Would you like fries with your information?

Paul Erlich wrote...

>>>No wonder, considering the number of times more information that can be
>>>stored in the 7-limit than in any root of 2 temperament with up to 2 times
>>>the number of pitches.
>
>>How do you define information?

If this isn't the hardest question! How do you define information? I think
it is an effect on Time. I don't yet know what exactly this effect is, but
I have some ideas. I don't yet know what these ideas mean for Time's
relativistic definition, but all this is off-topic, and I can't give away
all my secrets.

So, I must appologize for maybe writing too quick. I had just come back
from work, and was in a bit of a state. Later, I realized I didn't know of
a good way to explain this comment. Nevertheless, I hold that it is
correct, if requirin' further explaination. I will do my best.

Lots of stuff has been written on the nature of music. In late 94, I
explained it in terms of my ideas about cognition. Since then, I have found
only two cases where this idea was mentioned by someone other than me -- an
old Minsky essay, and the following...

Beethovan: Music. What is it? I don't understand it! What does it do?

Schindler: It exhalts the soul?

Beethovan: B.S. It is the power of music to carry one directly into the
mental state of the composer. What was I thinking when I wrote this?

Schindler: duh? [listening to something - Kreutzer sonata?]

Beethovan: A man is trying to reach his lover, but his carriage is stuck in
the mud. She will only wait so long. This is the sound of his aggitation!

..from the movie "Immortal Beloved", for all it was and was not. I suppose
things like "the language of music" or "music tames the savage beast" fit
along these lines too, but these are expressions more than things people
think about.

So the idea is that music is a sort of "fake information". The brain hears
it, and thinks it's learning. But it doesn't know *what* it's learning-> I
believe that all information has a certain character that makes learning
possible (the old "Music of the Spheres", with appropriate name). Music can
imitate this, offering a kind of generic data that the brain accepts,
generating appropriate reinforcements (emotions) just like you were learning
to drive or whatever.

So, while music is a form of communication, in that it can create a specific
mental state in the listener that was first in the mind of the composer (or
maybe out of nowhere, if certain conceptualist techniques are used- alg
comp, dice rolling, etc), specific data cannot as yet be transferred (that
is, things like wagon wheel, or mud) without words. This aside, I hope I've
established that information is in there.

How is the information stored? I believe it's all rhythm. Pitch is just a
way to fit more rhythm in. I believe all musical devices (including melody,
fugue, harmony, polyrhythms, etc) have a useful definition in this theory,
and I have classified all the musical devices I could think of. There is
the matter of minor is "sad", and major is "happy", but I'm hoping to god
this is cultural. A single sustained dyad might cause a reaction, but so
does looking at a bright red wall. The study of which harmonies effect your
liver, or which colors heal your spleen really beg the question.

With all that out of the way, I can explain my post. Say I'm an alien
concerned with sending some music to earth. I want to impress the
Earthlings with how much "information" I can fit into a three minute song.
Would I send music tuned in 36 note/octave 7-limit, or in 72 equal?

Well, information is stored in the rhythm, and multiple rhythms are played
at once, kept discrete by their pitch. If my ear sorted these rhythms by
tracking each individual pitch in the tuning, I'd use 72-tone, no contest.
I do have some kickass alien-powered absolute pitch, but my auditory
perception is just like the human auditory perception -> it sorts these
rhythms using relative pitch.

Well it must be obvious what I'm getting at. The number of intervals
provided by the just tuning is far greater than those of the equal-step tuning.

Carl


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From: Carl Lumma
Subject: Call me a "Zartist"
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>>> So, the melody C-D-Dbb-Cx-Dbb-Cx-Dbb-D is the same as C-D-C-D-C-D-C-D?
>>Question: can you _sing_ this progression... accurately? If so, you are a
>true >lusus natur=E6.

That's a valid question, but a more valid question would be whether you
can hear the distinction. I suspect that more people can hear it, at least
in a side-by-side comparison, than can control their voices accurately
enough to sing it.


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From: mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison)
Subject: Re: Judging Effect of Temperaments
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