The Complexity of Songs

en.wikipedia.org

20 pointstelekid5 comments

There are plenty of genuinely interesting things to say about song structure, and it bothers me that Knuth treated the whole thing as a joke.

Read http://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2015/11421/pdf/Sampl... instead

There's this genuinely interesting web toy that splits a song into multiple fragments and uses the song structure to create songs that loop forever http://infinitejukebox.playlistmachinery.com/

I've looked at that thing for hours just following the jumps.

Steve Allen had some comments on that also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAyxatBvKfg

tendency of popular songs to devolve from long and content-rich ballads to highly repetitive texts with little or no meaningful content.

Sounds like a good thing to me. I like music a lot, and most of the time I prefer it straight-up, undiluted by words. To me (non-verbal) music IS the message, and demoting it to a carrier that has to be modulated by a message to be enjoyed is upside-down. (Excepted: talented singers in a foreign language.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com