[vergesslich22]

Sorry, just for clarification...

So if someone created a musical piece by using Windows Media Player and setting repeat = on. Now a 5 seconds long .wav file is repeated forever. He records it, and this recording results in a 3 minute long musical piece that is nothing but a repeated .wav file.

Now, are these things are true?

1) There is (at least) one structural element in this musical piece. It's a repeated loop. The original 5 seonds .wav file already qualifies as a loop, although it has yet to be repeated. By repeating, the loop becomes a repeated loop. This repeated loop would be called an ostinato.

2) Every musical piece has a form. One could argue that in this case the form consists just of the ostinato. But "ostinato" ist still not the name of the form here, because we assume that we want to continue using the word ostinato for the structural element when the music piece finally gets some intro, ending and some variation inbetween.

That is my interpretation.

 

[bigshot]

It is frustrating to be "told" all the time what I say is wrong.

Then why do you keep inviting it to happen? Set your boundaries and if they are violated, ignore. Interact with people who are more open to relating as a peer. You aren't required to feed narcissism.

 

[gregorio]

I'm sorry. I didn't know this. I thought you studied sound engineering.

I studied sound engineering in my late 20’s informally, by working with world class sound engineers, reading and learning what they suggested and watching them. There were no formal sound engineering courses in the UK when I started as far as I know. Before that, I studied an orchestral instrument, went to a music conservertoire in my late teens and was a professional freelance orchestral musician for a number of years, until switching to sound engineering.

1) There is (at least) one structural element in this musical piece. It's a repeated loop. The original 5 seonds .wav file already qualifies as a loop, although it has yet to be repeated. By repeating, the loop becomes a repeated loop. This repeated loop would be called an ostinato.

Essentially correct in theory. In practice that would never be done because it would be horrifically boring. However, some compositions have come close. Ravel’s Bolero is a good example, it’s essentially the exact same loop repeated 9 times. However, it’s quite a long loop and it does vary dramatically in terms of its orchestration (though the bass, rhythm, melody and basic harmony doesn’t). The aforementioned “I Feel Love” is also very close, although the Cantus Firmus (the vocal Ostinato) is not continuous, it has breaks and the bass ositinato changes key/chord. In both these cases it would be accurate to call them “Ostinato based pieces”.

2) Every musical piece has a form.

Yes, every musical piece has a form. However, some pieces don’t follow any fixed structure and therefore in a sense don’t have any form, although in music theory they do because this type of formless “form” is called “free-form”.

One could argue that in this case the form consists just of the ostinato. But "ostinato" ist still not the name of the form here, because we assume that we want to continue using the word ostinato for the structural element when the music piece finally gets some intro, ending and some variation inbetween.

Essentially correct and there’s no practical need because there is no music to which this hypothetical “Ostinato Form” would apply as far as I’m aware. An Ostinato typically refers to an element, say a bass line, a rhythm or a melody, in a case where it has more than one element, we can typically break it down into smaller elements/structures. The aforementioned Bolero for example, is basically a repeated Ostinato but within each ostinato there are other smaller Ostinati, the snare drum for instance is a much shorter Ostinato that repeats many times within each of the large Ostinati, 169 repeats in total.

G

 

[71 dB]

I studied sound engineering in my late 20’s informally, by working with world class sound engineers, reading and learning what they suggested and watching them. There were no formal sound engineering courses in the UK when I started as far as I know. Before that, I studied an orchestral instrument, went to a music conservertoire in my late teens and was a professional freelance orchestral musician for a number of years, until switching to sound engineering.

G

Aah, okay. Now I know you have a strong music background. For me it is the "other way around." I studied electronic engineering in university (specialising in acoustics and signal processing). I tried to get into music theory on my own since early 90's without success until in summer 2018 at age 47 I understood how music theory is context-dependent thanks to a Youtube video and I started to understand it. I can't play any instrument. I am autistic (aspergers) which makes learning automated motoric sequences almost impossible for me.

 

[gregorio]

Aah, okay. Now I know you have a strong music background.

Yep, that also explains my posts on some of the pieces such as the Rite of Spring. I’d been freelancing for a couple of years with various ensembles, semi-pro and regional pro orchestras when I got my first gig with a world class orchestra (the Royal Opera House orchestra, Covent Garden). The piece was the Rite of Spring and to give you some idea how much I’d studied and practiced it (for years), the Librarian couldn’t find my part so for the first rehearsal I had to play the whole piece from memory. If you know the piece, that’s no mean feat.

I tried to get into music theory on my own since early 90's without success …

It’s awfully hard to just jump into music theory from scratch, on your own without guidance, it’s such a vast subject covering such a long period with so many facets. It’s almost inevitable you’ll miss some of the basics unless you start at the beginning and work your way through, which very few do on their own because they don’t have the time and much of it doesn’t initially appear applicable.

G

 

[Ryokan]

Aah, okay. Now I know you have a strong music background. For me it is the "other way around." I studied electronic engineering in university (specialising in acoustics and signal processing). I tried to get into music theory on my own since early 90's without success until in summer 2018 at age 47 I understood how music theory is context-dependent thanks to a Youtube video and I started to understand it. I can't play any instrument. I am autistic (aspergers) which makes learning automated motoric sequences almost impossible for me.

Some people on the spectrum are very gifted players.

 

[71 dB]

Some people on the spectrum are very gifted players.

Yes, but I am not on that section of the spectrum.

 

[bigshot]

I’m not on the spectrum either. I do play a little guitar though.

 

[Ryokan]

Yes, but I am not on that section of the spectrum.

People commenting on this video are on the higher end of the spectrum. Today the term asperger's isn't used in a diagnosis, they say 'high functioning autism' instead.

 

[gregorio]

Some people on the spectrum are very gifted players.

TBH, I don’t really see what’s supposed to be wrong with the guy. I see music in shapes too, not really shapes as such but a straight horizontal line that goes up and down by varying amounts by means of various curves and gradual or abrupt ramps. I also see this in storylines/films. I think this is common, isn’t that why we call it a story”line” and have terms such as a “story arc”? My “line” can be very detailed because I don’t only see the entire story (or piece of music) as a varying line but can break it down further, a single phrase (musical or spoken sentence) will have a varying line, that is within the varying line of the section, that is within the varying line of the whole piece/story. I presume this is much further/more detailed than most people go but not necessarily much further than other professionals who generally need a deeper understanding.

I can’t make sense of the guy’s drawings, which just appear like a random squiggly line to me and I don’t visualise notes as colours but maybe he and others couldn’t make sense of my line either. He only seems to be going a little further than I do, although somewhat differently and he mentions that all the musicians he’s spoken to also think somewhat in shapes, just not as detailed. So aren’t nearly all of us “on the spectrum” just to varying degrees and at some point we break some invisible line between “normal”/a more detailed visualisation than most others but still “normal” and “clinical disorder”? Maybe he can’t “turn it off”, can only see a guitar chart with coloured missing notes and a squiggly line, rather than just seeing a guitar chart and then developing a visualisation like (most of) the rest of us, and this is what makes it a clinical disorder?

G

 

[Ryokan]

TBH, I don’t really see what’s supposed to be wrong with the guy. I see music in shapes too, not really shapes as such but a straight horizontal line that goes up and down by varying amounts by means of various curves and gradual or abrupt ramps. I also see this in storylines/films. I think this is common, isn’t that why we call it a story”line” and have terms such as a “story arc”? My “line” can be very detailed because I don’t only see the entire story (or piece of music) as a varying line but can break it down further, a single phrase (musical or spoken sentence) will have a varying line, that is within the varying line of the section, that is within the varying line of the whole piece/story. I presume this is much further/more detailed than most people go but not necessarily much further than other professionals who generally need a deeper understanding.

I can’t make sense of the guy’s drawings, which just appear like a random squiggly line to me and I don’t visualise notes as colours but maybe he and others couldn’t make sense of my line either. He only seems to be going a little further than I do, although somewhat differently and he mentions that all the musicians he’s spoken to also think somewhat in shapes, just not as detailed. So aren’t nearly all of us “on the spectrum” just to varying degrees and at some point we break some invisible line between “normal”/a more detailed visualisation than most others but still “normal” and “clinical disorder”? Maybe he can’t “turn it off”, can only see a guitar chart with coloured missing notes and a squiggly line, rather than just seeing a guitar chart and then developing a visualisation like (most of) the rest of us, and this is what makes it a clinical disorder?

G

Maybe your visualization comes more from a lifetime of studying music and waveforms rather than how someone on the spectrum 'see's' things?

 

[Ryokan]

TBH, I don’t really see what’s supposed to be wrong with the guy. I see music in shapes too, not really shapes as such but a straight horizontal line that goes up and down by varying amounts by means of various curves and gradual or abrupt ramps. I also see this in storylines/films. I think this is common, isn’t that why we call it a story”line” and have terms such as a “story arc”? My “line” can be very detailed because I don’t only see the entire story (or piece of music) as a varying line but can break it down further, a single phrase (musical or spoken sentence) will have a varying line, that is within the varying line of the section, that is within the varying line of the whole piece/story. I presume this is much further/more detailed than most people go but not necessarily much further than other professionals who generally need a deeper understanding.

I can’t make sense of the guy’s drawings, which just appear like a random squiggly line to me and I don’t visualise notes as colours but maybe he and others couldn’t make sense of my line either. He only seems to be going a little further than I do, although somewhat differently and he mentions that all the musicians he’s spoken to also think somewhat in shapes, just not as detailed. So aren’t nearly all of us “on the spectrum” just to varying degrees and at some point we break some invisible line between “normal”/a more detailed visualisation than most others but still “normal” and “clinical disorder”? Maybe he can’t “turn it off”, can only see a guitar chart with coloured missing notes and a squiggly line, rather than just seeing a guitar chart and then developing a visualisation like (most of) the rest of us, and this is what makes it a clinical disorder?

G

'All musicians are mathematicians'. Would you agree with this?

 

[71 dB]

People commenting on this video are on the higher end of the spectrum. Today the term asperger's isn't used in a diagnosis, they say 'high functioning autism' instead.

Yes, but I found out I have Asperger's just before they stopped using the term. Despite the term, learning to play musical instruments is very difficult for me, whatever kind of autism that is. I think I have other kind of music talent such as understanding complex counterpoint. My brain is good at understanding how complex systems work, but they are bad at other things. I learn new things very slowly at first. I am bad with information that doesn't seem to be part of a logical system. Often I need to re-arrange new information into "logical" form so my brain accepts it. Music theory is a great example of this. For long it felt illogical to me, because I didn't know to add "context layer processing" when thinking about it, but once I did that, I learned a lot quite fast and a lot of music theory feels to me almost self-evident, surprisigly logical because I have it arranged in my head in a manner that suites my brain "OS."

 

[gregorio]

Maybe your visualization comes more from a lifetime of studying music and waveforms rather than how someone on the spectrum 'see's' things?

Maybe but hasn’t the guy in the video also been studying music for a life/long time too. And what about authors/screenwriters who think in terms of storylines and arcs, who’ve probably not encountered waveforms any more than an average member of the public?

I understood how music theory is context-dependent thanks to a Youtube video and I started to understand it.

I missed this before. I don’t know what YouTube vid you’re referring to and therefore exactly what you mean but on the face of it, this appears fundamentally incorrect. By way of analogy, the evolution of say a Pine Tree is obviously very different from say a zebra but the fundamental principles of evolution are the same for all living things and go far enough back in time and there is a common ancestor. Music Theory is the theory of the evolution of music, so fundamentally it is not context-dependent, it is applicable to all music. Up until the 1800’s it was the theory of evolution only of European classical music but unlike the theory of evolution, different “species” can interbreed and in the 1800’s composers started using folk music specific to their countries, so it became the music theory of European classical music and individual European country’s traditional music, although even from around the 1500’s, it incorporated elements from the Middle East. Then the impressionist composers incorporated elements/idioms from Africa and the far east, as the impressionist painters did, which resulted in a significantly different/new style and a bunch of new music theory. Then Schoenberg and others came along and basically tore-up much of the Music Theory “book” and wrote a new set of rules. This 12-Tone Theory was effectively a competitor to Music Theory but we didn’t get Music Theory and Twelve Tone Theory, we just got Music Theory which expanded to include 12 Tone Theory. One could argue the special case of say Indian Classic Music but even that is largely incorporated into Music Theory, although a specialised branch.

So while say Techno doesn’t appear to have anything to do with say Sonata Form, at a very fundamental level it does, certain aspects of Sonata Form could be useful to know and there’s no reason why a Techno composition couldn’t be created in Sonata Form. In fact, there’s very good reason to try! Ask yourself why sonata form lasted such a long time and was so widely employed by so many composers of different classical genres?

G

 

[Steve999]

'All musicians are mathematicians'. Would you agree with this?

Heck no. I’ve known people who can play or sing lights out but they know very little about math and know as little about music theory as they can get by with if they even think of it as music theory.

I also think that people who have natural inclinations and aptitudes for both math and music can do some very cool things by using their math aptitude in furtherance of their musical endeavors. It is a powerful combination of talents.

I think the lines between Asperger’s / high functioning autism and useful and healthy variations of how different people’s brains work is an ongoing sincere, useful and legitimate debate. Unfortunately where there is a diagnosis to be made there is often money to be made also, and therefore there may arise a self-interested cottage industry of professionals with a stake in treatment of, and therefor findings of and preservation of, that diagnosis.