Bessel function synthesis etc.

FROM: mclaren
TO: New practical microtonality group
SUBJECT: Bessel functions etc.

Haven't heard Bessel function synthesis, and thus I cannot comment on what it sounds like.
Have heard good things about Maple V. Apparently it solves a lot of problems (like finding hte zeroes of nonlinear functions) right out of hte box that Mathematica needs special packages for.
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None of this changes my basic contention that math has no connection with music, and mathematics proves largely useless in analyzing musical tunings.
Ultimately, modern computer music sounds dead and uninteresting because it has narrowed down to a handful of sterile-sounding algorithms like the Fourier Transform. In the old days, back before computer composers had these mathematical tools at their disposal, they created vast ranges of timbres, many of which prove interesting and fascinating even today. Their compositions sounded complex and full of variety.
Examples include "Mutations" by Jean-Claude Risset and James Tenney's "Noise Study."
Today, computer music has been made rigorous and it has been exquisittely mathematized, with the result that all the life has gone out of it. You listen to a computer composition today and within 30 seconds you say, "Oh, yeah, that's [so-and-so] algorithm" and that's it...the music has died. IRCAM remains the worst offender in this regard, with its "compositions" boiling down to nothing more than showpieces for the latest whiz-bang mathematical transform or pde solver or finite-state diddle-whiggy...in the end, who gives a fat rat's ass?
It's the music that matters. And in music, variety remains the spice of life -- alas, using one and only one mathematical method (or even 2 or 3) restricts the computer composer to a narrow range of timbres, and even worse and overall timbral "sound" or "sonic fingerprint" that proves incredibly limiting.
When math took ove rin computer music, the music died. And as the gibberish spouted by ignorami like Paul "All Math, No Music" Erlich shows so clearly, when the math takes over in microtonality, the music also dies.
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--mclaren

--- In crazy_music@y..., xed@e... wrote:

> When math took ove rin computer music, the music died. And as
the gibberish spouted by ignorami like Paul "All Math, No Music"
Erlich shows so clearly, when the math takes over in microtonality,
the music also dies.

I'm Gene "Even More Math, Even Less Music" Smith, so I'm probably not
the one to tell this to.