'Distance' between two chords

As a matter of fact, a prof here at Columbia University, Fred Lerdahl, has
just written a book that addresses precisely the question you ask. It's
called "Tonal Pitch Space" (I believe) and will be out soon, if not
already. It contains theories of "chord distance algorithms" and so on
for tonal music. Although some find his theories to be problematically
arbitrary, nonetheless, there are at the very least some very good ideas
floating around in there.

His other book, "Generative Theory of Tonal Music" written with Ray
Jackendoff, is also something of a classic and attempts to apply Chomsky
lingual theories to tonal music.

Sadly, both of these texts are solidly 12t-ET based.

But that's nothing we all can't fix in due time. . . . . . .

Your application of "distance" ideas to maqams he'd probably find very
interesting; write me off-list and I'll pass you his e-mail.

> Can Akkoc wrote:
>Ladies and Gentlemen,
>
>I have been grappling with the problem of defining a metric for
>characterizing the musical 'distance' between two maqams. Musicians
>constantly refer to different maqams being 'close' or 'distant' in
>their dialogues.
>
>I was wondering whether there is a well established metric defined in
>western music for the musical/harmonic 'distance' between two chords.
>If I am talking nonsense, please ignore this post with my apologies.
>If not, I would be interested in references in the literature.

***From: Christopher Bailey******************

http://music.columbia.edu/~chris

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