It's all a matter of perspective,
and at which level of comprehension about the topic one is at, etc..

You do it Right in essential terms tho,
you just come and Present the stuff, then let anyone gather whatever they want/can about it.


Some ppl might see the full picture, understand where you're coming from,
and what's it all supposed to mean/show, what are the implications..

Some ppl with less knowledge/experience, or a narrower understanding,
will just hit a wall of meaningless schematics/tables..

And I guess ppl with more experience/knowledge will agree/disagree with the premises you present,
or the practicality of all it..?

But nonetheless what you present is the same, it's all up to the subject to take it one way/another.

And afterall this "gather what you will", or "good question - good answer",
is actually one of the best philosophical ways to teach, or improve one's knowledge about any topic..

 

If you partition any equal temperaments in two parts, you define a linear temperament. Western tonality can be described as based on partitioning of 12 as 5+7 = meantone temperament (think of it white+black keys paritioning). These type of temperaments are not unique (you can play in meantone in 19 ET, 31 ET etc, classical music is based on unequal selections of meantone pitches )- the combinations of 5+7 and any of the others tonalities along them is the unique identity of enharmonics in 12 ET.
So, the other alternative tonalities in 12 ET are 1+11, 2+10, 3+9, 4+8, 6+6 (let's call them: chromatic, diaschismic/tritonic, augmented, diminished,whole-tonic). These modes of limited transpositions have their own logic and need unique notational systems to take advantage of what is going musically in them (just like meantone notation works only for meantone or ETs that support it and doesn't reflect just tuning).
If you want to play to play in more complex tonalities like 7+2+3 or even more complex ethnic scales, you are basically in just intonation territory (except the tuning is not pure and there are finite pitches and modulation options, still you don't get any chords for free unlike in meantone or other temperaments). Double harmonic, Romanian major and similar scales with lots of diminished/augmented intervals are example for scales that don't have comma problems in just tuning.

 

Play what's in your head if you are proficient enough or are able to make dots and dashes to express your thoughts on a piano roll or staff paper/program. Midi packs can be utilized as learning tools but if you use them instead of as the above it won't pass muster as art.

 

This is Part 3 of the above experiment
It is ridiculously long (TLDR) but there is some good stuff hidden in here - not written by me!

I claimed that I would provide feedback on comments submitted in this experiment and I promised it would be worth reading.
To misquote StarTrek "It's truth Jim - but not as we know it!"
Firstly - many thanks to @23322332 for making a nice contribution to this game. (more about that below)

I now need to confess that, as in most pyschological-sociological experiments the participants needed to be kept slightly in the dark about what was really going on. Time now for me to come clean with further details. So now some tricky stuff to explain - all wrapped up in several spoilers and of course too long - the 128 character twitter version will not be available.
- The Real Aim
- The Scam
- The Feedback
- The References
- Conclusion and (maybe) Further Discussion

Spoiler: The Real Aim

The real aim was authentic and can be summarised in this cartoon-like ranting metaphor.
p.s. happy to borrow something similar to @23322332's "writing a novel metaphor" from a few comments ago.

The metaphor:- (just pretend) - The world loves stories. The world especially loves stories that have... i) an intriguing beginning, ii) an adventurous middle, iii) a glorious happy ending. Nothing wrong with that at all. Pretend also that historically we find that a huge majority of our favourite stories do conform (more or less) to that blueprint. Nothing wrong with that either. But then a bunch of narrow minded idiots decide that the ONLY good stories are those that conform precisely to that blueprint and that all other stories are not REAL stories at all. Furthermore, those inferior fake stories are enjoyed only by ignorant morons who just don't know what REAL stories are. This seems to be typical human nature; these narrow minded perspectives are always in abundance and they are routinely advocated with a pseudo-religious fervour. All too often people can't see how facts and opinions are like chalk and cheese - and many of them even seem to think that chalk is edible. It is of course frustrating and depressing for creative people who enjoy a much broader range of REAL stories to witness this narrow minded perspective.

So, now map that metaphor onto our music world.
Let's already be quite narrow here and deliberately restrict the discussion to just Western music
(so - obviously already a huge limitation in this discussion). Then note the following...
Our blueprint this time (the metaphorical equivalent to our 3-step 'real' story above) is the idea of 'real music' that conforms (by mandatory definition) to a bunch of functional harmony rules. Our unreal fake music is all that other beautiful stuff that does not owe its existence to conforming to those functional harmony rules.

What can we say about this?
Personally, I think functional harmony rules are a treasure. They help us to 'analyse and describe' huge swathes of lovely western music - and that is absolutely NOT the same as saying that those rules 'prescribe' that music (a hugely important difference)
So, my complaint is never with functional harmony as a briliant musical scheme. My complaint is squarely with that narrow minded perspective which cannot see beyond functional harmony. People holding that narrow minded perspective often seem to have decided that Real Music and Functional Harmony are absolutely equivalent brute fact features of our universe and are somehow not just the products of human convention. Hence, from that delusional perspective, if some other music is not conforming to functional harmony rules it is regarded as either entirely inferior music or even just totally fake and not real music at all.

My aim in this little experiment was...
a) to express the ideas captured in the above metaphorical rant
b) to encourage others to reflect on it and express what they thought about it.

===

Spoiler: The Scam

In Part 1, I provided 8 paragraphs that 'allegedly' summarised the above rant. You may have thought (as intended) that you were responding to a bunch of opinions expressed by ME, i.e., just A.N.Other Crank on the AudioSex forum. That was only very slightly true.

In reality, those 8 paragraphs were views expressed by Stravinsky in 1939.
Of course I confess to deliberately disguising Stravinsky's comments by re-wording them into typical cranky forum-speak.
By design, you were supposed to believe that you were responding to my crackpot views, as one of the cranks on AudioSex, but actually you were responding to what Stravinsky thought (more or less)

Of course my disguised version is intentionally crude and less nuanced - it's a forum!
So, now you are welcome to vilify my crude version and feel pissed off from the scam if you wish.
You can also try to claim that I have distorted Stravinsky's comments but that would be missing the point completely.
I could just as easily have expressed the exact opposite of what Stravinsky said and it would still have served the same purpose.
All that matters was that the paragraphs provided 'some arbitrary tour' through the argument and that anyone reading them might then be provoked into thinking about it and maybe expressing what they thought.
As it happens, I don't think I distorted Stravinsky's comments too much at all - a bit yes - but not much.
And none of that matters because the important stage is still to come next (below)
- where we can see exactly what Stravinsky did say - in his own words.

===

Spoiler: Feedback

Spoiler: Feedback Part 1 - Do It Yourself

Given the now exposed scam - and almost no responses - it is pointless for me to wade into providing feedback.
Much better for me to summarise as follows...
1) We have my crude initial 8 paragraphs which summarised various points.
2) We have responses from @23322332 which do a great job of saying something like
"hang on a minute that point is not as simple as that - you need to consider...x,y,z, etc"
With both of the above inputs, surely everyone has enough material to provoke themselves into reflecting on their opinions.

Then, I would personally recommend that the right thing to do is read Stravinsky's comments 'first hand' and see how your opinions stack up against those. That's the best D.I.Y. feedback available.
Use what I wrote and what @23322332 wrote just to get you started - then think about it - then read Stravinsky in his own words.

It goes without saying (for me) that...
"Given that Stravinsky composed some of the most stunningly beautiful things I've ever heard we should probably take seriously the real possibility that this guy really knew what he was doing and also really knew what he was talking about"
and he's not slow to simultaneously respect and criticise the limitations of functional harmony.

Spoiler: Feedback Part 2 - Just Opinions

So this is just me being opinionated. The rational part of the feedback is described in the previous spoiler [Feedback Part 1 - D.I.Y.]
I said I would respond with feedback to everyone's responses. But actually the feedback task for me is much simpler than that.
I just invite everyone to simply reflect on whatever was said and re-consider (honestly) whether any views, written confidently or agreed with confidently, are still held with the same conviction, now that the author is revealed as Stravinsky rather than just some random nutter (me).
So, maybe reflect on whether your thoughts get warped by the forum context, It's easy to confidently disagree with someone on a forum - but does it feel the same if you then find that you're arguing with a Stravinsky comment but didn't know that?

@Marseilles (sorry - but just picking your comments as an example) You said

How do your opinions stack up now? in light of the revelation that it's Stravinsky's wisdom bearing the brunt of your cynicism? Your comments may have given you a yummy feeling while throwing them at me - but they're looking seriously lame when hurled at Stravinsky (although Stravinsky would probably NOT be insulted in the way you intended by being accused of being an improviser)
What could you and should you, @Marseilles, learn from this episode? - I suggest NOT denial!

And an opposite observation - for balance
My paragraph [1] was clearly not Stravinsky - that was just me setting a context to introduce the scam and glue it together.
So, congrats to @23322332 for 'calling out' the shallowness of my paragraph [1]
(got you going though - didn't it )

All other feedback is D.I.Y.
Please award yourselves whatever well-earned prizes or egg-on-face howlers you think are appropriate.
My best suggestion is "please just be honestly reflective with yourselves".

and if there's anyone here who thinks they can't learn something from Stravinsky's opinions - please see a shrink!

===

Spoiler: The References

All of this is from Stravinsky's 1939-40 Norton Lectures at Harvard and then published (1942) in a book called "Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons"
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13275.Poetics_of_Music_in_the_Form_of_Six_Lessons
Copy available here...
https://monoskop.org/images/6/64/Stravinsky_Igor_Poetics_of_Music_in_the_Form_of_Six_Lessons.pdf

First just the tiny subset of Stravinsky extracts that I ravaged in order to write my 8 paragraphs.

Spoiler: Stravinsky fragments used for my 8 paragraphs

'[Dissonance] is no longer tied down to its former function.
Having become an entity in itself, it frequently happens that dissonance neither prepares nor anticipates anything ...

The music of yesterday and today unhesitatingly unites parallel dissonant chords that thereby lose their functional value, and the ear quite naturally accepts their juxtaposition ...

We thus no longer find ourselves in the framework of classical tonality in the scholastic sense of the word ...

'Having reached this point, it is no less indispensable ... to recognize the existence of certain poles of attraction.

Diatonic tonality is only one means of orienting music toward these poles. The function of tonality is completely subordinated to the force of attraction of the pole of sonority.

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge toward a definite point of repose ...
This general law of attraction is satisfied in only a limited way by the traditional diatonic system, for that system possesses no absolute value

The above fragments were extracted from this more complete text...

Spoiler: Stravinsky - from Chapter 2 - The Phenomenon of Music

Stravinsky...
But the concepts of consonance and dissonance have given rise to tendentious interpretations that should definitely be set aright.
Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into an harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of this harmony by the addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word dissonance has carried with it a certain odor of sinfullness.

Let us light our lantern: in textbook language, dissonance is an element of transition, a complex or interval of tones which is not complete in itself and which must be resolved to the ear's satisfaction into a perfect consonance. But just as the eye completes the lines of a drawing which the painter has knowingly left incomplete, just so the ear may be called upon to complete a chord and cooperate in its resolution, which has not actually been realized in the work. Dissonance, in this instance, plays the part of an allusion.

Either case applies to a style where the use of dissonance demands the necessity of a resolution. But nothing forces us to be looking constantly for satisfaction that resides only in repose. And for over a century music has provided repeated examples of a style in which dissonance has emancipated itself. It is no longer tied down to its former function. Having become an entity in itself, it frequently happens that dissonance neither prepares nor anticipates anything. Dissonance is thus no more an agent of disorder than consonance is a guarantee of security. The music of yesterday and of today unhesitatingly unites parallel dissonant chords that thereby lose their functional value, and our ear quite naturally accepts their juxtaposition.

We thus no longer find ourselves in the framework of classic tonality in the scholastic sense of the word. It is not we who have created this state of affairs, and it is not our fault if we find ourselves confronted with a new logic of music that would have appeared unthinkable to the masters of the past. And this new logic has opened our eyes to riches whose existence we never suspected.

Having reached this point, it is no less indispensable to obey, not new idols, but the eternal necessity of affirming the axis of our music and to recognize the existence of certain poles of attraction. Diatonic tonality is only one means of orienting music towards these poles. The function of tonality is completely subordinated to the force of attraction of the pole of sonority.

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.. That is as true of Gregorian chant as it is of a Bach fugue, as true of Brahms's music as it is of Debussy's.

This general law of attraction is satisfied in only a limited way by the traditional diatonic system, for that system possesses no absolute value. There are few present-day musicians who are not aware of this state of affairs. But the fact remains that it is still impossible to lay down the rules that govern this new technique. Nor is this at all surprising. Harmony as it is taught today in the schools dictates rules that were not fixed until long after the publication of the works upon which they were based, rules which were unknown to the composers of these works. In this manner our harmonic treatises take as their point of departure Mozart and Haydn, neither of whom ever heard of harmonic treatises. So our chief concern is not so much what is known as tonality as what one might term the polar attraction of sound, of an interval, or even of a complex of tones. The sounding tone constitutes in a way the essential axis of music.

Musical form would be unimaginable in the absence of elements of attraction which make up every musical organism and which are bound up with its psychology. The articulations of musical discourse betray a hidden correlation between the tempo and the interplay of tones. All music being nothing but a succession of impulses and repose, it is easy to see that the drawing together and separation of poles of attraction in a way determine the respiration of music.

In view of the fact that our poles of attraction are no longer within the closed system which was the diatonic system, we can bring the poles together without being compelled to conform to the exigencies of tonality. For we no longer believe in the absolute value of the major-minor system based on the entity which musicologists call the c-scale.

Conclusions and (maybe) Further Discussion

Expressed in 1939... by a true master...
Stravinsky: "In view of the fact that our poles of attraction are no longer within the closed system which was the diatonic system, we can bring the poles together without being compelled to conform to the exigencies of tonality. For we no longer believe in the absolute value of the major-minor system based on the entity which musicologists call the c-scale."

My personal conclusion - having believed this for longer than I can remember.
Rules in music are never absolute - they are always just conventions.
'Descriptive' rules can be really useful for analysis. 'Prescriptive' rules are at best merely hints.
All music rules lag far behind actual musical practice - and repertoire is always infinitely richer than any rules that are trying to describe it. Music is the real terrain. Theory is just impoverished maps.

 

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The sad truth.

Ah! Did you see your past life/lives? See your soul with all the incarnations?
And 'Samadhi', right? Isn't it amazing and beautiful?
And then after, when you came back, when you couldn't see negative, Babylon artifacts, but just the light emanating from people? And from yourself?
And you then had to reintegrate all the low vibration negative stuff of this world again! Ugh, horrible!
And you can see through lies and you have seen the real and survived it? It's a full on experience, eh?
And obviously only you know if you are awakened. You wouldn't need telling, and it won't happen with any master that you would be told. You would know.
Yes, I'm really pleased so many people seem to be awakening as I did in the 90s!
Oh, wait...

You see, even that word has been usurped now...

 

Prescriptive rules are the basis of musical styles. Still, "rules" in music are not rules that you cannot break - in the worst case you are making some kind of art music instead of genre cliches when you break them.
Human language, pictures etc are also only metaphors that cannot describe reality - they are useful despite their flaws - just like music theory. I think some people (mostly amateurs) take music theory too seriously and think that it describes some kind of ultimate truth.

 

The 90s were, like, so last decade. Get over yourself bro.

 

Apparently fragmented pseudo-selfs until immersed into something meaningful to ourselves... then deviants.

Naively I'd wish upon a way to remedy that, as more often than not, academic circles don't different much.

One being or not aware of that, music poses like a ghost limb to our perishing brains and souls (for the believers), a manifestation we unconscioulsy acutely miss. Perceptions over existence change in a non-recoverable way after it - an abstract, broad, but essential form of passing along what we once were, but often times transmuting its byproduct (knowledge) into a nasty display.

It is also, once the proposition carries that within itself - just not steered in that direction yet.

Throughout life, the mechanisms of gathering and processing information vary and adapt as we grow, but sumarely we learn by comparison - we all need reference points (good or bad ones) = mnemonics.

Response to stimuli results from cognition, which is unique, thus the sum of one's vivency putting forth. The brain knows what it wants to convey/unload, but the conscience (gate valve) interveins constantly, thus the constant second-guessing upon our own.
The tools are fine and out there, but the commonly resorted taxonomy suffers and should be reviewed and updated, because if contradicted out loud the way it is currently formatted and referenced, one are in for winding up caught in frustating loop of justifications.

I admit I've got the proclivity of ranting over the resorted commonsense when it comes to describing music theory as is - like if it were a hassled attempt having an obligation of justifying itself in the end.

Isn't Music theory an arbitrary work-in-progress we haven't mastered it yet, therefore theory? A compendium made by generations and cultures aiming at organizing and cataloging the chaotic number of possibilities? However, says history that the "truth" passed on is written by the winning armies.

It has very little to do with the content, but possibly with the ditactcism of methods one's earlier came across and its fainthearted defenders. They were not tailored for individual-specific discerning capabilities, thus long before, if one sets/decides what his pursuit is, that leads to finding his own ways around it and why not made public afterwards if consolidated? That's what non-moronic-lazy-individuals do, or at least should do, when willing something that instills such passion innerself.

Is that the Kant-Schopenhauer fight within you speaking? (lol)

I'm a defender that knowledge humbles the individual, not otherwise - mea culpa, mea máxima culpa. However, the manner one absorbs, process and delivers as of it, it's comprised of far too many different aspects.

As an ancient analog soul, I can definitely get and relate to that.

It seems you do. Deeply appreciated @refix.

The most of knowledgeable people are the least interested in sharing their found expertises (generally not interested at all), given their own personal perspectives' abstracity, which would take them a sesquipedale amount of effort to be properly described rather than simply putting it to work, or simply due to sheer selfishness (pearls to the pigs).

Cheers

 

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I say we should disagree more, but that seems to be infeasible... Thanks mate.

 

That's an overly-generic-self-contained statement and you know that (so do I).
Anyhow...
Do white-noise and 20-20k sweep mean the same thing?
Put the first through a prismatic polygon (filtering). What do you get?
Interpolate the second by logarithmic evenly spaced intervals. What do you get?
So yes, for conveying/interpreting a message at human level - even if scrambled, mix-matched, justaposed, etc - some sort of prior common ordering is necessary for retrieving from wholeness the sum-of-parts.

 

One looks like a woman, the other looks like whatever you wish it to be. What kind of prior common order defines your perception of an object in Rothko`s painting? It is the same with what we call music.

 

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@Lois Lane

Inadvertently you're reinforcing my reasoning instead of rufuting it, if that's your desire.
By chosing to neglect it won't make its arguments invalid or to go away.
This time around has to do with human visible spectrum, not music.
There is a myriad of ways in which vision and hearing can be manipulated, but that recquires different techniques - different senses, different approaches.
Herewith a few metrics you could initially resort to:
- Both paintings are contained within a frame, thus boundaries were priorly considered;
- Differences only come to exist if light is cast upon both, so in a dark room there won't be any;
- The primary colors utilized receive specific names and textures and therefore are manufactured to cope with such definitions and standards, despite their later usage to be done consciently/arbitrarily or not;
- The same goes for the geometry of the tools, which make possible to define contours and effects;
- etc...
That could be extended and extrapolated/adapted to the video examples you've posted at following. Check "the wizard" Hermeto Pascoal (he even talks to birds through music).
You're into arts' metaphorical mystique, however there's much more beyond that, which inclusively encompases the very feasibility of one's vision.
I respect and kind of appreciate that. From my end, no problems whatsover.
Just don't despise or lay rushed judgements on others given your own reach of perspectives.

Are we cool?

 

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Me:

 

@Marseilles

"Mutant cans of lager with bad breath" should not be able to write, let alone to glimpse free will, but there you are...

Universe holds its uncanny secrets indeed.

PS.: I know, questionable contingency... but I had to let it out.

" " : @Paul Pi copyright

 

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"Do what you want" by The Presets. Classic trash-pop. A song that I actually enjoyed hearing once and would never bother to listen to it again. A clever pop video that I might actually watch twice. I have no complaints about the idea of disposable art.
It's like the daily sound track to the daily disposable news. Not where I want to spend much time but part of life.

John Cage's 4'33" piece. Referred to as "4 minutes of total silence" whereas the trendy performance art perspective wants you to regard it as "all the stuff you hear when there's no musical performance distracting you". Granted the 'what is art' debate is fine, but I wish I could remember which composer it was that provided the best review of John Cage's 4'33" piece. It was a rare case of the critic sounding better than the piece.
The comment was something like... "If this complete silence is typical of Cage's work - I hope we hear much more"

Remembered a previous comment about similar was here... (but this one was alarmingly funnier )

 

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You both were hysterically-sassy-funny on such comments... felt like a revivid Monty Python at their best. Approved

 

All I see is something fishy - does that mean I'm abnormal?

 

Nope... it's a dyed version of Lois Lane's own avatar.

 

Please tell me I'm not in love with Lois - please - I'm begging you.

 

Get a grip! You first thought it was a mollusc, stick to it... don't give in to my terrible first impression either.

 

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