JMitchem

Yeah, I'm going to stick to struck keys. At least for the moment, I want to be able to take a midi score and analyze that directly. (Notes, and pedal markings.) Granted, there's going to be all sorts of details to get into, like measuring dissonances created by the actual notes that are sounding (held notes too); and taking into account the decay of those sounds, as well as things like "perceived" dissonance, such as a sudden jarring modulation, even if it modulates from something very consonant, to something else very consonant. This is just a starting point. It's nothing more than an experiment right now. I don't really want to be the one coming up with the theories, I just want to subjectively test other people's theories and my own hypotheses... see what I like, what I don't like, and how those line up with what I personally perceive when I hear things.

What essay? Now there's the problem with actually asking a serious question around here. I'm a software developer, by profession; I used to be a somewhat serious pianist, and I've been improvising for years, and I'm just wanting to merge some things together. Why would I sit down and analyze all the chords in a piece of music when I can write a piece of software to do it? All I'm really asking for is to be pointed in a direction, any direction. Someone else has a different theory on dissonance and consonance? Who? Where do I look? What I'm working off of is what I saw in that wikibooks link, and also from what I've been able to gather from the book "Serial Composition" published by Oxford. So far, the results of my software seem to be consistent with the examples provided in the latter, but I'm wanting something a little more "real", than me just punching some numbers in to make it look right. Sorry, I just took a bit of offense to being considered a student writing an essay.

Heh, well, that got quite an interesting set of responses. I don't really have the time right now to even attempt to sufficiently reply. (I'll do that later) As far as instruments, I'm really asking in the context of piano music, so the 12 pitches available, and standard piano tuning. I was doing some visual analysis of piano-roll views of music (which is functionally just a spectrum analysis of the primary tones in relation to time)... and by visual analysis, I mean, hearing something, and going "I wonder what this looks like"... and vice versa. And I was like... "huh, I wonder if I can come up with a way to visualize dissonance too". I'm just toying around with this; I don't even want to pretend I'm dealing with absolutes. By coming up with a number, it at least gives me a way to visualize dissonance over time, which I can see being useful, even if the number isn't even remotely perfect. (It's just a starting point that I can further tweak, to fit what I consider correct.) Art and science (although, it's more, music and math) aren't mutually exclusive... it's only when you start to limit one by the [limited] achievements of the others that I find problems. (For instance, should you not play a sound because you can't notate it? I personally think notation is secondary to the actual music... Notation shouldn't be normative, nor should any sort of analysis.) Math is just a tool... it's neither subjective nor objective in itself, and I'm using it in a very subjective manner. Quantifying something doesn't mean it's anywhere near an objective value... all I really care about is that it's fairly consistent. A good example is loudness... you can say something is louder or softer than something else, both subjectively and objectively. However, there's not really any absolute loudness or softness, especially when you consider perceived loudness (which varies by pitch), versus actual sound intensity. But having a number... it's at least something to work with. The really core question that I'd like answered is this: Which interval is most dissonant, a diminished 5th, a major 2nd, or a minor 2nd? And which is the least dissonant of those three? And secondly, in which tonal/harmonic theory system is that considered the case?

I'm somewhat working on a way to quantify dissonance. I have a few things so far: A basic categorization of dissonance/consonance by intervals (measured by half steps between notes): PerfectConsonance = 0, 7, 12 = octaves and fifths ImperfectConsonance = 3, 4, 8, 9 = minor and major 3rd, minor and major 6th SharpDissonance = 1, 11 = minor second and major seventh SoftDissonance = 2, 10 = major second and minor seventh Perfect4th = 5 = well, um, a perfect 4th? Tritone = 6 = diminished fifth I built that list from this: Music Theory/Consonance and Dissonance - Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks A way to determine the inverse interval (Un?) Surprisingly, each dissonance value is the inverse of itself. The inverse of a minor second is a major seventh (and incidentally, a SharpDissonance)... the inverse of an ImperfectConsonance is an ImperfectConsonance... etc. Actually, a perfect 5th and a perfect 4th are inverses, but that's the one exception. So now I have intervals mapped to dissonance, and I can determine the inverse interval... A way to determine all intervals for a note cluster Next, I have a way to take a note cluster (a chord, or otherwise), and determine the full set of interval pairs created by all combinations of those notes. Not going to get into the algorithm here, but I have the ability to do it. Thus, I can take a note cluster, determine all intervals produced by that, and come up with an "average" dissonance produced by all the intervals. What I'm missing... the relativity of "dissonances" The critical piece I'm missing, is that I don't really have a good grasp of "how" dissonant each interval is. Right now, I'm assuming that a Tritone (dim5) is more dissonant than a SoftDissonance (M2, m7), and less dissonant than a SharpDissonance (m2, M7). Is that a correct assumption? Likewise, I'm assuming that a perfect 4th is more dissonant than a perfect consonance (octave, 5th) [duh?], but less dissonant than an ImperfectConsonance (m3, M3, m6, M6). Is that correct? Also, it'd be nice to have some way of quantifying that not only is a tritone more dissonant than an imperfect consonance, but that it's (say) 3 times more dissonant. I haven't been able to find any research into this, although I suppose I could probably come up with a quantitative way of measuring harmonics produced by the tone-pairs in an equal-tempered scale... but I'd rather not have to do that. Any suggestions, or references, or just, telling me how it is? (Note: this is entirely for personal use, just trying to come up with some informal music analysis tools. Also, if anyone wants any more details, feel free to ask... I'm just excluding them right now, to focus on this particular piece of the puzzle.)

Um. Scriabin. Because of the things he touches on in, say, his Piano Sonata 8 (and others). pt1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxG8KgEp_y8&fmt=18 pt2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ef6z2U8Tjo&fmt=18 There's plenty of "great" musicians, of course. But there's my pick of the last several months (maybe it's been over a year or so now...) If Mozart was a magician, then Scriabin was a shaman.

I like the romantic sentimentality of it.

Not complaints, I just didn't "get it", I wasn't sure what was going on. There was no musical context for that to make sense, and it took awhile until I felt anything that was... harmonic or melodic. Might be my fault though.

Up until about 5 seconds, I'm not really sure what's going on, musically, because the notes seem to almost fit into something harmonically tonal, and then it's chromatic, and there's nothing actually repetitive in the rhythm. After that, chord progressions start "making sense", if that makes sense. I like the harmony in a lot of places, it has a lot of depth. However, it seems to waver in and out of it, and when it resolved to the tonic at 24 seconds, it seemed abrupt and unsatisfying. I know this wasn't helpful. Sorry. But I did listen, and say... something.

You like your Sonatinas don't you :sadtears: This is what, the 3rd one you've posted in the past 3 weeks? Something like that... I like the stride/ragtime influence, it keeps it nice and fun. It's almost silly-happy; it's something that, if I learned it, I'd probably play crazy fast just because it seems to be suitably showy. No real suggestions; it is what it is.. any suggestions would be pointing it into a different direction from what it is, and I like it for what it is.

Aleatoric music? Jazz? That's... like mandatory improvisation. Of course, it's arguable whether you can consider it "classical music", but yeah.

Only one question... Are you hot?

Now you made me feel bad. :) I didn't want for you to scrap the piece at all. I was just trying to offer suggestions. Although, it'd be cool to hear how this would work as a woodwind quintent.

Sorry I took so long to get back to you. I actually wasn't familiar with any of Ravel's piano works until a week ago. All I heard was some of Bolero, and got bored, and that was the extent of my knowledge. However, I took another listen, and thanks for that. I had missed out on a lot (and it makes me feel better that Ravel even considered Bolero relatively trivial). Surprisingly, listening to a lot of my other ideas from earlier improv, and then listening to a lot of Ravel, it sounds as if Ravel "stole" some of my ideas. (Not necessarily in this improv recording, however.) Obviously that's not the case, but I find it interesting to hear several of my ideas in his music (in fact, there's a couple melodic lines in "Alborada del gracioso" that are literally exactly what I've played and recorded, a few years back.) When I sit down and improvise, I just play. Sometimes I completely zone out and the music just flows, however listening back on those times, it's pretty bland and boring background music. Other times I usually have something in my head, or something my fingers happened to play, and then just go with that, and keep messing around until I find something interesting, and try to build on that, until something else shows up, and play with that. I'll do that for usually 10-20 minutes at a time. It's very much exploratory; I try to completely avoid familiar patterns I've played before. And every once in awhile, I'll get maybe 30 seconds of really good ideas, and it's all coming together, and then I make one little mistake and lose it. However, since I record every improv, I can always go back and figure out what I played. Usually when I get bored with an idea, I'll try doing more random stuff, and sometimes I just end it there, if nothing shows up, and then I stop. Anyway.... that's what I do.

Heh, that's kind of cool. I like the rhythm; it's kind of hard to find interesting rhythmic use of a piano, as far as I've seen. I think it could use more.. something. Fleshing it out, I guess would be the best way to put it. It think it feels very skeletal at the moment. I think it could benefit from another melodic line, with possibly some subtle harmonies added in (via the use of some softer tones in between an upper melody line in a high register and the aggressive rhythmic bass line... and yes, I know that would make it quite a bit harder for a pianist to play.) Personally, I think a nice mixture of the relatively aggressive sound you have with a fairly tonal legato over the top of it, could make for a really interesting and unique piece. Now, that's not to say it isn't pretty good as it is. :)

Some of you may be familiar with the book... However, Garritan has a free copy of it on the web here: Principles of Orchestration On-line - northernsounds.com I just found this tonight. Pressing the play button to actually hear the examples is just, well, pretty amazing.