Re: music by numbers

["Sarth" <sarth@sarth.net>]

I'd really like to hear recordings of some of the drumming you're referring
to. I find it very hard to conceptualize drumming where one drummer is
completely out of time with another.

-- Sarth

----- Original Message -----
From: <SoundFNR@aol.com>
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 21, 2002 7:11 AM
Subject: Re: music by numbers


> >  Acoustical theory helped me to devise a reed
> >  instrument with a resonator for each note. The formant of each
resonator
> >  can still be altered by covering and uncovering the holes. Is this
science
> >  or music? Again, I don't mind how you call it; I'm just pleased with
the
> >  sounding result, quite different from any other instrument. And I am
> >  fascinated by the fact that sounds can be visualised, in waveforms by
> means
> >  of an oscilloscope, or with spectral analysis.
>
> can you tell us more about this instrument (very interested)
>
> <A HREF="http://www.c21-orch-instrs.demon.co.uk/"> 21st Century 
>Orchestral
> Instruments</A>
>
> there's a lot of stuff in the downloadable study about how
> tonality might relate to harmony, and new instruments
> (microtonal)
>
>
> >  By the way, numbers were implicit in music long before maths were
> invented.
> >  Anthropologists have found primitive societies where the concept of
time
> is
> >  non-existent. But they did not find societies without music. And where
> >  music is, there is rhythm, and scales, with fixed intervals. Obviously
> >  musicians can play with scrutinous precision to the rhythms and scales
> >  whether or not they are interested in visual representation. The fact
is
> >  that the musical mind loves to hear repetition in well-defined 
>portions
of
> >  time and pitch.
>
> but when I hear recordings of "primitive" cultures
> making music there is not really fixed intervals.
> ...and in some very old cultures the music
> theory is lost, and a glorious out of tuneness
> between the instruments develops.
> Sometimes there's no rhythm, just a pulse.
> The single repeated drum beat.
> Often a second drummer is totally out of time.
> ...and then it sounds real good:-)
>
> Shamanic drumming often seems intended to
> create a continuous drone, with the rhythm/pulse being
> irrelevant. Especially when there's a group of drummers
> all beating different tempi.
>
> I'd also say that people who learn rhythms before
> learning to read music have a distinct advantage
> in the rhythmic feel department.
> (the bar lines interfere with perception somehow)
>
> andy butler
>