Article on Music on philica.com

Would anyone want to check out this article on philica.com:

Doglas, Y. (2006). On the Properties of Original Triads Regarding Dissonance. PHILICA.COM Article number 66.

The title of the article is "On the Properties of Original Triads Regarding Dissonance".

The summary is about "This idea presents a surprising result that the series of original triads is 50% dissonant, and 50% non-dissonant.".

Sounds interesting?

has anyone seen the article yet? please post your comments!

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I am going to respond to this for one reason: I don't feel it is right for people to be mislead into thinking that there is something of deep value in this article. It needs to be rebutted and responded to.

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The article, firstly, relies on an arbitrary concept of "dissonance", which is subjective and heavily relies on the listener's musical experience and socio-cultural background. Dissonance can not be discussed without context (I return to this idea at the bottom of this post).

For composers, it also misses a large part of the principles involved - those of cohesion and systemization. This "article" is nothing more than the cataloguing of chords consisting of three notes. Without reference to harmonic system or scalar origin, it's in a vacuum. Besides being nothing more than a catalogue of 3-note chords, it gratuitously jumps to a conclusion about consonance and dissonance, which itself is based on a arbitrarily subjective definition. in other words, even for a musical discussion, this is very bad science.

The article takes 3-note chords by themselves, something which is unrealistic in a musical context. When one includes the doubling of tones, as would be necessary in any music involving more than three instruments, the importance of "inversion" as a musical principle comes into play.

So, for example 0-2-5, 0-3-10, and 0-7-9 are simply inversions of each other. As such, they share much of the same arbitrary accoustic value of dissonance/consonance.

If you start talking about the accoustic properties of various tone combinations, then register comes into play as overtones created by lower notes become apparent at some point and add to the "dissonance" factor.

To keep to the same example, 0-2-5 would be more dissonant in octave 0 (where overtone effects would be heaviest) than in octave 6 (where any question of overtones is lost).

Since even the simplest "classical" music involved 4-note chords (with linear-evolved dissonance), the point is kind of moot. This listing of chordal material imples a reversion to simplistic 3-note chordal harmony to the exclusion of other chords.

I'm more interested in seeing how a composer might apply this listing in any cohesive fashion.

The reference to Strawinski and Schoenberg is completely gratuitous, since they did not compose triadically, nor in a vacuum. Any triads present in their music were inherantly logical from the point of view of whatever system they were using, with consideration to consonance and dissonance as inate qualities of that very system. Strawinski in particular is erroneous as an example of "simple" triadic writing, since so much of his music is an extension of classical harmony and the use of functional and non-functional dissonant notes (passing notes, apoggiaturas, suspensions, etc...).

I myself have been working on a book of categorization, prioritization, and systemization of polychords for the past 4 years (as an extension of my graduate degree), and am finding the work arduous and at times uninspiring. I am finding mostly that my work is rarely anything more than a catalogue of polychords, since perception of consonance and dissonance are generally subjective qualities, and as such are useless in this work. Without linear meaning, a large part of the functionality of harmony is useless. Harmony can not be defined in a vacuum. Any single chord may have basic qualities, however, it only becomes functional within the context of a harmonic progression. Even the principle of dissonance is heavily dependant on functionality. If a chord contains a dissonant note that has linear function that will resolve in a subsequant chord then the dissonance can be mitigated by many factors, one of which is "habit". The more the listener is used to hearing a particular dissonant tone as part of a functional progression with resolution, the less the ear will perceive it purely as a dissonance. The most perfect example of this is any prepared and resolved progression involving a 7th chord (of any sort). All 7th chords are linear in origin (the dissonant tone is a passing tone, neighbour tone, etc...) and as such the logic of the horizontal line leads the ear to understand its purpose.

Well, I will be short after this... this article seems to be a very funny amusement for a schoolboy... but nothing more. As QcCowboy resume it well (as a great scientist I should add... I wouldn't do better there) it lacks a lot of informations...

If you wish to read about consonance and disonance... just read out James Tenney book... that is much more interesting and deeply searched.

hey what about this :

Doglas, Y. (2006). On the Principle of Relativity of Music. PHILICA.COM Article number 64.

by the same author.

It looks interesting, but I am not sure if its theories hold water.

It basically applies the Principle of Relativity (by Galileo) to music.

I don't know why you insist on refering to these articles as "by the same author" as though you had not written them yourself.

Quite frankly, these articles are a waste of bandwidth. They're pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo.

I would much rather you explain to us in what concrete way these articles deepen our understanding of music.

The first article is an exercise in extremely trivial combinatorics that teaches us absolutely nothing practical. The second article repeatedly begs the question.

Also, stop trying to pass them off as someone else's work. The resemblance between "Yeo Doglas" and "yoyodog" is so obvious it's not even funny.

The resemblance between "Yeo Doglas" and "yoyodog" is so obvious it's not even funny.

Indeed it's so obvious that there's nothing funny or even unusual about it at all. He just has chosen to call himself "the author". What's so bad about it?

http://www.youngcomposers.com/forum/young-composers-should-work-young-performers-4409.html Here he states who he is. No controversy.

The "articles" may be pointless piffle, but that's no justification for treating their author in such a hostile manner. It doesn't make either of you a genius to discover the obvious and rub it in his face.

You guys are moderators...enough said.

ok..

sorry for the anonymity.. I thought that by remaining 'anonymous' you all may have a more objective view of the articles.

That is, you will not say that they are good just because i am a memeber of yc, nor say it is bad because of that.

Personally, I feel that my articles are not very scientific and substantiated also. I look forward to some comments so that I can improve my future articles.

If you had used a pen name such as Bob Jones, Adam Ricter or something like that you wouldn't have been pegged so quickly

To be perfectly frank, your writing needs a whole lot of work.

I would first suggest that you think before you start writing, about: 1) whether someone has already thought of this before, 2) how meaningful the idea is, 3) whether you can substantiate your argument with solid evidence, and 4) what all the possible counter-arguments are. Writing on just any idea that pops into your head generally doesn't break any ground at all; it pays to be more selective and write only one what looks really promising. A good literature review also works wonders. (It will probably also demonstrate that most of your ideas are not new and possibly even already refuted. But quality of articles is more important than quantity anyway.)

Secondly, and this is a problem I notice with your non-musical articles on Philica as well: you're making huge leaps in logic, and inserting your own assumptions or beliefs in your argument without explanation of why you're making said assumptions. At times the reasoning is circular: you're trying to demonstrate the truth of a concept by assuming first that it is true. Also, very often the "truth" of one of your theories is based on a whole framework of "this seems to me like it's true, so it must be".

ok..

sorry for the anonymity.. I thought that by remaining 'anonymous' you all may have a more objective view of the articles.

That is, you will not say that they are good just because i am a memeber of yc, nor say it is bad because of that.

Personally, I feel that my articles are not very scientific and substantiated also. I look forward to some comments so that I can improve my future articles.

you realize, of course, that you have misrepresented yourself to Philica.com as a "researcher"? They limit their membership to people with university degrees who are presently working in an accredited institution.

No, your articles aren't very scientific. I wouldn't say they are either bad or good simply from your membership here. I would base my judgment on the actual worth of what you wrote.

So far, both musical articles of yours that I have read are pointless.

Let me give you an example:

totally useless

I think there is a correlation between the seasons of the year and musical form.

I present my argument.

the end.

practical application

I think there is a correlation between the seasons of the year and musical form.

I present my argument AND concrete musical examples of the application of said correlation.

the end.

the former is basically what you are doing... putting some off-the-wall idea out and calling it research.

the latter is what I would like you to do instead... if you have some idea of how your "theory" can be applied to actual music, then SHOW it.