FatKidsLikeCake

That may be a true statement, I just hope you're not confusing easier with plausible. I wish there existed statistical information for PhD in musical composition like there exist for Physicist. I imagine that a PhD in physics finds easier employment than a PhD in music, and physicist stand at less than 10% of all PhD staying within academics, with over 50% loss after the first PostDoc and a 40% drop after the second postdoc. This doesn't include those who never got a first postdoc. =( Like I said, I'm not trying to persuade you from following your dream, but you must give yourself the ability to work in a related field, find skills that can get you a job in general, or mentally accept life living at the poverty level. Although you may think you're ok with that at your age, people change dramatically. One day you might want a partner and kids. You might not. One day you just might incur huge debt due to a misfortune and will wish that you could make money more easily. Key thing to take away is that following your passion is great, but always be aware of what life can throw at you and prepare for it. Nothing is worse than seeing newly minted PhD's suddenly realizing that academics is not a bright future. Also, people also like to throw out that being a school teacher is a "safety". Music teacher is probably less secure and more competitive than say a math teacher.

How realistic do you think this really is? Do you think universities are just hiring new professors routinely? I graduated from a top 5 physics program (graduate school) and I still have an extremely rough time fighting for national lab and associate professorships*. I've had to go as far as Russia once or twice! If you think academic route is easier and safer than living off commission, you really need to wake up and fully grasp your situation. I'm not saying that you should not try, i'm saying you should fully appreciate how difficult it truly is. *I may work in an extremely abstract and theoretical field, so this adds to my burden, but nevertheless even my peers who researched more applied topics struggle.

This is where reading comprehension and not assuming statements would benefit you. 1)I never said it would have no use for a composer. I simply said a composer clearly doesn't need it. 2)I posted it here because as I stated in my first post, I believed there would exist a group ( even a 2 people form a group!) that would appreciate the book for what it is and perhaps the even more generalized idea behind it. I don't know why you assume every topic must be relevant to everyone. Clearly, the target audience is small, I am pretty sure I more or less stated that in my first post.

I can see you're not an academic otherwise the irony of niche publishing would surely have been a joke. Anyway! Don't get defensive because your ego is hurt. Just because you don't find value in it, doesn't mean other people don't or can't. I mostly suspect you find little value in it, mostly because you can't comprehend it, which is fine. Nevertheless, I don't see why you feel the need to go out of your way to express how little value it has to you, when it's clearly something not within your realm of understanding or even familiarity? That's like me reviewing a steakhouse, and just trying their mash potatoes (vegetarian here.) It's just asinine on so many levels!

If you believe that I'm agreeing with you then I believe you are mistaken. I'm just not trying to convince you otherwise, because the dialog would be beyond you and I don't mean that as an offensive jab. In the words of Feynman (more or less) we can't talk about physics without the mathematics. Thus, I don't believe I can talk about anything meaningful on how a topic like group theory can be useful or for that matter category theory without just talking over you. Nevertheless, let's not confuse that with a belief that I believe mathematics in music can only bring forth trivial ideas.

I think you're missing the point. I don't believe the idea behind using mathematics to describe a pitch set is to add anything more meaningful to what may be in your arsenal of musical knowledge. Clearly music students have been doing well enough at looking at notes on paper without group theory for a while now. However, I do equate the use of this method to be the same as formulating physics in terms of the Lagrangian or Hamiltonian. While these formularizations don't give you any new information per se, that doesn't mean that the new frameworks cannot be more useful. For example, the Hamiltonian is rather useful in celestial mechanics. Therefore, I believe, for someone who has the necessary background (which you don't), a person can use group theory and make meaningful statements that perhaps wouldn't be so obvious any other way and do so in a consist matter. So if your only real qualm is that an analysis of music can be done without mathematics, you'll have no argument from me. I simply don't understand why you are opposed to other people finding merit in using math to study music. Has it crossed your mind that perhaps the goal is not the same? Perhaps using abstract algebra to study a musical structure is not so much about studying it for musical purposes but rather as an algebraic structure, and clearly one obvious benefit of this method is that a person doesn't even have to know music theory if they can recognize the structures, alas I feel that last part might fly above your head though.

Oddly enough....Euclidean algorithm is rather useful in abstract algebra.

I was hoping to hear from someone who actually studied math or at the very least could prove the FTA. Clearly, this book presents no real value or of interest to a composer for music sake. I was hoping that would be fairly obvious.

If that's your point, it is a fairly basic and naïve point. So with that said, I'll choose to disengage from this line of dialog because it's apparent that you and I are approaching these ideas from different backgrounds. I simply do find it meaningful to point a basic chair and call it a chair and rhen see what else is true about the chair by looking at the structure and hopefully finding more underlying structures, ie it has legs or chairs made out of wood are more common than chairs made out of plastic. While, I can see why, on a purely musical creational aspect, that can be deemed as meaningless, I think on a more intellectual level, as in a level of knowing something for the sake of knowing it, it's rather meaningful. Again, different perspectives. However, I also suspect you didn't actually read chapter four. If the bijective relations to you was clearly obvious and the isomorphism are trivial consequences, then my hat is off to you. Keep in mind, this book is a MATH book that talks about how math can be used in music, NOT a music book that uses math.

I think you misunderstand the intent of the book. It's a book to learn group theory with application to music theory. I don't believe the author(s) claim that what they are doing is making new and insightful relationship, but rather attempting to show how a person can use group theory to formulate common properties within music. Truth be told, it is already well established that music theory can be described by abstract algebra and combinatorial analysis. The key word is describe, just as differential equations describe F = ma. The relation is one thing, the ability to use it for your own purposes is another thing entirely, but first a person must be aware of the relation.

From what I can tell, the book is riddled with Topos theory. A subfield of category theory that I'm not particularly strong and coupled with the fact that i'm also not particularly intuitive on topology makes this book fairly hard for me to glance through. So, I don't think I can decide how much of it is an acceptable use or a common use for said theories, especially regarding mathematics. Nevertheless, it seems more like a reference than something to learn from and I'm sure the small group of people who can comprehend the music theory and mathematics will have divergent opinions on the merit.

I'm utterly confused as to what you're trying to get at. So i'll just eat a bagel.

Depends on how you define trivial. If applying groups to musical theory is obvious, then no. If the term isomorphism is new to you, then yes.

http://bookboon.com/en/textbooks/mathematics/an-introduction-to-group-theory I came across this book randomly and I'm sure someone may be interested in this. To be honest, I haven't read the first 3 chapters that relate to group theory, so I'm unsure if the concept is self-contained or if it assumes knowledge regarding abstract algebra already. I did a quick read through the last chapter, where the music theory is presented. If a person is interested in how group theory can be used to describe musical relations, then it's a fairly interesting and straight forward read. I think, if someone here has read or studied abstract algebra and had a hard time understanding typical "concrete" examples, but understands music, then this book can be useful. The topics presented in the book are rather basic when it comes to music, but it should be fairly obvious on how to extend the concepts to more complex problems. If anyone else is familiar with the subject at say the typical undergraduate level care to weigh in and give their opinion on the matter that would be appreciated. I may be interested in teaching a summer course on this, but I'm unsure if the book is suitable or the material really that interesting.

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