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Pooh-Bah
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Carpal Tunnel
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Math is math, music is math, music is music. Math is not music. Otherwise we'd use the same term to de/pre/proscribe them both.  
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Some math heads can find math in most anything. I understand, of course, that pitch is related to vibrational speed, can be expressed in NUMBERS, volume is related to vibrations, can be expressed in NUMBERS. But the closest I come to finding music in numbers is listening to the touchtone phone when I dial.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Ears are not calculators.
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My temporary position as beelzebub's barrister failed, almost completely! Ears are not calculators. Some are better at it than others, I suppose. When we speak to each other we process a very complex set of *equations that are quite quickly and accurately (for the most part  ) resolved into meaning, intent, accent and perhaps even *direction. Language is quite firm in most of those four divisions (I'm sure there are plenty other ways to analyze that I'm missing, but... and notwithstanding what we'all doing here) Music doesn't make hardly any of those as clear as speech, yet in spite of this can be transcribed about as easily (with training, of course). Scribing the semantics of music is futile even if meaning is often prescribed (eg "fate"=Beethoven's 5th Symph. theme), but the meanings of 'musical' sounds are a personal overlayment. Intent, like language, draws from context, but unlike language (ie: without consistant meaning) is again strictly a personal endeavor. An "accent", comparing music and language, is probably the most mathematically based of those as the ear can tell the style of music (again, if trained) with about as much of a sample as one would need to tell what general accent a person is speaking... an "aural statistic" (so-to-speak). The rules for music are much less stringent and at the same time, within this universality, we only listen/hear a fraction of the possibilities it offers and therefore create more anticipation of understanding of it than we do a wonder of its newness. This may speak toward my suggestion of 'direction'... perhaps a musical application of Chomsky's Syntactical Hierarchy will yeild a "Universal Music Theory"... but I imagine you can hear where this suggestion could lead *us. 
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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>>some are better at it that others<<
[/where's the angry icon?]
Music can be described mathematically, and has developed mathematically. The brain functions engaged in hearing and interpreting it can probably be described mathematically as well. But ears hear. The experience is aesthetic. To say that the immediacy of experience is calculative is, it seems to me, a very popular category error.
Yes, some ears are better than others.
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Quote:
abridged by themilum without proper permission
When we speak to each other we process a very complex set of equations that are quite quickly and accurately resolved into meaning, intent, accent and perhaps even direction. Language is quite firm in most of these four divisions.
Music doesn't make hardly any of those as clear as speech, yet in spite of this can be transcribed about as easily.
Scribing the semantics of music is futlie even if meaning is often prescribed, but the meanings of 'musical' sounds are a personal overlayment. Intent, like language, draws from context, but unlike language, music is again strictly a personal endeavor.
The rules for music are much less stringent and at the same time, within this universality, we can only hear a fraction of the possibilities that it offers and therefore it creates more anticipation of understanding of it than we do at a wonder of its newness. This may speak toward my suggestion of 'direction'... perhaps a musical application of Chomsky's Syntactical Hierarchy will yeild a "Universal Music Theory"...
As for me, Musick, I think that Chomsky is a jerk and a joke and I think you are certainly not. But I don't understand your overall point within your remarks above. Can you give your "meaning" in a different way?
Here is what I think...
I think that music is older than language - obviously - bird songs, the whistling winds in tall trees; all the variable sounds of nature.
Then after we learned to talk some enterprising unknown shaman found out that rhymes and chants gave legs to the myths that gave his tribe social cohesion. Social cohesion is an imperative when your group is fighting other groups and the very esssence of our music today is simply an echo of the social contract that was made a long time ago by tribal man.
What? You think music "Holy"?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Quote:
I think that Chomsky is a jerk and a joke.
That's funny, Milo. He's always spoken very highly of you.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I think we are on the same page here, Insel. it is why I went so far to say "music is math" yet "math is not music". Being more successful at making math out of music is a function not an aesthetic (IMHO). A theory should not be the driving force in composition any more than technique should be the driving force in a performance... yet, often it is what some give highest regard.
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Carpal Tunnel
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I think that Chomsky is a jerk and a jokeWhoa, dude, pretty harsh words. Learn some linguistics and get back to me on why Chomsky is what you say he is. In fact, since music is a a language, hum me a few bars of your thesis. Far be it from me to defend Chomsy's linguistic theories, as I studied with one of his alienated grad students, but to listen to you talk about language is like listening to Bart Simpson scratch out Beethoven's 9th Symphony on a chalkboard. Go back to bird watching and leave language to linguists. 
Ceci n'est pas un seing.
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