CBL

Cool, I'm glad we agree on this at least. :)

Subjectivity was a part of my premise to begin with. And I thought it went without saying, but it's entirely computationally impossible (probably forever) to do what I am talking about. It's just a thought exercise. With the exact same authority, I am able to call it not-music. Neither one of our jurisdictional domains extends into objectivity however, i.e. nothing Cage or I name has its fundamental nature changed. Having said that, I have no problems calling Cage's work music, and in fact do, but as of yet have not emotionally connected with the music (hence I cannot like it).

Here is the key part again: What this essentially means, is he wants a negative definition for music. I.e. "Everything on this list is not-music, so everything left off of the list is music". Instead of a literal list of "not-music", a formula could be used to check if something would be on the list. It doesn't even have to return yes or no, it could return "percentage not-music", and anything over 10% might make cats scratch their eyes and ears out. Maybe 50% would be Cage music (jokes! :D) It just so happens that this is exactly how we define prime numbers. There is no definitive list of prime numbers; only a list of "numbers with more than one non-one factors" (from which we can find the prime numbers out). That's why you will read about prime number searching - we actually have to seek them out. Prime number searching is the analogue of an algorithm to make all the music....!....except it's not. There are no prime number formulas that can generate all the prime numbers (I think it was proven, that with our current methods to be impossible to make such a formula). There are things like Mersenne primes, which have been generated by a formula, but even then, not every Mersenne number is a prime (there's actually very few generated this way, 47 so far to be exact out of tens of thousands of candidates). The point of this excursion into prime numbers is to demonstrate that there are "spaces" (i.e. sets of all prime numbers, sets of all music) that are unable to be mapped positively (this would mean we have a formula that generates all the music, or all the prime numbers), and only can be mapped negatively (which means we have to sift through the list of "everything" to find something that is part of the "space" - we don't get an automatic list). So, to answer your question, you can't generate a definitive positive formula for music, and we already have negative formulas - of which the rules of counterpoint in the Gradus, Serialism, are examples of. Just like how there are primes that are not Mersenne numbers, your negative formulas can usually only catch a certain amount of everything fitting your definition - you will need the combination of many negative formulas to flesh out the positive space (i.e. you will need many composition techniques and rules to make all the music).

I think you should listen to a lot of music (seek far and wide, really listen, prod it, mull it, etc - not just let it fall dully over your ears) and develop your own taste for music. You'll soon notice certain structures appearing again and again in some invariant form in your favourite music, figure them out, understand and absorb them, and then it's really up to you to go from there. There are many ways to get back to the place you started. You can just stay there (still, or seizuring). You can go for a road trip and then come home. You can walk around town. Why would you choose one way over another? Because you prefer it for some reason. :)

There are multiple problems with expecting an answer to a question posed like this. The first being what defines "being a gifted composer". Is it wide acclaim? From memory J.S. Bach was essentially footnoted (for like 100 years or something) compared to say, Handel, in terms of popularity. This wide acclaim so long after his death would probably not have acted as validation for his efforts... I think it's pretty obvious that this particular definition is flawed if you use it to guide you, and by similar reasoning, most other mildly objective standards (# of grammys..., etc) are similarly flawed. So maybe your definition is "for your work to be appreciated by yourself and your friends". In this case, then there's nothing that requires being born with Xmen powers. Where I think you would be screwed, is if you were born with amusia. Then maybe you should just do painting. Edit: Studies have shown that congenital amusia is a deficit in fine-grained pitch discrimination and that 4% of the population suffers from this disorder. -Wikipedia quote. From memory that just happens to be the same percentage of people who are Cage fans! it all makes sense. :)

I really like the glass armonica, or at least the idea of it. Check out this nugget from Wikipedia: It's very similar to the hydraulophone. But the hydraulophone uses a special integral property called 'absement'. This is for some reason not even on Wikipedia (at least when I checked), despite how basic of a concept it is: http://wearcam.org/a...nt/examples.htm Check that page out Dom. if you didn't already know about absement. Secondly, is the 'Violin octet'. These are basically scaled up Violins, which try and scale the timbre "properly". Due to the various construction nuances between the current string family (e.g. the neck on the double bass, the belly shape, etc), they all have different timbral differences to varying degrees. I can't remember what I thought of the sound of these instruments, or even if I found any music of them. But still, I think that the small differences could be used cleverly.

I've edited my post to reflect this new information. I still don't quite see how it was a joke given the context. What is funny is how this is not the first time humor has been completely missed in our exchanges.

I agree that it's not really possible to summarize a composer within a few sentences; it's a good thing I didn't attempt it. It's also good that I didn't claim the music was impressionist, as that label is oftentimes too contentious to use honestly. Edit: Removed rebuttal because apparently it's a joke.

Apparently Hamauzu took early inspiration from Debussy and Ravel, so I would also include in my research these composers. If Hamauzu is anything like Ravel then this Wikipedia-sourced passage may help: Hope that helps. :)