Subject: Re: About Silence From: Pablo Hernan Rodriguez Zivic <elsonidoq@xxxxxxxx> Date: Sun, 12 Jul 2009 13:15:52 -0300 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>Hey! that's interesting! Where can I download your program? I red in the link that you put in your mail that what you made is based on German folktune. Is it appliable to tonal music in general? The other thing I'm concern of, is whether or not you have parameters that somhow reflect what the program is going to do in terms of what the listener may perceive. I mean, its ok to develop an alternative theory of music, however, the listeners of the music remain the same, so you must reflect in your theory some estetic concerns of what we humans like to listen (and it's somehow resumed in standard music theory). It's interesting what you say, if you have something to reed, it will be a pleasure for me to reed it. I'm developing a theory too, based on statistical models and intuition =D, hope I have something to show in short! salú! Pablo Eliot Handelman wrote: >> >> Since the very beginning of my research I had trouble modeling >> silence. The silence is not just another pitch which has the ability >> of not to sound. I think that silence has to be treated apart from >> pitches, but I don't know how. > A question is "in what way is silence an event in the way pitch is an > event?" > > Consider that musical events are always durational events (which poses > a philosophical problem as to whether the feeling someone gets from > music is necessarily durational). Qualitatively, musical silence is > (or can be) a kind of echoic extending of the last thing heard -- as > in a big crash before a long silence, with the crash still in echoic > memory. So silence is best seen not as "nothing" but rather as a > durational extension of a preceding sounding event. Rather than > theorizing silence, then, you need to theorize duration. > > In computational composing, as I practice it -- see below -- duration > is the minimal & principle thing theorized. A collection of pitches > can be surmised as having a single duration when we can surmise the > likelihood of perceptual grouping. For example a fast scale ending on > an accented long note will tend to be grouped as a single event -- it > is a "shape." With these you make bigger shapes, until you can work > out that you have made a whole piece. In my work, "shapes" recursively > form part of macro-structural systems called "supershapes." > > Nothing in music is ever an end in itself -- with duration (of shape, > of pattern of shapes, etc.) you can construct new rhythms and > patterns. You can construct patterns of "silence" just as you can > construct "the pattern of recurrence of the main theme or any of its > transformations." It may be a component of a rhythm or pattern of > rhythms, etc. Since the perception depends on whatever shapes come > forward to the listener -- which bigger components we are in -- it is > wrong to surmise that "silence" or "longness" are necessarily phrase > demarcaters. How they function would tend to be determined by the > music itself. > > > -- eliot > http://www.colba.net/~eliot/shape_web.html