it is. Rather, I was saying that while you can interpret all music through the grid of math, this is nevertheless a constraining way of interpreting music and as far as I'm concerned a rather negative one, mostly because of the consequences. So, again, if you take my example, one can judge the effectiveness of a sentence in terms of how well it fulfills the necessary predicates of forming a sentence, and one could in fact, build a very complex sentence and still stick to the rules. And yes you could evaluate every sentence like that -- but to me, that's doesn't have as much value as evaluating a sentence from within its social and cultural context since it's only there were a properly functioning sentence actually matters.

[AndrewHickey]

No, all music is maths, and it always has been. All we ever did was harness it. We didn't discover, or invent it. Primitive, complex, it doesn't matter. A hollowed out bone flute with regular intervals drilled into it creates the mathematical phenomenon known as the pentatonic scale, the starting block for all music, in all cultures, from way back.

Music is maths. That is a fact, not an opinion. I would not write that lightly.

Nonsense.

Music 'is' only mathematical in the same way that all human aesthetic constructs are mathematical - human brains are wired to like patterns and symmetry, and to like those patterns and symmetries being broken in interesting ways. The best language we have for describing symmetries and their breaking is mathematics -- partly because it's the best language we have for describing *anything*. Aesthetic works are always best described by mathematics -- there's a reason why the first page of Leonardo's notebooks starts "let no man who is not a mathematician read the elements of my work" -- form and structure in paintings are properties of geometry (ever hear of the Golden Ratio, for example?)

But that description is also limited - it's limited with respect to mathematics, and frankly insulting to serious mathematicians (music is simply not on a par with, say, Zemelo-Fraenkel set theory as a rigorous discipline, and to say 'music is a branch of mathematics' is to equate the two), but it's also limited with respect to music in that it's descriptive, not prescriptive.

One can say "great music seems to have these characteristics", but what one can't as yet say is "if you write a piece of music which has all these characteristics, it will be great" - at least not without abandoning the formalism of mathematics and resorting to woolier terms like 'beauty'.

And in the absence of any agreement as to what actually *is* a great work - and the lack of that agreement is evidenced by this very thread itself - all that's actually doing is describing a category, without applying a value judgement to it. One can certainly find formulae that show that the 22nd Goldberg Variation and Smokestack Lightnin' by Howlin' Wolf have very different characteristics, but that's all we can show. We can't show which is 'better', because the question itself is a category error, like asking which is better, reading or the colour green. (Personally, I wouldn't like to be without either Howlin' Wolf or Bach). Smokestack Lightnin' is pretty awful when looked at as a baroque keyboard piece, and I wouldn't want to hear Glenn Gould play it, but the Goldberg Variations make pretty lousy gutbucket blues.

Stripped of the pretence of scientific objectivity, all your argument actually boils down to is "Brian Wilson's music is closer to the art music of the late baroque and early classical periods than the Beatles' is." This may be a true statement, but it's an irrelevant one, as neither Brian Wilson nor the Beatles were trying to create late baroque and early classical art music. It's equivalent to saying that James Joyce is a terrible writer because Shakespeare was a great writer, Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter (a pattern of rhythms that can be analysed mathematically...) and Joyce didn't.

[Iron Horse-Apples]

I'm happy to debate with you, but less of the "nonsense"

What is rhythm - a repetative series of patterns, usually based on 3's or 4's.

What is melody - a series of notes which has a clearly defined pattern

What is harmony - two or more notes, which, whether or not the vibrations of the notes are divisible with on another creates a pleasing, or unsettling sound. Read this, it's simple to understand http://www.greenwych.ca/natbasis.htm

What is counterpoint - The combining of melodies. You definitely need the mind of a mathematician to compose in this style

What is structure - Structure is what makes music. It is form, it is order, it is maths.

Seriously. You think Bach is the greatest composer ever. I wholeheartedly agree. But he would tell you what I'm telling you. It's all number crunching.

Music is maths.

[Wirestone]

Hm. This argument begins to move into the weeds of "can any art have any objective quality"?

Which is an interesting question, but impossible to prove one way or the other. I mean, we could potentially prove that some music is mathematically more elegant that other music, but the maths don't relate to our experience of it.

The argument made about the Beatles does strike me as true, though. They were and continue to be more influential and important to popular culture than the BBs were or are. But does that translate into "better"?

Hard to say!

And most importantly, how do the Monkees fit into this?

[AndrewHickey]

I'm happy to debate with you, but less of the "nonsense"

You're stating things as facts which are simply untrue. Note, incidentally, that nothing in your latest post actually contradicts a word of mine.

What is harmony - two or more notes, which, whether or not the vibrations of the notes are divisible with on another creates a pleasing, or unsettling sound. Read this, it's simple to understand http://www.greenwych.ca/natbasis.htm

Just because I *disagree* with you doesn't mean I don't *understand* you.
Firstly, what you're talking about is physics, not mathematics. It's a physical property of waves that you're talking about -- in fact mathematically perfect waves have none of the overtones that make music of the type you're discussing so interesting. It's precisely because the music is played on physical instruments, in the real world, and takes advantages of the properties of physics, that we enjoy it.
That doesn't mean that mathematics can't be used to *describe* it -- mathematics is, as I said, the best language we have for talking about physics -- but it doesn't arise from mathematics, but from the physical properties of air and the instruments used.

And secondly, those harmonies are only 'pleasing' or 'unsettling' *in context*. The tritone found in a seventh chord is a dissonant interval, as is the major seventh interval, and yet very few people would say that the first line of Something by the Beatles, for example, is in any way unsettling or unpleasant.

What is counterpoint - The combining of melodies. You definitely need the mind of a mathematician to compose in this style

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life. Name one, just one, first-rank mathematician of the last, say, three hundred years, who has composed a single well-known piece of music. Or a single successful composer who has come up with a single interesting mathematical theorem. They don't exist. If this was true then Hilbert and von Neumann and Godel and Turing and Erdos and Rumanujan and Wiles would be the names we'd associate with great music, while Brian Wilson would be known for his pioneering work in proving that the P versus NP problem is independent of current axioms and thus undecidable.

Strangely, this is not the universe we live in. In the universe in which we live, the only person I can think of who has achieved any prominence in both fields is Tom Lehrer, who much as I love his work is not exactly among the first rank of composers, and while he was a lecturer in mathematics at MIT, he never completed his doctorate and co-authored very few papers, none of them classics in the field.

In fact, it's precisely the atonal and serialist composers you dismiss who have been most keen to apply mathematics to music, along with free jazz people like Guerino Mazzola -- who is, to be fair, both a mathematician and a musician, but a very minor one. Certainly I don't think that his applications of topos theory to piano improvisation are the kind of thing you're referring to -- a piece like Chronotomy, with no counterpoint, melody, harmony, rhythm *or* structure in any conventional sense, is very mathematical (and just my kind of thing), but as far away from 18th century music as it's possible to get.

What is structure - Structure is what makes music. It is form, it is order, it is maths.

Structure is also what makes poetry, what makes paintings, what makes a great political speech, a great film, a great piece of architecture, a great essay, a great comedy sketch. It is, in short, the hallmark of anything created by the human brain with any craft at all.

Music can be analysed mathematically -- though so far only the most trivial aspects of music have been so analysed, usually using only the most trivial aspects of mathematics -- but only to the same extent that anything can. If music 'is' mathematics, then so is painting, so is sculpture, so is poetry and rhetoric and dance and sport. In short, if we say that music is mathematics, we are devaluing the word 'mathematics' to the point where it is literally meaningless.

[AndrewHickey]

And most importantly, how do the Monkees fit into this?

Michael Nesmith's mother invented correcting fluid, which allows us to update the old joke:
The second cheapest department for a university to run is the mathematics department, as all they need is a pen, a piece of paper and a bottle of Tipp-Ex.
The cheapest department is the philosophy department, as they just need the pen and paper.

[Iron Horse-Apples]

I'm happy to debate with you, but less of the "nonsense"

You're stating things as facts which are simply untrue. Note, incidentally, that nothing in your latest post actually contradicts a word of mine.

What is harmony - two or more notes, which, whether or not the vibrations of the notes are divisible with on another creates a pleasing, or unsettling sound. Read this, it's simple to understand http://www.greenwych.ca/natbasis.htm

Just because I *disagree* with you doesn't mean I don't *understand* you.
Firstly, what you're talking about is physics, not mathematics. It's a physical property of waves that you're talking about -- in fact mathematically perfect waves have none of the overtones that make music of the type you're discussing so interesting. It's precisely because the music is played on physical instruments, in the real world, and takes advantages of the properties of physics, that we enjoy it.
That doesn't mean that mathematics can't be used to *describe* it -- mathematics is, as I said, the best language we have for talking about physics -- but it doesn't arise from mathematics, but from the physical properties of air and the instruments used.

And secondly, those harmonies are only 'pleasing' or 'unsettling' *in context*. The tritone found in a seventh chord is a dissonant interval, as is the major seventh interval, and yet very few people would say that the first line of Something by the Beatles, for example, is in any way unsettling or unpleasant.

What is counterpoint - The combining of melodies. You definitely need the mind of a mathematician to compose in this style

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life. Name one, just one, first-rank mathematician of the last, say, three hundred years, who has composed a single well-known piece of music. Or a single successful composer who has come up with a single interesting mathematical theorem. They don't exist. If this was true then Hilbert and von Neumann and Godel and Turing and Erdos and Rumanujan and Wiles would be the names we'd associate with great music, while Brian Wilson would be known for his pioneering work in proving that the P versus NP problem is independent of current axioms and thus undecidable.

Strangely, this is not the universe we live in. In the universe in which we live, the only person I can think of who has achieved any prominence in both fields is Tom Lehrer, who much as I love his work is not exactly among the first rank of composers, and while he was a lecturer in mathematics at MIT, he never completed his doctorate and co-authored very few papers, none of them classics in the field.

In fact, it's precisely the atonal and serialist composers you dismiss who have been most keen to apply mathematics to music, along with free jazz people like Guerino Mazzola -- who is, to be fair, both a mathematician and a musician, but a very minor one. Certainly I don't think that his applications of topos theory to piano improvisation are the kind of thing you're referring to -- a piece like Chronotomy, with no counterpoint, melody, harmony, rhythm *or* structure in any conventional sense, is very mathematical (and just my kind of thing), but as far away from 18th century music as it's possible to get.

What is structure - Structure is what makes music. It is form, it is order, it is maths.

Structure is also what makes poetry, what makes paintings, what makes a great political speech, a great film, a great piece of architecture, a great essay, a great comedy sketch. It is, in short, the hallmark of anything created by the human brain with any craft at all.

Music can be analysed mathematically -- though so far only the most trivial aspects of music have been so analysed, usually using only the most trivial aspects of mathematics -- but only to the same extent that anything can. If music 'is' mathematics, then so is painting, so is sculpture, so is poetry and rhetoric and dance and sport. In short, if we say that music is mathematics, we are devaluing the word 'mathematics' to the point where it is literally meaningless.

Music is maths. I'm not trying to belittle it, or take away from it's beauty. That it was it is though at it's fundamental level. You are obviously intelligent and well learned, and I respect that.

At the risk of sounding, well, sounding something. I can hear four part polyphony in my head. I "see" music in my head as patterns. When I compose, I feel it in the same way as when I attempt a mathematical puzzle or logical problem. And that is what it is. Problem solving. I'm very good at music, (not much else), and I understand it in a way that is hard to verbalise. I'm sure many mathematicians feel the same about complex equations.

Sorry you don't understand this, I really am. And there is no need to take such a condescending tone on what is such an esoteric subject. The reason I didn't "contradict a word of yours" is that you said Bach was the greatest composer ever, so you're a pretty cool dude in my eyes.

But music is maths.

[Myk Luhv]

I wonder how many musicians hold views analogous to mathematical Platonism, jeez.

[runnersdialzero]

dildos

[Iron Horse-Apples]

dildos

Again, fundamentally numbers

[Iron Horse-Apples]

Anyhoo, fun debate. Just fun. I'm just trying to entertain. Pay no attention. It's all bollocks really.

[AndrewHickey]

At the risk of sounding, well, sounding something. I can hear four part polyphony in my head. I "see" music in my head as patterns. When I compose, I feel it in the same way as when I attempt a mathematical puzzle or logical problem. And that is what it is. Problem solving. I'm very good at music, (not much else), and I understand it in a way that is hard to verbalise. I'm sure many mathematicians feel the same about complex equations.

Sorry you don't understand this, I really am. And there is no need to take such a condescending tone on what is such an esoteric subject. The reason I didn't "contradict a word of yours" is that you said Bach was the greatest composer ever, so you're a pretty cool dude in my eyes.

But music is maths.

Again, it's not that I don't understand you, it's that I disagree.

Yes, music is all about patterns. I've studied both mathematics and music at university level (my academic career has been a somewhat torturous one), though I have no great talent for either, and I know from experience that the processes involved in writing multiple contrapuntal parts are much the same ones as in proving a theorem -- both involve a combination of applying a set of small, incremental, known rules to solve immediate small problems, and sudden epiphanies ("those two groups are isomorphic!" "I can tie the whole EP together if I transpose this track to C and add the verse melody from the first track as a countermelody in the bridge on the last track!")

But I also currently work as a software engineer, and I know that *exactly* the same thought processes are involved in writing Perl scripts. We don't therefore say "music is Perl". I wrote a book last year that was an in-depth critical analysis of a superhero comic series. The process of writing that book -- structuring it, bringing new themes in part way through the work, adding call-backs to earlier passages, trying to create a web of resonances and allusions that would be experienced as an artistic whole while reading through the book -- that process felt internally *exactly* the same as writing music. (In fact, in the case of that book, it felt specifically like improvising a new melody over an existing chord structure). We don't say "music is critically deep-reading a superhero comic".

Yes, all those things are in some way about patterns, but to say that makes them the same is to miss the crucial differences between them that make them what they are. And you're saying this in an effort to raise your opinions (that music peaked in the 18th century), to the status of universal truths, by trying to claim that the rules of (European, tonal, upper-class) music exist in some Platonic realm, independent of and greater than any mere human, when in fact those rules are just like any other set of game rules created by human beings, like the rules of chess or Parliamentary democracy -- contingent and rooted in fairly specific social, political and physical conditions. Should we ever discover alien intelligences, I can guarantee they will have discovered number theory. I can equally confidently guarantee that they will not have invented the sonata form.

I'm sorry if I appear condescending (though I'll note that you've twice said I didn't understand you, when I've made no such claims about you). That's not my intention. My only intention here was to defend those people who were disagreeing with you -- you were attacking the validity of their arguments based on completely unsound premises. To say "Brian Wilson is better than the Beatles" is a perfectly valid statement of opinion. To say "Brian Wilson is better than the Beatles because he better approximates a Platonic mathematical abstraction which is the only valid form of music, and anyone who disagrees is factually wrong" is both incorrect and insulting to the people who disagree,

But I've derailed this thread more than enough now, so I'll leave it there.

[Iron Horse-Apples]

Fair enough. I was wrong on many of the points you mention.  I'll PM you so as to not derail the thread further.