Re: Why the music is music and the noise is noise? (Paul Treffner )

Subject: Re: Why the music is music and the noise is noise?
From:    Paul Treffner  <p.treffner(at)MAILBOX.GU.EDU.AU>
Date:    Tue, 24 Apr 2001 08:40:38 +1000

Check out the work of Richard Voss who quite some time ago (late 70's)
showed the relation of noise, formally construed, to music. There's a
Scientific American article on it in 80's. A good book on it is Schroeder's
"Chaos, Fractals, Power Laws". The analysis involves formal definitions of
Brownian motion (brown noise), white noise, and 1/f noise Fourier spectra
("pink" noise"). Mozart and "real" music is characterised by profiles with
1/f spectra (pink noise). The natural world is full of such colored noise.

^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
Paul Treffner, PhD
Motor Coordination & Dynamics Laboratory
School of Physiotherapy & Exercise Science
Griffith University, Gold Coast Campus
PMB 50, Gold Coast Mail Centre
QLD 9726, Australia
tel. +61 7 5552 8215
fax: +61 7 5552 8674
p.treffner(at)mailbox.gu.edu.au
http://www.gu.edu.au/school/pes/ppages/ptreffner.html