Using mathematical structures and patterns in music?

Hello, my name is Peter and I just recently joined this forum. I'm an IB student and I just finished my music higher course. I did three compositions for my music course and have been working on music with other poeple for many years.

Right now I am trying to create a composition based on the dodecaphonic system. I have created some melodies that I really like but right now I'm trying to look at a bigger structure and I am a bit stuck. One thing that interested me was the idea of using mathematical structures and patterns but I don't know how I woudl apply it to music.

I've been mostly looking at artists like Simon Thomas Simon Thomas Sculpture - Biography and some others, and an intersting jazz artist called Rudresh Mahanthappa www.myspace.com/rudreshm who uses mathematical structures in his album codebook

I was just wondering if anybody has had any experience with using mathematics in their compositions or could give me any useful links.

I put this in advice and techniques cause I would love to read any dscussion on the subject as well.

Thankyou for reading this, Pete.

Tricky,

Very tricky...

There are many different ways to use mathematics:

* Pitch

* rhythm

* form

I have used repeatedely mathematics in my forms.

One very simple example is the golden ratio.

Then you can have all sorts of things with the structure of your piece really.

One work I did, to include various aspects of mathematics, can be found here. Apart from the score and the mp3 of a live performance I also gave away a small analysis, mainly concerned with the form of the piece, which would be interesting for you to read...

Other than that anything you want in more particulat, just... ask again :horrified:

Sorry, no relevant links...but if you seek out works by Jim McNeely who uses a very unique approach incorporating mathematics in what seems a very sterile technique, but yields exceptionally organic results. Check out especially the record Lickety Split. The liner-notes to which I think go into some detail on McNeely's writing.

He's still steeped in jazz vocabulary, and nothing really dodecaphonic - but somehow incorporating formulas and mathematics into his writing....

Dodecaphonic....I like that. Fancy way of saying 12-tone. :horrified:

Dodecaphonic....I like that. Fancy way of saying 12-tone.

lol

In Greek dodeka (Δώδεκα) means 12. I guess it could be common knowledge but then again I don't know...

Phonic comes from phone which comes from phoni in Greek (φωνή) which is the word for voice!

HA!

Anybody ever seen "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"? Yes,... All greeks are like featured in the movie! :( :horrified: ;) :D

Anybody ever seen "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"? Yes,... All greeks are like featured in the movie! :horrified: ;) :D

Except from me! :(

I really enjoyed Exeliksis for Chamber String Orchestra, I love the mix of tension and more consonant harmonies. It gives the music a lot of depth, complex personality and a very unique beauty.

I just read through your analysis a couple of time now and I'm gonna need to read it and put some of your mathmatical ideas to practice like using areas of certain shapes. I still don't understand how its applied but Im gonna read through it a bit more before I ask any questions which I'm sure I'll have :horrified:

The main thing I'm trying to work on now is a sort of mathematical framework for my composition, I have a lot of ideas connected through my tone row but they just dont seem to have any direction at the moment and using mathematical patterns just seems so exiting to me!

Im gonna look into some of the Jim mcNeely you metnioned as well, thankyou

Except from me! :horrified:

lol

Yeah right... ;)

Peter: Glad you found it useful. :D

Anybody ever seen "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"? Yes,... All greeks are like featured in the movie! :( :pinch: :sweat:

Every single character in that is exactly like a person in my family!:P

If one creates music, one already 'uses' mathematics. The difference is that some people realize it, think about it and use it in different ways, with certain limits, while others don't.

You could try to use fractals or make aleatoric music (probability), could use geometric shapes, functions and/or combination of them plus additional adjustements and roundings, and so on... It's all up to you and where you want to go.

My friend Terran just did a senior thesis project on representing fractals in sound- check out his website: audio fractals

I used mathematics in some of my pieces I wrote during my conservatory. Just listen to my orchestra piece the movement Hymne

So many composers through time have used the fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio, that they can be said to be a part of the canon of styles of the western music tradition. However, I think that some composers, like Luigi Nono, for example, have used the Fibonacci sequence more as a pseudorandom seed for rhythmical sequences -- i.e. used it in such a broken-up way, that I think no-one can really claim to hear the ratios as such. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with using pseudorandom, completely random, or statistical means in composing, as long as the composer is aware of the "aural reality" of the piece. It has been argued, that this kind of random generation approaches concepts such as "musique concr