Re: Why the music is music and the noise is noise?

[Bob Masta <masta@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 25 Apr 01, at 16:35, Tóth László wrote:

> I was talking about "how" you choose the random number. If you choose them
> independently of each other, then their spectrum is "white".
> But you could try to chose them following an 1/f (pink) distribution,
> which means something like you choose the closer notes with higher
> probability then the farther notes ("closer" and "farther" compared to
> the previous note). So it would probably even more like a
> melody then random jumping.

The pink distribution does indeed choose closer notes with higher
probability, but it still doesn't sound very musical if it is able to
select any 12-tone note.  It sounds much like the white distribution,
only played slower.  It still hits "wrong" notes, and just hangs around
them longer.

With a pink distribution applied to Pentatonic notes only, the result is
less dynamic than white, but still musical.

I seem to recall reading about some well-known composer (Irving Berlin?)
who only used black keys.  And besides Oriental music, the Pentatonic
scale is allegedly common in traditional music of the British Isles,
American Mountaineers, and American Indians.  It seems to be sort of
a "can't miss" scale, maybe hitting on natural ratios in our systems?


Robert Masta
tech@daqarta.com

         D A Q A R T A
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
 Shareware from Interstellar Research
        www.daqarta.com