A Philosophy of Sound
aeon.co
aeon.co
I have always thought that any extraterrestrial visitors are more likely to be interested in human music more than human mathematics.
But then our two-legged dance music might seem a trivial or degenerate case.
E.g., consider a typical electronic dance music crescendo in common time. Say you've got four beats to a measure. Then you've usually got the first half of a phrase in 4 measures, with the second half of the phrase happening in the next 4 measures.
Now, imagine that this first 8-measure phrase starts a long crescendo that will eventually lead to the "beat dropping"-- i.e., the percussion finally gets introduced. It's pretty easy to imagine an additional 8-measure phrase right after the first one, and being able to hear how they pair together in the unfolding of the crescendo.
Going further, there are a lot of these buildups where two 8-measure phrases are followed by yet another group of two 8-measure phrases to create a larger pair of 16 + 16 measures. So you have:
1. hierarchy or 4 beats to a measure 2. groups of 8 measures phrases 3. pairs of phrases in 8 + 8 measures 4. pairs of pairs in 16 + 16 measures
If you drop the beat after 16 + 16 measures, most listeners would be able to track where they are at each moment of the long crescendo. In other words-- even if you don't know when the beat is going to drop, you can still hear when you start the second group of 8 measures, or when you being the second group of 16, or when you're at the end of the first phrase, etc. The music-listening apparatus in your brain can track that stuff.
The question is: how far out can you take these groups of measures before the listener loses where they are in the larger rhythmic hierarchy?
I like the concept because we can use that to help tell a story. Think about being a kid on a carousel. It starts up, you see a stand, there’s a cool bike, there’s a pretty girl standing in line, there’s your mom, there’s the stand, the bike, the girl, your mom, the stand (cotton candy), the bike, the girl looking at you (!), make a face at your mom, the stand, the bike, smile at the girl (she wasn’t looking), mom’s not looking either, the stand, the bikes gone, the girls smiling at you!!! etc etc.
> Gioia writes: ‘Each major shift in technology changes the way people sing.’ More importantly perhaps, he prophesies that, if authorities don’t interfere, ‘music tends to expand personal autonomy and human freedom’.
I'm not sure I even care if any of this is true. It feels like it's true, but one way or the other I think this is a church I might feel ok worshipping at, so to speak.