melody, Can Akkoc, Chalmers

[Can Akkoc]
>>(1) Deviations from an 'anchor' sound forming the said distributions
>>(clusters) seem to be part of a mysterious plan on the part of the
>>artist.
>
>>During the course of an improvisation, which can be viewed as a 'journey'
>>over a finite set of distributions, the pitch for a given note seems to
>>depend on where the music 'has been' for the past "k" steps, including
the >>preceding sound, before getting to that note. This feature makes me
think >>in terms of a model which has some form of long and short term memory.

Boomsliter and Creel are re-born! And are more robust. Mr. Akkoc, your
work sounds very exciting to me. At first look I do agree with Paul Erlich
that this approach is applicable to Western (and other) music.

If only all music theory and psychoacoustics were as keen on observing what
musicians do (rather than having the musicians do something dreamt up for
an experiment) as you seem to be!

[Polychroni N. Moniodis]
>Might I suggest a different approach that removes the "performance"
aspect? >If these performers were given access to an musical instrument
and asked, >for a melody, to slide a pitch upward until it was at the
appropriate value >(or someone else can do the sliding, and the subject
just indicates when to >stop). With the performance element removed, I
surmise that significantly >different results would be recorded than in
taking vocal measurement >directly.

And I shall surmise exactly the opposite.

[Bill Sethares]
>(2) Most likely, the distributions change depending on melodic
>context. For instance, is there a difference if you look at the pitches
>of a given note when the note is preceeded by a lower tone than if
>preceeded by a higher tone?

There may be a small "bag of tricks" like this at work, but I suspect they
can be safely ignored.

[Sethares]
>(3) Most likely, the distributions are dependent on the vertical
>context, that is, those other notes that are currrently sounding. How
>can this be taken into account?

Vertical context is surely a big deal, but melody alone should have it's
own wonders to disclose, and these should be nailed down before moving on
to bigger game, IMO.

[Chalmers]
>Rothenberg also deals with the range of variation that preserves
>"equivalence" class

This is the booty! John, do you happen to know which paper this is in, or
R's catchword for it?

Carl

On Sat, 20 Mar 1999, Carl Lumma wrote:

> From: Carl Lumma <clumma@nni.com>
>
> [Can Akkoc]
> >>(1) Deviations from an 'anchor' sound forming the said distributions
> >>(clusters) seem to be part of a mysterious plan on the part of the
> >>artist.
> >
> >>During the course of an improvisation, which can be viewed as a 'journey'
> >>over a finite set of distributions, the pitch for a given note seems to
> >>depend on where the music 'has been' for the past "k" steps, including
> the >>preceding sound, before getting to that note. This feature makes me
> think >>in terms of a model which has some form of long and short term memory.
>
> Boomsliter and Creel are re-born! And are more robust. Mr. Akkoc, your
> work sounds very exciting to me. At first look I do agree with Paul Erlich
> that this approach is applicable to Western (and other) music.
>
> If only all music theory and psychoacoustics were as keen on observing what
> musicians do (rather than having the musicians do something dreamt up for
> an experiment) as you seem to be!
>
> [Polychroni N. Moniodis]
> >Might I suggest a different approach that removes the "performance"
> aspect? >If these performers were given access to an musical instrument
> and asked, >for a melody, to slide a pitch upward until it was at the
> appropriate value >(or someone else can do the sliding, and the subject
> just indicates when to >stop). With the performance element removed, I
> surmise that significantly >different results would be recorded than in
> taking vocal measurement >directly.
>
> And I shall surmise exactly the opposite.
>
> [Bill Sethares]
> >(2) Most likely, the distributions change depending on melodic
> >context. For instance, is there a difference if you look at the pitches
> >of a given note when the note is preceeded by a lower tone than if
> >preceeded by a higher tone?
>
> There may be a small "bag of tricks" like this at work, but I suspect they
> can be safely ignored.
>
> [Sethares]
> >(3) Most likely, the distributions are dependent on the vertical
> >context, that is, those other notes that are currrently sounding. How
> >can this be taken into account?
>
> Vertical context is surely a big deal, but melody alone should have it's
> own wonders to disclose, and these should be nailed down before moving on
> to bigger game, IMO.
>
> [Chalmers]
> >Rothenberg also deals with the range of variation that preserves
> >"equivalence" class
>
> This is the booty! John, do you happen to know which paper this is in, or
> R's catchword for it?
>
> Carl
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mr. Lumma,

Thank you for your complimentary remarks on my work. I totally agree with
your comment "Vertical context is surely a big deal, but melody alone
should have its own wonders to disclose, and these should be nailed down
before moving on to bigger game,...".

In my humble judgement Turkish music has achieved multi-dimensionality,
a form of musical "richness", through multi-modality. There seems to be a
very intricate grand structure made up of 120 some `maqam's, interconnected
in sophisticated ways, making up the `universe' for this music. An individual
aspiring to become a master of this kind music has to learn and fully
comprehend the musical "architecture" of the said structure. This is an
extremely demanding proposition on the part of the apprentice, requiring
many decades of training with persistence and dedication. Adding vertical
context to such a structure, as some theoreticians have tried to do in the
past, could be very risky if not totally inappropriate.

Regarding a quote from Chalmers, the term "equivalence class" has a very
positive ring to my ears.

Can Akkoc
Alabama School of Mathematics and Science
Mobile, Alabama 36604-2519
Phone: (334) 441-2126
Fax : (334) 441-3290