Right.
The value of learning, and the assumption that historical music study is the 'raking over of dusty artifacts' is something that, as William says, is a key to avoiding the repetitive circle we seem to be going in musically at this moment in time. We've just had an interesting dicussion in another thread about the 'sameness' of much of today's modern orchestral ideas, and how new ideas are thin on the ground. I think it's because access to technology and market forces are putting so much pressure on composers, that perceptions are built of the 'only way' to succeed, and the steadily narrowing focus of that perception. I also think historical study has been a victim of the technology as more and more buyers of computers, and musical enthusiasts try their luck. DG made a point a little while ago about there being more composers, but no greater level of great music.
And to use your own thinking on this Laurie, the study of historical artifacts is a science in itself, but only part of the picture.
Folk songs, for example, are often stories set to music of adventure and emotion, and relationships, and love, and all that other stuff, that neither you, or the best minds in history have been able to quantify into a science, and provide an explanation for. And as try as you might, the premise that music can be reduced to the same mathematical equative benchmark as the path of neutrons or cosmological speculation is pointless and invalid.
Because that mindset that removes emotion and the unquantifiable from music effectively renders it dead.
And it's been tried in the past, so your argument of comparing music to physics is in itself a 'relic' and 'pointless artifact' as much as studying Mozart or Beethoven. They remain popular with millions and millions because their music evokes an emotional response, and triggers memories, both unquantifiable and unable to be so mercilessly shoved in the 'understood' and scientifically explainable box.
If you think you can reduce and explain away musical output to the equivalent of a paper on Quantum mechanics, go right ahead. You'll be emulating many before you who tried the same thing. Your opinion is important the same as theirs was. They ended up covered in the dust of historical derision, and forgotten almost as soon as they started.
'Cultural cliche' is just another catchall name, so popular in todays fast, image chasing world. Like collatteral damage, or democracy. So easy to say, and so hard to pin down. Which culture? One or more than one? Did you gather this viewpoint from listening to orchestras or watching the Simpsons? Where's your proof, and importantly, are you referring to GREAT music, or cliche ridden music? Can you honestly say the Planets suite is cliche ridden? Didn't holst define what we percieve now as music for the stars? Yet he is one of your cultural artifacts, to be dismissed as irrelavent.
You've commented before about the randomness of the music you're trying to 'create.' Don't you realise it's been done before? In the 50's and 60'? When a good chunk of the world was spreading free love and a lot of dope, there were musicians who were determined to 'define' a completely new direction, disconnected from the structure so enjoyed by so many?
Do we play their 'music' these days?

Interesting discussion, and although i respect your right to your views Laurie, i actually enjoy studying the masters, and get a thrill out of writing new music as a result of that study. Music that's never been heard before. Your argument would be i am emulating the artifacts. My response is one of dismissive exclamation, as I listen to something i've created, and enjoy the emotional response i get from listening, be it happy, sad, angry, or dissatisfied.

Regards to you all,

Alex.

Thoser are good points by Dave and Alex. However I find lgrohn's ideas interesting and particularly his concept of the visual generation of musical tones. Also, quantum mechanics is not predictable and reducible to formula - it is alarmingly unpredictable and weird. Something like the human brain and that "something else" in between randomness and cliches that lgrohn mentions.

Far be it from me to be critical or suspicious of a new musical approach. I've heard some of LG's music and liked it. Even randomness displays the wonder of the universe because it is a sampling of it. There is so much inherent beauty in the world that any sort of display of it will touch and show it in various degrees.

A recent entry in KYle Gann's "Postclassic" blog seems germane to this discussion,

http://www.artsjournal.com/postclassic/

The entry entitled the Fetishism of the Literal

Do carry on - a most interesting discussion.

DC

Well you see, something I've noticed about lgrohn - this person always disappears when anyone agrees, or says something supportive. So the positive posts will stop this discussion cold, I am sure. But lgrohn will reappear with another shocking rejoinder that startles people with its "Out There" quality.

Which is one reason I like him/her/it. (Perhaps a new form of artificial intelligence? Or a supremely intelligent brain functioning within a closed metallic sphere of unknown origin that periodically makes communications to the VSL Forum?)

Anyway, is this music:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/news/2005-09-12/wolframtones/

Thanks for that link! I don't think that's perticular good music... sounds more like my initial ramblings when I started out...

But the mathematical approach is very interetsing.

Well let's see how William handles positive remarks:

This fellow is astonishingly intelligent and facile in his remarks: I wish I was half as smart.

I can write a good tune now and then at least.

Btw he's also an excellent composer with his own musical language that is romantic and modern at the same time.

I'll agree with that.

I've seen him 'speak' and heard his music.

Very talented fellow, who has my respect and admiration.

Alex.

Thanks Dave and Alex - sorry to be sappy but the feeling's mutual.

On that example from Wolfram I think weslldeckers is right. It is an interesting concept, and I agree that music can simply be an interesting pattern, but it doesn't sound all that good. I think I like Wolfy better than Wolfram.

But do you believe in Wolfram's "Scientific Foundations" concerning his new music:

http://tones.wolfram.com/about/how.html

Yes, I believe that. It is very interesting and probably brilliant, but I don't do it because I suppose I already have my own automata somewhere inside my brain. Seriously, I'm not trying to be funny or a smart-ass, I can't understand that stuff in relation to music which to put it bluntly I just do without thinking.

Hello - I started reading this thread a while ago but have not kept up to date with it... [[:|]]

But I just listened to the Wolfram tones site and what was interesting to me about it (in relation to this thread) was this:

Here is a little tool for translating these examples of randomness/mathemtical equations into music form, yet someone along the way couldn't resist constricting the notes to scales and adding some cheesy GM instruments to make it all sound a bit more familiar.

I actually prefered it with the controls at the bottom of the page set to play all 12 notes, with no accompaniment, full range of notes and a simplle celesta, harp or piano.

But it made me think this making things more familiar is exactly what we as human beings do all the time.... we perceive the energy of the universe directly, (as a newborn baby does) yet we have all been brought up to make our perceptions fit a system of interpretation, an inventory of the world. What we commonly call perception is, in fact, just the reflection of our inventory. This is why when we experience new things they are always somehow familiar to us!

As composers (or simply as human beings who seek more than an endlessly familiar inventory) it is a matter of bridging our less socialized sides with our more socialized sides (so we can be inspired and THEN turn our inspiration into something which is comprehendible by all).

Ok so some composers just like to make complex/clever arrangements of utterly familiar themes and there have been great composers of that kind.

But in my view the really great composers are the ones who go the furthest in both directions - the utterly astract and the familiar concrete - and somehow manage to span the distance between leading one into the other, without loosing too much on the way.
[:D]

@MarkOfTheStoat said:

...But in my view the really great composers are the ones who go the furthest in both directions - the utterly astract and the familiar concrete - and somehow manage to span the distance between leading one into the other, without loosing too much on the way.
[:D]

Would that make you a fan of Charles Ives then? and presumably John Cage. I'm with you there. [:)]

@William said:

Yes, I believe that. It is very interesting and probably brilliant, but I don't do it because I suppose I already have my own automata somewhere inside my brain. Seriously, I'm not trying to be funny or a smart-ass, I can't understand that stuff in relation to music which to put it bluntly I just do without thinking.

Says on the page mentioned:
"Scientific Foundations
WolframTones is based on a core discovery of Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science: that in the computational universe even extremely simple rules or programs can give behavior of great complexity."

In what do you believe here? Do you perhaps mean that " simple rules or programs can give behavior of great complexity" is a scientific claim? If so do you also believe that that claim has something to do with basic philosophy of music? I am not convinced, yet, but I listening... LG (PS. read Wolfram's book very soon after its publication)

Here's an interesting quote from the site:

Each composition in a sense tells in music the story of some system in the computational universe. And because the system follows a definite consistent rule, the compositions inevitably have a certain internal consistency--which is probably what makes them so effective as music.

This is the same principle found in most composition as with Mahler's cells: as long as there is a consistancy it will be percieved on some level by the listener. Recently analyzing Honneger's 3rd I found unconventional movement everywhere by it was consistant in various ways such as intervalic movement. This was his own order of things and worked great.

This is almost an extrapolation on chaos theory, to use an analagous scientific stance. The randomness so determinedly processed as non-systematic is in fact an ordered sequence. The length of the sequence might be considerable, and in fact lend some perceived weight to the conjecture of random twelve tone output (Schoenberg tried this with more restraint), but the reality is, the argument of randomness is inevitably defeated by the eventual duplication of sequence.
We often think of musical phrases and variations as a one bar phrase or idea, maybe two bars, maybe even eight bars or 16. But if a phrase is 128 bars, or 2654 bars long, it's still reaches a point of repetition. How many combinations of 12 can you create before hitting the same sequence or set of multi sequences again?
If by using random as a genre you imply no repetition, then that's actually, factually, mathematically impossible. Even with 38 microtones, or 3,600,000 molecular tones, the repetition must come. so you need something to backup this statement of random. and like so many before, those who postulate random as a genre, or musical 'non-structure' is comparing it to music we view as conventional, however unconventional it may be.
The fabric and structure of our universe is anything but random, and although the equation might be measured as 'infinite to the power of forever,' because we can't measure any further with current knowledge or method or scientific imagination, infinity and forever are emotional labels we attach to what we perceive as unmeasurable by our understanding. If we measure music as random in the computational restrictions of twelve tones, a scientist or cosmologist whose benchmark is trillions of milies or light years, will still discover form and repitition, because that's the fabric that continuing existence at every level relies on.
Twelve tone experimentation has a label i guess because humans need to name everything, often for the ego of self recognition and self adulation as much as identification, but i profoundly disagree with the label 'random' because it simply isn't true.
So, going forward from here, 'random music' as we know it is simply an extra long sequence or phrase, and for me that phrase so often ends up as complete crap, for the boredom of knowing that it will take so long to get to the end, and remain so uninteresting.
It's repetition and variation of repetition that gives music life, as it relates directly to that 'nebulous combination of regularity' that we associate with heartbeat, breathing, walking, earth going around the sun, milky way revolving in a universe within a cosmos, etc.

Regards,

Alex.

@hermitage59 said:

If by using random as a genre you imply no repetition, then that's actually, factually, mathematically impossible. Even with 38 microtones, or 3,600,000 molecular tones, the repetition must come. so you need something to backup this statement of random.

I'm trying to find the post this subject of 'definition of random' refers to (perhaps it is in response to the Wolfram website itself)

But, anyway, I wanted to ask:

Why can't randomness produce repetition?

Surely 'absolutely no repetition' is less random than than 'the random chance of some repetition or perhaps no repetiton'

Surely it's only if the repetition is predetermined that makes it not random.

[[:|]]

@dpcon said:

Here's an interesting quote from the site:

Each composition in a sense tells in music the story of some system in the computational universe. And because the system follows a definite consistent rule, the compositions inevitably have a certain internal consistency--which is probably what makes them so effective as music.

This is the same principle found in most composition as with Mahler's cells: as long as there is a consistancy it will be percieved on some level by the listener..

It is not that simple. There is a mapping from a picture to music and there is no guarantee that the consistency will be preserved. Then there are extras: e.g. Wolframtones has 300 scales.. After that feature any science based on cell automates will blow up!

Nonetheless there are some parameters are there not?