Why "notes", duples?

Ask general music theory or songwriting questions, get feedback!

Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz

Post Reply
Metrophage
Established Member
Posts: 20
Joined: Sat Apr 30, 2016 6:42 pm

Why "notes", duples?

Post by Metrophage »

It seems like such a simple thing which most people take for granted! Most of what I know about music (not much) has been using computers to sculpt and modify raw sound. I have mucked about with MIDI and DAWs for sequencing events and assembling finished tracks, but it has always seemed so severely conceptually limited in really fundamental ways. And when I have talked with "real musicians" about this, they have tended to have no real answers why, apart from "tradition".

Contrary to what "western music theory" tends to teach, the most basic elements of sound are not harmonies, scales, intervals, etc - but rather simply duration and placement in time. Basically, rhythm is the most basic framework, which melody, harmony etc are layered on top of. But in most western theory, rhythm, the actual progression through time is mostly glossed over entirely, and presumed to be a static thing.

Where this comes to be a huge obstacle in computer music software is in pervasive notions such as a single master tempo, and regular bar-beat structure. Does anybody make a DAW where one can independently vary the tempo and time signature of each track discretely? The bar-beat conundrum seems to derive from the insistence upon "notes" which are entirely duple in nature - always divisible by two. People tell me that it is "easier" somehow to crowbar everything into 4/4, and that notes which are themselves odd divisions are somehow impossible/unthinkable! There is obviously no artistic or practical reason why a note could not be divided by three or five equal durations of time. Yet most musicians protest the idea as if their brains are going to break. Things do not need to be divisible by two to be rational, pretty much anything can be expressed as a ratio.

I can appreciate that many people are deeply invested in the structures and sounds of traditional European musics, and the notations used to realize them. But not everybody is! The old adage rings false to me that "one should learn the systems of these musics rules before they break them". Should I really need to become an expert in western musical theory, learn staff notation, and then translate the math so that I can simply tell a sequencer to play pulses in 5/9 and 7/11 at the same time to hear how they sound? It seems that what people are really saying by this is that I should dedicate myself for years of work towards mastering a huge pseudo-system which is ultimately ill-suited to expressing many kinds of even simple musical ideas.

So, what do you think? Is the inability of western music theory to parse most of the world's music something best glossed over? Is it unthinkable to devise a new symbol to notate a 1/3 note? Or do away with master clock?
Lyberta
Established Member
Posts: 681
Joined: Sat Nov 01, 2014 8:15 pm
Location: The Internet
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: Why "notes", duples?

Post by Lyberta »

I think you forgot or don't know about tuplets.
User avatar
davephillips
Established Member
Posts: 592
Joined: Sat Aug 15, 2015 1:05 pm
Has thanked: 35 times
Been thanked: 23 times

Re: Why "notes", duples?

Post by davephillips »

Greetings,

Henry Cowell addressed similar issues in the 1920s :

http://zztt.org/lmc2_files/Cowell_New_M ... ources.pdf

Also check the music by Elliott Carter and Conlon Nancarrow, both were particularly interested in the matters of time in music.

And check out environments such as Csound or SuperCollider, they're much better tools for the job you're asking about.

Best,

dp
witchspace
Established Member
Posts: 60
Joined: Sun Jul 13, 2014 7:14 pm
Location: Eindhoven

Re: Why "notes", duples?

Post by witchspace »

Metrophage wrote:And when I have talked with "real musicians" about this, they have tended to have no real answers why, apart from "tradition".
Absolutely. Music theory is basically a language. It makes it easier to talk about what you are doing to other musicians. Like in other human languages a lot of things are just tradition, why is a word written in one way or not another, why is grammar a certain way etc. Also listeners have come to expect certain patterns and may be confused by others, but that is very (sub)culture specific.

With the computer (or before, with modular synthesizers) there's no need to do anything in the traditional way. There's no need to write scores for concert performers so you don't need to write your music in note symbols. You can do arbitrary rhythms, arbitrary song speed changes, arbitrary musical scales (why stick to twelve-tone chromatic scale?), or even just filter recorded sounds in creative ways and hope something nice-sounding comes out. That's a lot of freedom and also easy to abuse :D
Should I really need to become an expert in western musical theory, learn staff notation, and then translate the math so that I can simply tell a sequencer to play pulses in 5/9 and 7/11 at the same time to hear how they sound?
That depends on what you want to do? Learning theory can broaden your scope, but so does listening to other culture's music as well as just experimenting. You certainly don't need to be an expert in western music theory to make good music. On the contrary, a lot of people may find that kind of formulaic classical music boring (music theory is mostly used to describe things after the fact - it is not generative). But it depends on who your audience is.
rghvdberg
Established Member
Posts: 1067
Joined: Mon May 12, 2014 7:11 am
Has thanked: 15 times
Been thanked: 36 times

Re: Why "notes", duples?

Post by rghvdberg »

Agreed, music theory doesn't dictate what to do. It isn't a set of rules. It just describes what and how it is commonly done in (western) music.

Btw, tracks in a DAW don't have to follow the tempo or 'grid', just record like you would on an old fashion tape recorder.
User avatar
thumbknuckle
Established Member
Posts: 51
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:16 pm
Location: Western Massachusetts
Contact:

Re: Why "notes", duples?

Post by thumbknuckle »

Metrophage wrote: Is it unthinkable to devise a new symbol to notate a 1/3 note?
That symbol has existed for a long time. It's called a triplet and any competent musician can execute one with no trouble. Things can get much more elaborate than that:

Image
rghvdberg wrote: Btw, tracks in a DAW don't have to follow the tempo or 'grid', just record like you would on an old fashion tape recorder.
This. Turn off the quantization and play tuplets to your heart's content.

Turn off the quantization anyway. Music on a grid sounds terrible.
Faster than a laser bullet.
Louder than an atom bomb.
User avatar
raboof
Established Member
Posts: 1855
Joined: Tue Apr 08, 2008 11:58 am
Location: Deventer, NL
Has thanked: 50 times
Been thanked: 74 times
Contact:

Re: Why "notes", duples?

Post by raboof »

Metrophage wrote:Does anybody make a DAW where one can independently vary the tempo and time signature of each track discretely?
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polytempo . Indeed most DAWs and notation-based applications don't support this. This is a limitation, but on the other hand in many situations it is very convenient.

If you want practical advice (though I'm not sure you do), if you want to keep the guardrails of tempo's and time signatures, but have them independent for tracks, one option might be to open several instances of an application that supports those (one per tempo/timesignature), and link them together with Jack Transport synchronization (https://wiki.linuxaudio.org/apps/catego ... _transport).
Metrophage wrote:The bar-beat conundrum seems to derive from the insistence upon "notes" which are entirely duple in nature - always divisible by two. People tell me that it is "easier" somehow to crowbar everything into 4/4, and that notes which are themselves odd divisions are somehow impossible/unthinkable! There is obviously no artistic or practical reason why a note could not be divided by three or five equal durations of time. Yet most musicians protest the idea as if their brains are going to break.
This seems to be a bit of a straw man: I don't think I've ever heard anyone claim this. As mentioned before in this thread, tuplets are very common in western music. Even in the old (admittedly fairly unsophisticated) MIDI clock, the number of PPQN (pulses per quarter note, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulses_per_quarter_note) were typically chosen in such a way that they were easily divisible. Of course the whole point of this system is to have a 'global beat', something that you might scoff at in general, but remember that this is an optional system.
Metrophage wrote:so that I can simply tell a sequencer to play pulses in 5/9 and 7/11 at the same time to hear how they sound?
Can you explain what you mean by '5/9' and '7/11'?
merlyn
Established Member
Posts: 1392
Joined: Thu Oct 11, 2018 4:13 pm
Has thanked: 168 times
Been thanked: 247 times

Re: Why "notes", duples?

Post by merlyn »

@thumbknuckle : I also thought of Frank Zappa while reading @Metrophage's (confused) post.

Is that a Steve Vai transcription you posted?
User avatar
thumbknuckle
Established Member
Posts: 51
Joined: Sun Oct 19, 2014 6:16 pm
Location: Western Massachusetts
Contact:

Re: Why "notes", duples?

Post by thumbknuckle »

merlyn wrote:@thumbknuckle : I also thought of Frank Zappa while reading @Metrophage's (confused) post.

Is that a Steve Vai transcription you posted?
Just something I found with google, although I don't think it comes from Vai's work. Most of the Steve Vai transcriptions are of improvisations, this was a notated piece from the start.
Faster than a laser bullet.
Louder than an atom bomb.
merlyn
Established Member
Posts: 1392
Joined: Thu Oct 11, 2018 4:13 pm
Has thanked: 168 times
Been thanked: 247 times

Re: Why "notes", duples?

Post by merlyn »

thumbknuckle wrote:Most of the Steve Vai transcriptions are of improvisations
You're right. I was thinking of Black Napkins.

Something that jumped out at me was bar three. Modern practice would notate it like this :
BarThree.png
BarThree.png (4.51 KiB) Viewed 9706 times
I found a video with the sheet music. It's good to hear what the dots sound like. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyH8A_XPXeM
caryoscelus
Established Member
Posts: 71
Joined: Thu Mar 21, 2019 3:54 pm
Location: Tbilisi
Has thanked: 16 times
Been thanked: 12 times
Contact:

Re: Why "notes", duples?

Post by caryoscelus »

Metrophage wrote:Does anybody make a DAW where one can independently vary the tempo and time signature of each track discretely?
I would really like to have a DAW like that. Emulating that by time-scaling notes manually is possible (e.g. in ardour), but it would take a lot of manual effort and would be very inconvenient to edit.
libre artist in many media :: site :: support my music on badcamp :: liberapay ::
ko-fi
User avatar
raboof
Established Member
Posts: 1855
Joined: Tue Apr 08, 2008 11:58 am
Location: Deventer, NL
Has thanked: 50 times
Been thanked: 74 times
Contact:

Re: Why "notes", duples?

Post by raboof »

caryoscelus wrote:
Metrophage wrote:Does anybody make a DAW where one can independently vary the tempo and time signature of each track discretely?
I would really like to have a DAW like that. Emulating that by time-scaling notes manually is possible (e.g. in ardour), but it would take a lot of manual effort and would be very inconvenient to edit.
Did you see my suggestion above of using multiple DAW (or sequencer) instances and syncing them together with Jack Transport synchronization? I'm curious how you'd apply this concept without ending up with a mess musically speaking though ;).
caryoscelus
Established Member
Posts: 71
Joined: Thu Mar 21, 2019 3:54 pm
Location: Tbilisi
Has thanked: 16 times
Been thanked: 12 times
Contact:

Re: Why "notes", duples?

Post by caryoscelus »

raboof wrote: Did you see my suggestion above of using multiple DAW (or sequencer) instances and syncing them together with Jack Transport synchronization? I'm curious how you'd apply this concept without ending up with a mess musically speaking though ;).
I've read it now. That would probably work nicely with Non ;) Not sure if Ardour or something won't be annoyed by multiple instances of itself, but it still adds some manual syncing work. But otherwise good idea, maybe i should try it one day

For multiple tempos with rational proportions it's also possible to simply use differently sized notes. I'm pretty sure i did something like having 5 notes per bar on bass and 4 per bar on drums. Another workaround is to make rhythm using synths and/or effects, but that won't work for melodies.
libre artist in many media :: site :: support my music on badcamp :: liberapay ::
ko-fi
Post Reply