{"id":4221,"date":"2016-03-29T23:35:46","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T03:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/?p=4221"},"modified":"2016-03-29T23:35:46","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T03:35:46","slug":"music-is-not-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jimhaku.com\/blog\/music-is-not-math\/","title":{"rendered":"Music is Not Math"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s this thing again.<\/p>\n

You may be new. I’ve got this idea I’ve been working on a while. It’s supposed to make writing music more simple, so instead of expanding the idea with each post, I’m gonna recap the whole thing each time I come up with a better way to put it out there. Here goes:<\/p>\n

Music is a language. It express pure emotion more than ideas. (Lyrics are not music, put that aside.) If you think of language as math, you are already likely a poor communicator, so for music it would be even worse. So, do not be confused by the use of numbers. Yeah, a computer program can write a song, who cares, not about that either. If you write a song in the traditional manner well enough, a computer program can also play it back it you, a fully programed feeling, if you like. Not so with this method. A computer could almost never get an accurate reading of a song written in this manner. (It would have to be a really terrible song.)<\/p>\n

Let’s try it with one of the most terrible songs of all time, “Happy Birthday”. I hate it, but everyone knows it and it’s recently become public domain, so it’s perfect for this demo:<\/p>\n

\n5 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 10 | 8
\nHap- py Birth- day to you<\/p>\n

5 | 5 | 7 | 5 | 0 | 10
\nHap- py Birth- day to you<\/p>\n

5 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 10 | 8 | 7
\nHap- py Birth- day dear who zit<\/p>\n

3 | 3 | 2 | 10 | 0 | 10
\nHap- py Birth- day to you<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now before you start worrying about the proper hyphenation of “Happy”, check out the third line. “Birth” is a higher note, isn’t it? It is, exactly an octave higher. You might want to mark that in some way.<\/a> But you don’t have to.<\/p>\n

If you want to get mathematical, which you might for a sound art installation or figuring out how to fix the acoustics of a room. That would involve real math involving putting notes into numbers and there is already a system for that, each key on a piano, for example, has it’s own soundwave frequency number<\/a>. Musicians usually only think of the number they tune to, which is usually A440. But here are all the A’s on a grand piano: <\/p>\n

\n3520 Hz
\n1760 Hz
\n880 Hz
\n440 Hz
\n220 Hz
\n110 Hz
\n55 Hz
\n27.5 Hz<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is quite nice and neat compared to pretty much every other note, which have a lot of decimals<\/a>. (Only exception: C7\/Double high C @ 2093.00hz.)<\/p>\n

So what.<\/H1><\/p>\n