Real Music Composition Software not just Sequencing and Composing Software

I’ve been studying how Expert Systems mimic pro composers. I’d really like to see some music composition software which isn’t only music sequencing software or music notation/graphing software.

I’d specifically like to see a program that will take a melody I input, perhaps only scanned in, that the computer then runs through all of the traditional music composition transformational devices without making me write them all out and test them on my instrument before I input them into the so called music composition software.

If and when it can instantly create, inversions, retrogrades, retrograde-inversions, permutations, augmentations, diminutions, diatonic transpositions, putting the original melodic series together with the rhythmic retrograde, or putting the melodic series’ retrograde inversion with the original melodic rhythm or taking the melodic series from one tune and combining it with the melodic rhythm from another tune, automatically make a diatonic melody pentatonic or automatically change the mode, then and ONLY then will there be any real music composition software in the universe.

Movie Composer Guidance System

Ever wonder how scores are put together for movies? Been thoroughly disappointed at the dearth of books on the subject? And the quality of the books you’ve been able to find?

This link is the MOTHERLOAD for anyone wishing to learn how to compose for film. Leave it to a computer technician to explain the process better than anyone else.

You do have to wade through everything about how to tell a computer to do it but it’s worth it.

Mazz where are you? Check this out!!!

http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13924/

Highlights;

Music changes when new emotion or new subject of dialogue is present

When there’s a change of scene or new character introduced.

Camera movement

A new action

Reaction to a dialoge or event

Preference for short repeated motifs by some composers who focus on rhythms and chords

Music modified by whether it’s night or day, inside or outside, transition, location, dialogue and action as well as gender, mood, species, age and body size.

The music may also be written for items/props, locations and occurences. And may take into account increasing age and death of a character.

Music changes as a characters motivations are fulfilled.

Specific events are gain, loss transformation and introduction.

5th interval heroic

chromatic worry

(I would say the descending tritone often represents evil.)

Keys normally change either from major to minor or the reverse as well as cycle of fifths

If strings contain accents then it’s more probably to use brass instead of woodwinds

If strings are smooth then woodwinds a more likely coinciding choice.

Normal chord progressions apply such as IV I if more music is coming or V I if music is ending

If the rhythmic motions of bodies in a scene have determined that scenes rhythm and the next scene does not have any way to determine a rhythm then carry forward the previous rhythm,

If no previous music then a subsequent music’s rhythm is brought backwards.

If neither previous nor subsequent music exists for a scene then default is 120bpm.

2/4 beat is standard if composing based on short repeating rhythms and motifs.

There is a wonderful chart showing the likely hood of key progressions.

And weighting of instruments such as

6 for piano

5 for violin

5 for flute
4 oboe
2 guitar
1 trumpet

Low probability notes exist on low probability beats (weak beats and off beats)

Action Hero gets Strings with Brass in Major Key and Dotted rhythms.

minor fast strings equals dangerous tension

When fighting over a gun, when the hero gets it the music is major, when the villain gets it the music is minor.

Use musical transitions for segment changes

Homophony simple

Polyphony complex

Melody covers notes of the chords

Musical Patterns Two

My Korean composition professor, who is a big fan of Eastern European classical music especially the Polish composer Lutoslavski, told me to write ALL of my rhythms for classical music using the golden mean/fibonacci series in a certain way. Where, for example, 3/4s of the way through there was some variety within two measures. Then again at 3/4s through 4 measures which includes the first two already discussed. And again at 3/4s through 8 measures.

Anyway, if you’re so inclined to search for meaning within mathematical "systems", I came across this page which has about 147 number sequences 1/3rd of the way down the page.

http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/Seis.html

Here is another one with probably thousands:

http://www.research.att.com/~njas/sequences/Sindx_Aa.html

Not all of them seem musically useful to me and I only looked at the one’s with an asterisk which are supposed to be frequently resorted to by mathematicians making them more important in the math world.

How to translate these into musically meaningful ideas will be the topic of the next posts in this thread.

One definition of a pattern is: a succession of local similarities.

Pattern recognition software such as speech recognition, or face recognition use some of the same things we’ll be talking about here. There is also software for identifying patterns within music, which can be difficult because sometimes a repetition of a pattern is so altered that it could just as easily be defined as a new pattern.

They usually say that musical patterns are based on contour, pitches and rhythm. Once a pattern is identified, the third repetition of a pattern can be found merely from it’s contour even if the melodic and rhythmic aspects are significantly distorted.

A note or group of notes make poorly perceptible patterns only when they cannot be related to more salient patterns. Simple suffixes and prefixes of patterns cannot be considered new patterns.

The importance of a pattern within the music is a product of it’s length and the frequency of it’s recurrence. Another musical pattern they talk about is that the degree of slowing reflects the importance of a boundary. So, if either you’re playing a longer note such as a whole note at the end of a tune, that usually signifies it’s the most important boundary in the composition, or if the tune is performing a ritardando after the climax and approaching the final pitch and rhythmic event.

Some of the most basic patterns in music are if a note begins and ends a piece.

If it’s in a metrically important position, is louder than the rest and if it’s accented.

If it has a long duration and if it’s repeated.

If it’s the highest lowers or pivotal within a defining pattern.

Or a member of the harmonic relations, octave, fifth or fourth even if they are only consecutive.

More complex patterns would be motifs, antecedent phrases, consequent phrases, and sections.

Book Summary: Anthropology of Music

The book Anthropology of Music talks about a new awareness of ethnomusicology's obligaton and a probling for what it is, does and the purposes toward which it is directed. It's the author's contention that ethnomusicology should focus on concepts about music, how music and behavior are interrelated and the sound of music. The author states that ethnologic behavioral concerns have not received an equal amount of attention by ethnomusicologists.

Performers and the performance context should be more fully at the center of analysis. The mere preservation of music has been overly focused upon,and ethnomusicology's role needs to be wider than that. More fully, ethnomusicology should have technical goals such as determining what music is to the extent possible, how music is made and what it's structure is both from a microscopic view and from the big picture.

Ethnomusicology also should have behavioral concerns relating to physical, conceptual/cultural, social, and learning what it means to be a musician, a listener or a participant in the culture in question. It should also be concerned with showing connections betwen ethnomusicology, the humanities and the social sciences. One of the problems that has been plaguing ethnomusicology has been it's inability to combine the social sciences and the humanties together.

The author states that the social sciences are concerned with the economic, political and social aspects of humanity while the humanities are concerned with art, religion, and philosophy. Social science stems from the needs of the body and the humanities stems from humanitiy's purposes. Social science engages in descriptions of behaviors while the humanities are concerned with human values.

The author believes that the thread connecting them is that they are both interested in what people do and why. The author goes on to say that ethnomusicologists have not consistently and completely applied the scientific method and have placed too much emphasis on the laboratory phase and not enough concerning the proper things to do before going into the field and in the field once they get there.

Ethnomusicologists should institutionalize a field method that is taken from ethnomusicology's base of accepted theory and then create hypothesis', field problems and research designs based upon the theory/theories. Concerning a good research plan there are four points to consider. Is the research possible? Does it have a goal? Has the methodology been recorded and which to employ based on a knowledge of the variety of methods available.

It should also say what the study did and did not accomplish. Musicology's neglected field phase can be broken down further to 6 areas of inquiry. 1 The material culture of music such as where the instruments fit within the taxonomy. 2 Song texts. 3 Categories, 4 The musician. 5 The uses and functions of music. 6 Music as a creative cultural activity.

Ethnomusicology also needs to determine the optimum number of song samples necessary to isolate styles and sub-styles. Lastly, ethnomusicology needs to be able to determine what aspects of structure constitute the determining factors of a certain style such as range, level, direction, countour, interval, interval patterns, ornamentation, melodic devices, melodic meter, duration values, structure, scale, mode, duration tone, subjective tonic, meter, rhythm, and tempo.

Purpose of Music

On the surface it appears that music is for entertainment or as a money-making opportunity for the gifted or the lucky. But if one looks a little deeper it can be seen that music can be used to bring people together to build community in group performances whether that community is in the audience, in the ensemble or both. Music can be used in psychology to help people express their emotions when they find it difficult or impossible to use words. Music therapists use music for healing the sick or the bereaved through its power to stir the emotions. Music can be used to help people unwind after an upsetting day, to enter into meditation, to express the religious sentiment or create drama in the movies. The powers of concentration involved in performing and composing music can give a person a greater chance of success in the world. It can help people see themselves as having an influence on the world and therefore feeling contented if they create something useful and beautiful. A person becomes a co-creator of the universe with the source of all life instead of merely theorizing about life in lofty spheres of abstraction which alone leads to depression and a lack of passion.

Many people are becoming unbalanced as a result of modern life due to its complexity and the difficulty of living sustainable with nature and each other. A call to greater complexity, disharmony and distortion for no other reason than because it is the way we seem to be going is like intentionally stepping on the gas while approaching a fatal fall from a cliff. There must be a balance between randomness and control.

I like aspects of modern education because it is sometimes saying that fields such as music are not separate boxes from other subjects. For example, music composition overlaps music theory, performance and aesthetics. These are obvious. What is not obvious is that music composition overlaps other fields such as religion, philosophy, mythology, architecture, mathematics, sociology and psychology. Music does not have hard boundaries that separate it from everything else and therefore cannot be thought of as a box. The same way that we cannot place ourselves outside nature. We are a part of nature, the trees are our external! lungs and there is no escaping the fact without them we would all die.

Aesthetics

Nature:

Some aestheticians say the reason we are all so concerned with beauty in art and music is because we don't live close enough to nature. We yearn for it and try to create it. I tentatively add that we may be trying to create it in our own image.

Math and Music:

Pi is a property often associated with beauty. The spiral in sea shells, like that of the chambered Nautilus, have the property of Pi in their construction and are considered beautiful. It seems that math is intrinsic to nature. Often sacred geometry around the world utilizes Pi and goes into the construction of temples and palaces. There are many other ratios that occur in nature and all are fair game for the composer.

e=2.7182818284590452353602874713526624877572470

9369995957

Pi=3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693

9937510582097494

Copeland/ Erdo=.023571113171923293137414347535961677173798

38997101103107109113127

Froda=6.5808599017920970851452403886486491573077

438348074005121512

Omega=0.567143290409783872999686622103555497538

15787186512508135131

Omega Inverse= 1.7632228343518967102252017769517070804360179866

674736345704569

Ramanujan’s#=262537412640768743.9999999999925007

25971981856888793538563373

Phi=1 1 2 2 4 2 6 4 6 4 10 12 6 8 8 16 6 18 8 12 10 22 8 20 12 16 12 28 8

Niven=1233456789 10 12 18 20 21 24 27 30 36 42

Golden String=1.6180339887498948482045863436563811772030

917980576

Tau=122334243426244526264428344628

Ugliness:

Protestantisms belief that the deity should not be represented and that art and music are not to be trusted since they take one away from God, created an architecture by modernists that is bereft of ornament. That’s why modern cities are so ugly. !

Finery:

Yes, we should avoid excessive finery but no ornaments? That’s going too far. Indian sitar music is often too heavily ornamented. For my taste, its use of ornaments should be more sober.

Aniconic Architecture of Persia and Music:

The aesthetic of Persian architecture is such that Allah is never to be represented using any kind of icon. But where the Protestants don’t use any ornaments, the Persians represented the deity in beautiful geometrical patterns, lattice-work and symmetry of which the Allhambra in Moorish Spain and the Taj Mahal in India and wonderful examples.

About the Music 6

In the Buddhist canon, the Abhidharma says that the only thing that can be said to be inherent is truth which is not conditioned.

On what should everyone in the world concentrate? There are as many answers as there are people. Joseph Campbell and I would have everyone concentrate on what truthfully heals you and makes you happy. Besides an experience of nature and other people, ambassadorship, medicine, literature, music, art, gardening etc... are possible foci.

Concerning relationships with other people, western traditionalists and some conservatives are well networked. They may meet every Sunday in Church, in the board room or at power lunches. Cultural creatives think they're alone and there's nowhere to meet. The Unitarian Universalist church is trying to be everything but they wind up alienating just about everyone.

Many Buddhists and Hindu's want to eliminate all desire for happiness. This is one of the problems of cultural creatives. But if the truth is that gardening makes you happy now, no amount of Buddhist philosophical gynmnastics about it ULTIMATELY not making you happy since it's not eternal is nonsense in my opinion.

What is eternal is this moment we have now which is all there ever is. If what makes you happy changes over time then change. It's not that difficult to do, in fact, its inevitable. Anyway, we don't need to be copying Jesus or Buddha, we just need to live up to our divine nature.