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Looper's Delight
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>perhaps it does help to know how sound is generated, etc. but i state that >it doesn't hurt to not know. > >ah, beer. makes the conversation much...more...zzzzzzzzzzz > >-jim cheers. That's what I mean. Some people make beautiful music not bothered by musical theory, some people spend a lifetime analyzing and theorizing about cents and comma's (e.g. Harry Partch), and I am not interested in discussing which way is best, in terms of ethics or esthaetics. To me it's a matter of means to an end. To illustrate my fascination for fysical patterns in sound generation I will give an example. I am interested in sounds which vary not only in pitch or volume but also in quality, like different vowels in vocals. A wah pedal does this for guitar. But how can I do this with an acoustical instrument, without the help of electronics? For trumpet and trombone this can be done with various damping devices, by which you actually change fysical dimensions of the bell. I wanted to see if this can be done for a reed instrument. 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. It effectively supports understanding of acoustical theory, which in turn shows why certain experiments work and others don't. It feeds my fantasies about sound dissociated from their traditional propagators, the existing instruments. It's just part of my toolbox. 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. Musical theorists (e.g. Pythagoras) have analysed these patterns and described them in terms of numbers, and in turn influenced musical practice by refining and promoting their theory. This dialectical process is of course still going on these days. Please note I am not suggesting only theorists contribute to the development of music, I merely state they can contribute to it. Katja.