[gmpi] Re: Topic 6: Time representation

Thanks for the long and informative post.. any thoughts on how to actually
go about representing this? (one reason I suggested the sync pulse
information should be a rich, extensible event... I figured problems like
this were out there but had, and still have, precious little idea on how
to solve them).


On Tue, 29 Apr 2003, Frederick Umminger wrote:

> PEEVE ALERT:
>
> Despite notational tradition, there is no major musical tradition on this 
> planet whose metrical concepts are accurately expressed by A/B fractions. For 
> instance, as far as the fractions are concerned waltz could just as easily be 
> 6/8 meter. It is not, because it is a convention that 6/8 means duple meter 
> and 3/4 means triple meter. This distinction (between a bar divided into two 
> groups of three and a bar divided into three groups of two) cannot be 
> expressed in a simple two level bar-beat or fractional conception of meter. 
> The 3/4 vs 6/8 convention is basically a hack around a fundamentally broken 
> representation of meter that should not be emulated.
>
> This 3/4 vs 6/8 distinction is not at all an isolated phenomenom. Virtually 
> any classical music of any sophistication has multiple levels of metrical 
> structure. This was reflected in older notational practice, for instance see 
> the metric notation in Jean Philippe Rameau's "Treatise on Harmony" or Thomas 
> Morley's "A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music". But if you think 
> classical music is an irrelevant niche nowadays, consider instead the most 
> basic standard afro-cuban rhythms. They are all nominally 2/4 or 4/4, but in 
> reality they all obviously have distinct multi-level patterns of stressed and 
> unstressed (and swung) beats that are crucial to the feel. For instance, 
> rhumba is 1 bar divided three groups of length 3, 3 and 2, while cha-cha must 
> have the fourth beat subdivided in two with the second part emphasized. It is 
> also obvious that rock and roll, disco, and hip-hop have different patterns 
> and groupings of stressed and unstressed beats which are not reflected i
>  n the standard fractional notation, which instead treats them all the same.
>
> Complex metric differences are, and always have been, one of the primary 
> factors distinguishing different genres of dance music, whether it has been 
> the waltz and the gigue or the samba and the merengue. Reducing these meters 
> to simply beats-per-bar lobotomizes even the lowest of low-brow styles.
>
> It is an exercise for the reader to consider the case of other meter in other 
> major world music traditions, such as North and South Indian classical, 
> Balkan, Balinese, Chinese, Japanese, and various African musics.
>
> This is not just anal-retentive music-theoretic wankery. If the true metric 
> structure is not representable in the API then it cannot be communicated to 
> plugins and as a result the plugins cannot do musically sensible things with 
> it, in the same way a musician could not improvise an appropriate solo if he 
> did not know whether he was playing along to rock and roll, tango, or disco.
>
> A standard API needs to be able to express music in a sensible, musically 
> meaningful way, so that sensible, musically meaningful things can be done 
> with it. Otherwise it is going to limit the music-making of our entire 
> culture for decades to come. Real music of quality, in virtually any genre, 
> simply does not follow the simplistic fractional-meter paradigm.
>
> At the very least the standard has to be able to capture important, obvious, 
> and common distinctions like those between 2+2+2 and 3+3 (3/4 vs 6/8) and 
> 1+1+1+1 and 3+3+2 (4-to-the-floor vs rhumba). Otherwise the meter information 
> is almost useless.
>
> -Frederick Umminger
>
>
> Some references:
>       "The Rhythmic Structure of Music" by Grosvenor Cooper and Leonard Meyer
>       "A Generative Theory of Tonal Music" by Ray Jackendoff and Fred Lerdahl
>       "A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music" by Thomas Morley
>       "Treatise on Harmony" by Jean Philippe Rameau
>       Your favorite brief overviews of talas in Indian music, say 
> http://www.ancient-future.com/theka.html and 
> http://www.angelfire.com/mb/mridhangam/.
>       Your favorite brief overview of African drumming traditions, say 
> http://www.cnmat.berkeley.edu/~ladzekpo/Foundation.html.
>
>
> Homework exercise:
>       Take dance lessons.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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