Hey! It's Music!
I mean, there's notes and everything. So I guess it is.
But gee. Is there someone who can listen to this stuff and like it? My musical tastes are not universal. Arabic music seems dissonant to me, for instance. But Arabs can't seem to get enough of it.
Arabs number in the hundreds of millions, but is there any market for this least-common multiple music? Do avant garde composers come home after a hard day and cue up the "88 notes on a chromatic scale played out of phase" song? Do they relax in their armchairs with a gin and tonic and let every possible chord wash over them?
If so, how did they get to be that way? I bet Arabs like Arabic music because it was playing when they were young and all their friends liked it and there's something about those tunes that meshes with their particular cultural upbringing. I doubt artists have a similar background. What do you have to do when you're fifteen to get to like the mathematical music?
Of course someone thought it would be, if not a pretty song, at least a good idea to write these compositions. Perhaps nobody likes them as music. Perhaps the composer just thought it would sound "neat" or something, and that was enough justification for him to compose what is actually a very simple song.
I have news for him, though. It doesn't sound neat. It goes tinkle tinkle tinkle pause plunk repeat. The number of tinkles and the length of the pauses and the volume of the plunks varies in a mathematical way of course, but not in a way that's interesting to someone without a slide rule in his ear.
In fact, it adds almost nothing to the visual element. The swirling dots are the real attraction here, not the impossible music. Judging from the name of the website, I think the author intended it the other way around, but either I am completely wrong about how other people process music or you should look at "Whitney Music Box" with the sound off.
But gee. Is there someone who can listen to this stuff and like it? My musical tastes are not universal. Arabic music seems dissonant to me, for instance. But Arabs can't seem to get enough of it.
Arabs number in the hundreds of millions, but is there any market for this least-common multiple music? Do avant garde composers come home after a hard day and cue up the "88 notes on a chromatic scale played out of phase" song? Do they relax in their armchairs with a gin and tonic and let every possible chord wash over them?
If so, how did they get to be that way? I bet Arabs like Arabic music because it was playing when they were young and all their friends liked it and there's something about those tunes that meshes with their particular cultural upbringing. I doubt artists have a similar background. What do you have to do when you're fifteen to get to like the mathematical music?
Of course someone thought it would be, if not a pretty song, at least a good idea to write these compositions. Perhaps nobody likes them as music. Perhaps the composer just thought it would sound "neat" or something, and that was enough justification for him to compose what is actually a very simple song.
I have news for him, though. It doesn't sound neat. It goes tinkle tinkle tinkle pause plunk repeat. The number of tinkles and the length of the pauses and the volume of the plunks varies in a mathematical way of course, but not in a way that's interesting to someone without a slide rule in his ear.
In fact, it adds almost nothing to the visual element. The swirling dots are the real attraction here, not the impossible music. Judging from the name of the website, I think the author intended it the other way around, but either I am completely wrong about how other people process music or you should look at "Whitney Music Box" with the sound off.
posted by apk01004 at 3:00 PM
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