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Sir Mustapha Group: Musicians Posts: 2802 Joined: April 2003 Posted: Dec. 24 2007, 10:55 Quote (moonchildhippy @ Dec. 24 2007, 10:23) Back to music, I agree that having the ability to put a series of chords/notes together into a striking tune is far from matematical.  Speaking as a would be guitarist, well I try to play my guitar, I don't really consider the maths involved in a piece of music, other than trying to keep the rythym.  When I listen to a piece of music I don't really think of the maths behind it other than the timing of the piece, for me I just wish to engage in the pleasure the combination of notes/chords brings to my ears    , which to me ia more of an art form than a mathematical equation. I did address that point earlier on. Consciously, you're not thinking of music in mathematical terms. Music is this sort of shapeless, organic being, and that's how you can extract all the things you do from music. But internally, music has its own logic. A piece of music is an algorithm. The relationship between sounds and frequencies are things you can calculate. But that is analysis. I don't think you can consciously do that while you're listening. But the fact is, the brain processes all those things in measurable and observable ways. Whether you can find an applied use for that is another matter. If you're willing to accept an empirical example, well, I'm studying Computer Science in college, and I write music. Whether I'm good or not is something else, but I also have colleagues who like and play music and all. I don't think those skills are mutually exclusive - the music business is filled with engineers and scientists, and even they need to have some ear for music in order to know what they are doing. Quote Maybe music is one art form where maths, physics and art successfully combine. Bingo. It's a happy combination, and you don't need to know it inside out in order to appreciate music properly. -------------- Check out http://ferniecanto.com.br for all my music, including my latest albums: Don't Stay in the City, Making Amends and Builders of Worlds. Also check my Bandcamp page: http://ferniecanto.bandcamp.com Back to top

Ray Group: Members Posts: 857 Joined: Jan. 2000 Posted: Dec. 28 2007, 19:16 Quote (jonnyw @ Dec. 23 2007, 14:48) you are all missing the point!! Naaaa.. I think you are.  You need to chill a bit and take a helicopter view, rather than that of one teacher!!  I guess that ability comes with age.       -------------- Looking out over the harbour in Peel....... Back to top

Silver Negus Group: Members Posts: 357 Joined: Sep. 2007 Posted: Dec. 31 2007, 10:04 I still believe art forms contain some kind of structure, which is also considered mathematical.  -Not literally having to mean numbers.  We have ideas, we connect them in some way. This is still partially mathematical, and about structure. Writers- They need to think logically about how to structure their stories. Actors- Need to think about their characters and objectives in their work. Dancers- Need to structure their dances with motifs and beats like a musician. Artists- Still need to have some kind of structure to their work. Directors- Need to keep structure within a production in order to create a good performance. However, where the creativity comes in, the ideas about meaning etc does not necessarily have to conform. Back to top

Alan D Group: Members Posts: 3670 Joined: Aug. 2004 Posted: Dec. 31 2007, 16:56 This thread has wobbled about all over the place, so I'm not sure exactly what I'm responding to. So I thought I'd just chat away pleasantly, vaguely on topic. Heck, it's New Year's Eve, so why not? The weird (and really quite awesome) thing about maths is the fact that it bears any relation to the real world at all. Mathematics is a pure abstraction with its own internal and entirely self-consistent logic, and there's no conceivable reason why it should turn out to be so successful at describing nature. For instance, we all know that the square root of 4 is 2, right? And we all know that a negative number can't have a square root, yes? - because no real number, multiplied by itself, can produce a negative result. So the mathematician adopts the idea of imaginary numbers that have no counterpart in the real world but which, when multiplied by themselves, produce a real, negative number; and he goes on to develop a whole set of self-consistent rules that these imaginary numbers obey. Still with me? Now here's the amazing thing. These imaginary numbers can be used to develop a mathematical model of a wave (a sound wave for instance) which predicts the behaviour of real sound waves (or any other waves) wonderfully well. I don't think any philosopher, mathematician, or physicist, has ever come up with a satisfying general explanation of why this correspondence between mathematics and the real universe works. Sometimes the universe seems more like an idea than a thing. This battle that goes on between the arts and the sciences is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of science. Science doesn't provide explanations - it provides theoretical models (often mathematical models). A good model will predict the outcomes of experiments very well, and be retained. A bad model will make less successful predictions, and be discarded. Sooner or later every model will fail. The history of science is littered with discarded models. The reason science has been so successful during the last few centuries is NOT because it explains everything, but because it can make successful predictions (within limits). We now know that Newton's theories are wrong - not just slightly wrong, but fundamentally flawed. They definitely don't provide an acceptable 'explanation' of the way the universe works: but we can still use them to send a spacecraft to the moon, because, within limits, they're good at predicting outcomes. There's something beautiful about good scientific models, and you only need to look back at the comments earlier in this thread to see how people respond to that. Sir Mustapha and Jonny both 'love' physics. That's a most unscientific attitude, but it's why we do science - because the elegance of the models makes us feel better, and because the highly predictive nature of science makes us feel we understand things better. That's an illusion of course - we don't understand anything at all. As one famous physicist said: 'if you think you understand quantum physics, you can be sure that you don't.' Or words to that effect. The trouble is that so often these fundamental issues are forgotten, and the scientific models are mistaken for the truth. That's where the trouble starts, and that's why the pronouncements of scientists often rub artists up the wrong way. The real truth is that music is one of the ways in which we feel we can make sense of the world in which we find ourselves, and so are all the arts. And so is science. They're all essential human activities, and none of them has - or should have - the last word. Back to top

Sweetpea Group: Members Posts: 1476 Joined: April 2007 Posted: Jan. 01 2008, 23:28 Quote (Alan D @ Dec. 31 2007, 16:56) Still with me? It's still good to have you back. -------------- "I'm no physicist, but technically couldn't Mike both be with the horse and be flying through space at the same time? (On account of the earth's orbit around the Sun and all that). So it seems he never had to make the choice after all. I bet he's kicking himself now." - clotty Back to top

Silver Negus Group: Members Posts: 357 Joined: Sep. 2007 Posted: Jan. 03 2008, 11:06 Structure and creativity still overlap in any performance industry, whether we like it or not. Structure is mathematical and logical, and we need this to have a successful artistic piece at the end of the day. No structure equals a messy piece of work. Maths (structure) will always co-incide with any artistic venture to some degree. Back to top

Sir Mustapha Group: Musicians Posts: 2802 Joined: April 2003 Posted: Jan. 03 2008, 14:53 Quote (Silver Negus @ Jan. 03 2008, 11:06) Structure and creativity still overlap in any performance industry, whether we like it or not. Structure is mathematical and logical, and we need this to have a successful artistic piece at the end of the day. No structure equals a messy piece of work. Hey, mr. Squarepusher! Check this out!... -------------- Check out http://ferniecanto.com.br for all my music, including my latest albums: Don't Stay in the City, Making Amends and Builders of Worlds. Also check my Bandcamp page: http://ferniecanto.bandcamp.com Back to top

Alan D Group: Members Posts: 3670 Joined: Aug. 2004 Posted: Jan. 03 2008, 16:51 Quote (Silver Negus @ Jan. 03 2008, 16:06) Structure and creativity still overlap in any performance industry, whether we like it or not. Structure is mathematical and logical, and we need this to have a successful artistic piece at the end of the day. No structure equals a messy piece of work. Maths (structure) will always co-incide with any artistic venture to some degree. I don't find this equating of mathematics and structure helpful, myself. Obviously any work of art must have a structure of some kind (in order to exist as a conception in the artist's mind), but I don't see why that means it must also be mathematical. For example, a tree has a structure (the same kind of organic structure, perhaps, as many works of art), but I wouldn't want to try to insist that structure of that kind is mathematical. I mean - you CAN attempt to describe the structure of a tree in terms of fractals, statistics, and chaos theory, but all you get when you do that is a pattern that looks vaguely like a generalised tree. It kind of misses the point about the quiddity of this particular tree, somehow: how it got here; the trials it endured; the sheer story of it. The same goes for a work of art. Back to top

The Big BellEnd Group: Members Posts: 971 Joined: Jan. 2004 Posted: Jan. 03 2008, 18:34 I love that poem by W H AUDEN -------------- I, ON THE OTHER HAND. AM A VICTIM OF YOUR CARNIVOUROUS LUNAR ACTIVITY. Back to top

Sir Mustapha Group: Musicians Posts: 2802 Joined: April 2003 Posted: Jan. 03 2008, 20:19 Quote (Alan D @ Jan. 03 2008, 16:51) Obviously any work of art must have a structure of some kind (in order to exist as a conception in the artist's mind), but I don't see why that means it must also be mathematical. For example, a tree has a structure (the same kind of organic structure, perhaps, as many works of art), but I wouldn't want to try to insist that structure of that kind is mathematical. I mean - you CAN attempt to describe the structure of a tree in terms of fractals, statistics, and chaos theory, but all you get when you do that is a pattern that looks vaguely like a generalised tree. It kind of misses the point about the quiddity of this particular tree, somehow: how it got here; the trials it endured; the sheer story of it. The same goes for a work of art. Correct me if I miss your point, but there is a difference between finding a viable mathematical model for trees (which would probably result in your suggestion of a generalised tree) and finding an actual mathematical representation of one particular tree. I'm talking hypothetically here, but I don't think it's a stretch to think you can express one tree entirely in mathematical terms. Whether you'd put that to any use, and whether it would be viable, is something else. Eventually you could stumble into a continuous function that stretches towards both infinities, or an infinite series or something, but at least you can model it, whatever may be your criteria. For example, if you want to transport that tree to a computer generated 3D environment, you'll be obliged to express it in terms of equations, vectors and all that; in that way, you'll be limited by the capacity of representation inherent to the computer. The same happens with music, when you record it on any digital media. An entire song is broken down into numbers, and even though what you get in the end is a reconstruction of a sound wave which lose any frequencies above ~22kHz (for CD quality, iirc), it is sufficient for us. But if you're talking in more abstract, theoretical terms, you have the Fourier transform which will give you the entire frequency spectrum of that wave. I'm walking on rocky terrain here, mind. My "belief" (mind the quotes) is that if something can't be expressed in mathematical terms somehow, then it just defies everything we know. But finding those mathematical methods might be even impossible, in the end, to the point that we fail to even imagine how it will be - thus giving it that air of impossibility. Mathematics is such a wild, absurdly big thing, that we don't even know it very well. There's so much to it that, sometimes, the "limitations" of mathematics are actually limitations of what we think it can do. Or something. -------------- Check out http://ferniecanto.com.br for all my music, including my latest albums: Don't Stay in the City, Making Amends and Builders of Worlds. Also check my Bandcamp page: http://ferniecanto.bandcamp.com Back to top

Alan D Group: Members Posts: 3670 Joined: Aug. 2004 Posted: Jan. 04 2008, 03:57 Quote (The Big BellEnd @ Jan. 03 2008, 23:34) I love that poem by W H AUDEN Which one, TBBE? Back to top

Alan D Group: Members Posts: 3670 Joined: Aug. 2004 Posted: Jan. 04 2008, 04:36 Quote (Sir Mustapha @ Jan. 04 2008, 01:19) I'm talking hypothetically here, but I don't think it's a stretch to think you can express one tree entirely in mathematical terms. Whether you'd put that to any use, and whether it would be viable, is something else. Eventually you could stumble into a continuous function that stretches towards both infinities, or an infinite series or something, but at least you can model it, whatever may be your criteria. Yes. You could, theoretically (though as you suggest, I think it may not be a viable process), end up with an almost perfect image of the tree. But you don't get the tree - its physicality - its smell, how its branches sound in the wind - or, to quote myself, "how it got here; the trials it endured; the sheer story of it". I'm straying somewhat from Silver Negus's point, however. On a practical level, I'm just expressing the view that equating structure (in a work of art in this case) with mathematics doesn't help me understand anything. Of course if you insist that everything is mathematical, then structure is mathematical, because structure is part of the 'everything'. But again, I wouldn't find that helpful in any practical sense. Quote My "belief" (mind the quotes) is that if something can't be expressed in mathematical terms somehow, then it just defies everything we know. I take a different position on this. I think we know virtually nothing (though we live with the illusion that we know a lot), so I think almost everything is capable of defying everything we know. But let me just make one more observation, and stick within the terms of Information Theory and/or Occam's Razor. A painter looks at the landscape, mixes a colour, and with a sweep of his arm, makes a brushstroke onto his canvas. Now, if a billion mathematicians spent a billion years modelling those few seconds of activity, they might, I grant you, be able to produce a broadly analogous mathematical representation of that sequence of actions. But at what phenomenal cost, in terms of information! To me, that suggests the whole idea is on the wrong track - that the attempt to produce a mathematical model of the event is fundamentally misguided - a bit like going to the local chemists via Alpha Centauri. (You might enjoy the trip, but it's not a good way to get your paracetamol.) Back to top

Sir Mustapha Group: Musicians Posts: 2802 Joined: April 2003 Posted: Jan. 04 2008, 06:48 Quote (Alan D @ Jan. 04 2008, 04:36) Yes. You could, theoretically (though as you suggest, I think it may not be a viable process), end up with an almost perfect image of the tree. But you don't get the tree - its physicality - its smell, how its branches sound in the wind - or, to quote myself, "how it got here; the trials it endured; the sheer story of it". That's true. Quote I'm straying somewhat from Silver Negus's point, however. On a practical level, I'm just expressing the view that equating structure (in a work of art in this case) with mathematics doesn't help me understand anything. Of course if you insist that everything is mathematical, then structure is mathematical, because structure is part of the 'everything'. But again, I wouldn't find that helpful in any practical sense. And yep, it will only be helpful if you already have a well set purpose right from the start (even though many discoveries happen by accident, but hey, let's not add even more variables to the equation - ha! ), otherwise it's either pointless, or an empty display of knowledge. Saying that "everything is mathematical", at least if I say that, is merely an over-simplification of one aspect of things. Everything has mathematics in it, somehow (which was the initial point I made, that started all that commotion), but we don't need to be consciously aware of that at all times. I can even say we shouldn't. It's analogous to being aware that all our thoughts and ideas are chemical reactions in our brains. They are, in the end (at least according to my personal, non-spiritual ideology), but we don't need to reduce our entire lives to that. We can abstract the reactions and live our life the way we perceive it. In the end, it's not a matter of "seeing maths in everything", which I do find kind of sick, and I would not do in spite of all my babble. Instead, it's a matter of not neglecting or denying the scientific nature of things - even art. Quote I take a different position on this. I think we know virtually nothing (though we live with the illusion that we know a lot), so I think almost everything is capable of defying everything we know. But that's unscientific! -------------- Check out http://ferniecanto.com.br for all my music, including my latest albums: Don't Stay in the City, Making Amends and Builders of Worlds. Also check my Bandcamp page: http://ferniecanto.bandcamp.com Back to top

Alan D Group: Members Posts: 3670 Joined: Aug. 2004 Posted: Jan. 04 2008, 11:37 Quote (Sir Mustapha @ Jan. 04 2008, 11:48) It's analogous to being aware that all our thoughts and ideas are chemical reactions in our brains. They are, in the end (at least according to my personal, non-spiritual ideology) This is in danger of becoming a terrifyingly wide-ranging discussion (though I'm afraid we're hijacking Silver Negus's thread). I think this comment about the chemical reactions is philosophically unsound. I'd maintain that my thoughts and ideas are not chemical reactions in my brain. It's true that if you examined my brain while I was thinking, you'd observe a whole heap of electrochemical stuff going on - but that isn't to say they're the same thing. There's no need to introduce a spiritual element - I promise I'm not trying to do that. But I do maintain that my thoughts are an entirely different kind of thing to the chemical movements in my brain, in the same way, for instance, as my home is not the same thing as the sum of the bricks it's built with. Chemicals aren't the same as concepts. For instance, even without invoking more complex mental activity, it's evident that basic mathematical or logical thoughts can be true or false. Chemical reactions are just chemical reactions, and can't be true or false about anything. They just are. Quote it's a matter of not neglecting or denying the scientific nature of things - even art. I feel uneasy about this. I don't think the 'nature of things' is scientific. Things are what they are, not what science (or any other investigative process) might declare them to be. Scientific inquiry is an invented human activity which allows us to make certain kinds of statements (very limited, but often useful, statements) about what the nature of things might be like. But I wouldn't want to have to defend a position in which scientific statements were accepted as the only valid ones - as the logical positivists would have it. Quote But that's unscientific! Yes it is (and that's kind of my point, in a subtle sort of way), but it's also the philosophically sound position to adopt, I believe. When we've stopped laughing, of course. Back to top

The Big BellEnd Group: Members Posts: 971 Joined: Jan. 2004 Posted: Jan. 04 2008, 14:13 The Night Mail, it's on the previous page. Anyway  even the biggest brains found that maths was'nt the answere to everything, infact I read that when the great , Albert Einstein suffered from constipation he tried but failed to work it out with a pencil. This thread may have it's plus and minus point's but I don't get a large percentage of it. I also think it is making divisions among poster's, hopefully my comment's don't multiply any ill feeling that is going around, I mean I don't want to make a Decahedron out of a Rhombus. In all honesty when it comes to math I'm a bit of a square. -------------- I, ON THE OTHER HAND. AM A VICTIM OF YOUR CARNIVOUROUS LUNAR ACTIVITY. Back to top

Sir Mustapha Group: Musicians Posts: 2802 Joined: April 2003 Posted: Jan. 04 2008, 15:55 Quote (Alan D @ Jan. 04 2008, 11:37) I think this comment about the chemical reactions is philosophically unsound. I'd maintain that my thoughts and ideas are not chemical reactions in my brain. Right, I'll be a coward and use a very unfair example in my own area. Take your computer. Every kind of software you run are absolutely nothing but bits; 0 and 1; true and false; electrical current or no electrical current. The words you write, the messages you see, the sounds you hear - everything IS bits. Everything. Positively everything. The computer sees and generates nothing but long sequences of those two values, and nothing else. Everything you do on your PC turns into bits, and everything you get comes from the bits. But we don't need to be constantly aware of that - not anymore, after all, we're way past the 50's. We now have powerful hardware that can transform those bits into humanly readable things in their (metaphorical) sleep, so we see and hear the things those bits generate as if they exist on their own; but they don't. The computer is a radical example, because we don't just say the images, files and sounds and everything "can be represented as bits": they are represented as bits and they ARE bits. Of course, it's a very rocky path, if it even exists, to show any equivalence between a silicon microprocessor and the human brain; but my initial idea is that. Maybe yes, maybe our thoughts can't be completely reduced down to chemistry, but heck, our entire consciousness is the work of those cells. Even if what they do together is infinitely larger than the sum of its parts, the sum of its parts is still relevant, so much that recently it's been discovered that the power of one single braincell is much bigger than what was initially thought. Quote I feel uneasy about this. I don't think the 'nature of things' is scientific. Things are what they are, not what science (or any other investigative process) might declare them to be. That's not what I meant. I'm sorry for the bad wording from my part. I didn't mean to say the nature of things is scientific. That doesn't even make much sense, I mean, I definitely used stupid words that. My idea was that I don't think there's anything that's completely untouchable by human reasoning, logical questioning, rational understanding and investigation. That's one point; and the second is that I don't think there's anything "sacred" that would be "spoiled" by a scientific view. Scientists studying music? That's not a blasphemy, is it? That's not "missing the point", is it? Maybe they'll end up with nothing useful, depending on their approach, but there's nothing wrong with it. Of course we can attach a lot of significance and emotion to music, but science doesn't forbid anyone from doing it. -------------- Check out http://ferniecanto.com.br for all my music, including my latest albums: Don't Stay in the City, Making Amends and Builders of Worlds. Also check my Bandcamp page: http://ferniecanto.bandcamp.com Back to top

Alan D Group: Members Posts: 3670 Joined: Aug. 2004 Posted: Jan. 04 2008, 17:16 Quote (Sir Mustapha @ Jan. 04 2008, 20:55) Every kind of software you run are absolutely nothing but bits; 0 and 1; Yes, I'm happy up to here, of course. Quote true and false Ah, now there I put up my hand and object. '1 and 0' are states, which in themselves are meaningless. 'True and False' are concepts, which we superimpose on the states to give them meaning. Similarly, when we listen to music from a CD, the information on the CD is held as bits as you say. But the music we actually experience is conceptual, and a completely different order of 'thing' to the bits that store the information. Can I refer back to my discussion of 'home' that I mentioned earlier? The bricks that make up the house are like the bits that make up the information on the CD. But my concept of 'home' is a different order of thing to the organised collection of bricks. Quote I don't think there's anything "sacred" that would be "spoiled" by a scientific view. I entirely agree. You can examine anything scientifically. But what is so often overlooked is the fact that science, by its very nature, limits the kind of questions it can ask, and the kind of observations that can be made, and therefore its conclusions can only be valid within those limits. What I mean is that when a scientist examines the brain of someone reading a poem, and finds only electrochemical reactions, he mustn't conclude that therefore thoughts are 'only' electrochemical reactions. He isn't equipped to detect anything except electrochemical reactions. The conceptual impact of the poem isn't something science can observe. Finding footprints in the snow is not the same thing as seeing the yeti. Back to top

Alan D Group: Members Posts: 3670 Joined: Aug. 2004 Posted: Jan. 04 2008, 17:21 Quote (The Big BellEnd @ Jan. 04 2008, 19:13) This thread may have it's plus and minus point's but I don't get a large percentage of it. I also think it is making divisions among poster's, hopefully my comment's don't multiply any ill feeling that is going around, I mean I don't want to make a Decahedron out of a Rhombus. In all honesty when it comes to math I'm a bit of a sqaure. I hear what you're saying, TBBE, but there's something about it that doesn't add up. Back to top

Harmono Group: Members Posts: 759 Joined: May 2005 Posted: Jan. 04 2008, 21:59 Quote (Sir Mustapha @ Dec. 23 2007, 17:31) You don't put maths into things; you extract it out of things. Here's the thing, I watched a movie last night, Tenacious D - The Pick of Destiny. I laughed my arse off. These dudes really did rock. Everything they did (when they ROCKED) was great. What I'm trying to say is that science and music are related but... just read the quote. Back to top

Harmono Group: Members Posts: 759 Joined: May 2005 Posted: Jan. 04 2008, 22:12 and I should add to my previous that this thread and your contributions to it are interesting and super. Back to top

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