I tried to read the opening post, but so many big words coupled with the rather debauch weekend I had, means that's just not gonna happen

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quote:

Originally posted by nefardec Analyze spectra of various moments in an audio recording, preferably a collection of many many audio recordings. This could be anything - historical music, thundersorms, crowd noise, whatever. Record the spectral information, how much it deviates from the spectral information in the neighboring samplings, and where it is located in time. Create a database of this information. (This could also be done using actual samples). Using the spectral information and rates of change, assign movement or speed values to each entry and tag them with more subjective things like brightness values, etc. These obviously depend on what your bias or purpose is, and that's what makes this an art rather than a science. Using parametric software, create a structural algorithm. For instance, does brightness rise over time and then fall in a sinusoidal way? Musical movement perhaps increases and decreases parabolically - this is an experiment, so as many variations as you can do are better. The algorithms could be anything, that's up to the artist and his bias. The structural algorithm then is one of many variables, which change over time. The parametric software then scales the spectral information over time depending on the value of the algorithm so that the sound is modulated mathematically. This could be smooth, piecewise, etc depending on the algorithm you are working with. If you are working with samples the software would map samples along the parametric curves based on their tabular data.

Finally something concrete. This seems to be an interesting idea in terms of programming or creating a new instrument perhaps or a system for playing back sounds following certain instructions. However i'm not sure you could create something with it that sonically and stylistically hasn't already been explored or can not be accomplished with the tools available today and that revolutionizes the concept of music.

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So this begins to undermine the idea of musical structure, melody, harmony, rhythm, etc as long as one remains objective.

That is nothing new or revolutionary. Just listen to any long-form textural ambient album. There are artist who already master the art of creating soundworlds devoid of melody, rhythm and obvious harmonic structure.

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And electronic music is slave to the programs which are used to create it. You can kind of tell when a beginner makes something in ableton live as opposed to logic for instance, because of the structure. But when you learn a bit more all the programs become interchangable, because you are no longer using the programs to generate music which is clearly a result of the medium - in fact you want to hide it and create something which sounds like it could be made in any program.

But you can't tell wheter someone makes his music sound typical of an abelton beginner on purpose or not. Both the slave and the revolutionary subverting user could create something that sounds typical of a certain program, so what's the difference? And what's your point anyway?

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To play devil's advocate for myself, no matter what technology exists, people will always try to cover it up for superficial ideas about the fashion of sound. Just like people will make landscape artwork using vector programs...

Is that good or bad?

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Nice job. Way to try and twist my words. Of course I feel it's obsolete. Call me old-fashioned then. Obsolesence has nothing to do with whether or not I like it.

If you like it i assume you listen to it, and if you listen to it you can't at the same time assert that it is "no longer in use; gone into disuse; disused or neglected".

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Besides this though, I am interested in searching for new ways to make and think about music. Is there something wrong with that?

I couldn't care less about what you're interested in. I do however have opinions about claims that imply that there are no new possiblities left in the vast realm of music and that we need some machine that is going to add something beyond human comprehension to the concept of music. It's highly comparable to a "trance is dead" thread, only more elaborate on the surface.

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I do however have opinions about claims that imply that there are no new possiblities left in the vast realm of music and that we need some machine that is going to add something beyond human comprehension to the concept of music. It's highly comparable to a "trance is dead" thread, only more elaborate on the surface.

Would you mind elaborating? This is exactly what I wanted to talk about...

So what this basically is about is that you feel that the traditional framework and conventions of music are not necessarily essential to defining the term, correct? I think the main issue here is you seem to be hypothesising about various other pathways musical development could take, yet you don't actually know what any of it would sound like.

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> Maximum Elevation [Progressive House]
> DI.FM 26th Anniversary Guest Mix [Progressive House]
> Live @ Dance:Love:Hub London, 11.10.2025
> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24

Like these sets? Come see me play live at Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J So what this basically is about is that you feel that the traditional framework and conventions of music are not necessarily essential to defining the term, correct? I think the main issue here is you seem to be hypothesising about various other pathways musical development could take, yet you don't actually know what any of it would sound like.

Surely one of them would sound like LORD OF BASS?

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quote:

Originally posted by nefardec Would you mind elaborating? This is exactly what I wanted to talk about...

I would. I prefer keeping it concise. If anything, ask me a direct question.

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Originally posted by SMC Agree with above ^^ and skip etc. The whole thing is pretentious, not to the point and filled with totally arbitrary conclusions.

Nah, this is some interesting stuff, a good topic, and I welcome any chance to bump it. He's dropping some interesting science here.

Now, you want pretentious, overblown wordiness that meanders all over the place and doesn't get to any cohesive point, read anything Spirit5 has to say.

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yet you don't actually know what any of it would sound like.

SystemJ, I think part of this is to try to create music without knowing what it would sound like. I suppose it could sound like anything. I'm really only interested in a discussion on the method for now. Once experiments have been made then we can start making ideas about the sound because we will know what kind of beast we are handling.

I posted an example method earlier:

quote:

Analyze spectra of various moments in an audio recording, preferably a collection of many many audio recordings. This could be anything - historical music, thundersorms, crowd noise, whatever. Record the spectral information, how much it deviates from the spectral information in the neighboring samplings, and where it is located in time. Create a database of this information. (This could also be done using actual samples). Using the spectral information and rates of change, assign movement or speed values to each entry and tag them with more subjective things like brightness values, etc. These obviously depend on what your bias or purpose is, and that's what makes this an art rather than a science. Using parametric software, create a structural algorithm. For instance, does brightness rise over time and then fall in a sinusoidal way? Musical movement perhaps increases and decreases parabolically - this is an experiment, so as many variations as you can do are better. The algorithms could be anything, that's up to the artist and his bias. The structural algorithm then is one of many variables, which change over time. The parametric software then scales the spectral information over time depending on the value of the algorithm so that the sound is modulated mathematically. This could be smooth, piecewise, etc depending on the algorithm you are working with. If you are working with samples the software would map samples along the parametric curves based on their tabular data.

@SMC, ok - well you said "I do have opinions about claims that imply that there are no new possibilities left in the vast realm of music...etc"

I guess I am a little confused by the first statement I quoted - I can't tell if you were being sarcastic, making a parody of my idea or this is a straight statement. Sarcasm doesn't carry too well over the internet, and given your previous posts I have to imagine you are scathing in your intent.

There are several definitions for the word 'obsolete'. You did a great job playing gatekeeper and posting only the one that you can use against my point. Here's another definition: "of a discarded or outmoded type; out of date" and another: "imperfectly developed or rudimentary in comparison with the corresponding character in others"

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There are artist who already master the art of creating soundworlds devoid of melody, rhythm and obvious harmonic structure.

Could you give me any names? I would like to hear them.

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Finally something concrete. This seems to be an interesting idea in terms of programming or creating a new instrument perhaps or a system for playing back sounds following certain instructions. However i'm not sure you could create something with it that sonically and stylistically hasn't already been explored or can not be accomplished with the tools available today and that revolutionizes the concept of music.

Ok, well it's a start for someone who has only begun to dive into these ideas. But I don't think it's really about style, again. For experiment's sake, it doesn't really matter what it sounds like. Like I said earlier, only after one develops methods he will be able to understand the sonic aspects of it.

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Is that good or bad?

It really doesn't matter. For one, this is irrelevant to the technology. to use the example I started, i think it's more productive to push technology to its limits rather than recreate things which came about from pushing older technology to its limits.

@skip -

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might have similarities to bioinformatics, but that doesn't make it bioinformatics. the bio aspect is missing.

You're right, they aren't the same. I am a bit imaginative is all, and I like to imagine that music could behave like an organism. I don't believe that it is an organism, however.

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i'm all for that. i just think you're not doing a very good job at it. i'm all for crazy stupid ideas that don't necessarily lead to anywhere. if no one had new ideas that most people thought were stupid, then we'd have a pretty boring world. but IMO that's really not something that you're doing here.

Ouch, so I don't even qualify for the stupid ideas category? What does that make your ideas then for responding to them?

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ok. so tell me, why did you post nano tech in the list?

The list was called "important technologies for the future". I don't see how nanotech wouldn't be used in the future for sound synthesis or sound reproduction.

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Originally posted by nefardec SystemJ, I think part of this is to try to create music without knowing what it would sound like. I suppose it could sound like anything. I'm really only interested in a discussion on the method for now. Once experiments have been made then we can start making ideas about the sound because we will know what kind of beast we are handling.

"Anything" isn't automatically music though, is it? You can come up with any number of interesting ways to make new sounds and then branch them as "music" under the philosphical stretching of the term, but will any of them be worth hearing?

___________________
Mixes:
> Maximum Elevation [Progressive House]
> DI.FM 26th Anniversary Guest Mix [Progressive House]
> Live @ Dance:Love:Hub London, 11.10.2025
> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24

Like these sets? Come see me play live at Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/

quote:

Originally posted by SYSTEM-J "Anything" isn't automatically music though, is it? You can come up with any number of interesting ways to make new sounds and then branch them as "music" under the philosphical stretching of the term, but will any of them be worth hearing?

Does that matter?

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Originally posted by Allied Nations Does that matter?

Does it matter if it's worth hearing? Erm... what do you think?

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Seeing as music is a human interpretation of sound, wouldn't this all require a certain degree of uniformity in how different people perceive it? Already, music has a completely different definition to someone who lives in a major city compared to someone who lives, say, in the middle of a desert. We write music that reflects our environment. Techno, for instance, is inspired by the movements of machines, assembly lines, car horns... sounds that are meaningful to us, but would be nothing but noise to someone who doesn't hear them on a regular basis. Then there's even more variation in perception of sound on a smaller scale, from person to person. To give you an example, one of my favorite sounds is that of a vaccum cleaner. To most, it's nothing but ambient noise, but for me, it invokes sensations that conventional music can't even come close to producing. I don't see how we could efficiently calculate and take into consideration every different perspective and generate music based on it. The closest thing we can do is stick to blanket rule systems that appeal to groups of individuals, but aren't tailored to be specific, which is pretty much our current definition of music.

... or did I completely misunderstand you?

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