Challenge: Polyrhthyms and Numerical Sequences in music

[Shift]

Okay I was bored to shit in school the other day, so I whipped out my phone and got onto got-djent, and read a few articles. Most were the generic debates over different artists and such, but one thread really caught my interest.

So apparently for a while now some djent-prog (and other genres) artists have been using numerical sequences and constants for polyrhthyms in their music.

The first one I read about was from after the burial and their song "Pi: the mercury god of infinity." So i went and and listened to it and I discovered something intriguing (so here's a link) After The Burial - Pi (The Mercury God Of Infinity) 2011 Extended Mix - YouTube

So with that piece they used Pi. Pretty strange but cool, but there was only one note being repeated by the guitar. So later that day I went to class and asked my teacher if he ever dealt with polyrhthyms and all that business with Pi and stuff. He responded by pulling up 10,000 days by tool on YouTube.

So at this point I'm listening and trying to follow the rythym and I'm like "holy shit, this band is f*cking cool."

Link btw
Tool - 10 000 days (pt 2) - YouTube

So apparently musicians can use sequences like Pi and the fibbonaci sequence to write songs. So as musicians yourselves I challenge you to write some nasty polyrhthyms that follow sequences like these and show em off here, just for the sake of it being fing cool

 

[darkinners]

IIRC Ron Jarzombek use similar way to write music too

 

[BeyondAntares]

listen to the song Lateralus by Tool.

That song follows the fibbonacci sequence quite closely. The theme of the song is how tool fans overanlayse their songs

 

[ArtDecade]

Challenge declined.

There is music for the heart and music for the head. I'd rather listen to and play J-Pop music than have to "solve for the equation." There is nothing inherently wrong with using a crap ton of polyrhthyms and odd time signatures as long as it serves the song. Otherwise, you are working within a system and that seems to defeat musical expression as a type of freedom. But to each their own...

 

[abandonist]

Challenge declined.

Do not give fucks.

 

[The Omega Cluster]

I love this kind of challenge. I often challenge myself, here is an example :

The Pernicious Lophophores of the Unknowable Abiochimera | Omega Cluster

I've written most of the melodies using the Fibonacci sequence, and the rhythms using the Collatz conjecture starting with the number 24.

 

[Blasphemer]

I wrote a song based off of the Lucas Numbers. It's pretty head-spinningly complex to remember how its composed off of it, honestly.

Take a listen.

 

[Ryan-ZenGtr-]

 

[IamSatai]

As someone currently studying mathematics in college, I cannot figure out if I like the idea or not.
I appreciate the attempt to use mathematics to somehow describe why a song sounds good to us, but I feel in general this is not achieved through these songs.

If you take the Fibonacci sequence for example, and use it to construct some rhythm or perhaps a melody(eg. 1 for first note in a scale, 2 for second note in a scale...), I feel this misses the above point for a few reasons. The sequence itself depends on a number of factors chosen by the composer(eg. the base system), and the application of the sequence relies entirely on the composers interpretation. It just ends up to be nothing more than a random rhythm or melody, far from being divinely inspired by fundamentally derived mathematical concepts.

I feel it is entirely backwards. The starting point should be taking a beautiful piece of music, and the end point should be finding out why it sounds so damn good in terms of mathematics. Not starting with the mathematics and ending with the song. The choice of notes and rhythm can be random up to a certain reasonable point(which is usually kept within due to the composers interpretation of how the sequence should be applied to the music) and still sound good, but if the mathematics, or sequence in this case is even the smallest bit off, then the entire idea comes crumbling down. Because of this, mathematics to music is most likely nothing profound in almost every case, but music to mathematics almost certainly implies something profound.

In the end, it just feels like some pseudo-intellectual gimmick that a lot of mathematically ignorant people fall for(probably including the composers themselves).

tl;dr:
But anyway... here is a song inspired by the golden ratio, written by a mathematician (well actually a physicist) which possibly gives it some more credibility:


And here is an explanation of how and where the mathematics was used within the song:


EDIT - video ninja'd by Ryan-ZenGtr

 

[Shift]

As someone currently studying mathematics in college, I cannot figure out if I like the idea or not.
I appreciate the attempt to use mathematics to somehow describe why a song sounds good to us, but I feel in general this is not achieved through these songs.

If you take the Fibonacci sequence for example, and use it to construct some rhythm or perhaps a melody(eg. 1 for first note in a scale, 2 for second note in a scale...), I feel this misses the above point for a few reasons. The sequence itself depends on a number of factors chosen by the composer(eg. the base system), and the application of the sequence relies entirely on the composers interpretation. It just ends up to be nothing more than a random rhythm or melody, far from being divinely inspired by fundamentally derived mathematical concepts.



In the end, it just feels like some pseudo-intellectual gimmick that a lot of mathematically ignorant people fall for(probably including the composers themselves).

tl;dr:




EDIT - video ninja'd by Ryan-ZenGtr

I'm afraid your missing the point. The idea of the challenge is not that these sequences will neccesarily sound good. It's to challenge yourself for the same reason people play sudoku and shit like that. It's intriguing to some how you can make music out of numbers. When I write music myself I dont just sit down with a calculator pencil and paper and write down ratios and arithmetic shit. I wrote what I think sounds good and is musically pleasing. The concept of this thread is to see what sorts of crazy things you guys can write.

 

[-42-]

Be warned, the more you ask for polyrhythms, the more heavy syncopation you're going to get.

 

[Randyrhoads123]

Heh, they should've kept that golden ratio song instrumental. Those lyrics were cheesy as fuck

 

[abandonist]

I think that's the point!

 

[spawnofthesith]

"YOU CAN'T DENY IT'S PHI!"

 

[xwmucradiox]

The fundamental problem with these deep thought musical concepts is that the actual music often doesn't become interesting until you tell someone the back story. No one is going to naturally pick out the rhythmic theme of any of these songs unless they stop listening to the song to focus on a single instrument. Pi is such an arbitrary (and obvious) number for creating a rhythm that it loses meaning as the source of your syncopation in a breakdown.

On the other hand I've been accused of writing music using arbitrarily formulations by writing a song in which everything stops in the middle and is played backwards from the that middle point to the end of the song. It was cool to everyone in the band but no one would ever know or care that it was done that way unless we made a point of telling them.

 

[The Omega Cluster]

The fundamental problem with these deep thought musical concepts is that the actual music often doesn't become interesting until you tell someone the back story. No one is going to naturally pick out the rhythmic theme of any of these songs unless they stop listening to the song to focus on a single instrument. Pi is such an arbitrary (and obvious) number for creating a rhythm that it loses meaning as the source of your syncopation in a breakdown.

On the other hand I've been accused of writing music using arbitrarily formulations by writing a song in which everything stops in the middle and is played backwards from the that middle point to the end of the song. It was cool to everyone in the band but no one would ever know or care that it was done that way unless we made a point of telling them.

It's cool when :
1) you run out of inspiration
2) you want to show your superior intelligence
3) you want to have something to say about your song
4) you want to try a different thing

Anyway, it's a fun compositional exercise.

 

[The Reverend]

I've done things like this before, but I'll have to decline the challenge out of laziness.

I remember hearing After The Burial's 'Pi' when I was 18 or so, before Rareform came out, at least, and reading on their Myspace blog the explanation of it. I was so mindfucked. I thought the song was brilliant, and still do. They even played it as an intro on a few tours, which really made me jizz. My attempts to use the Golden Ratio and Fibonacci numbers to do something similar failed at being anywhere near cohesive or listenable, even.

There seems to be an underlying current of tech versus expression going on here. That argument never ends well. Music is subjective, and as such is all valid. The end.

 

[The Omega Cluster]

But now... What's actually the challenge?

Make a song with Pi? Phi? Fibonacci numbers? Collatz conjecture?

I also already thought of doing a song with the electron shells and nuclear shells numbers (electron shells, nuclear shells)

 

[The Reverend]

But now... What's actually the challenge?

Make a song with Pi? Phi? Fibonacci numbers? Collatz conjecture?

I also already thought of doing a song with the electron shells and nuclear shells numbers (electron shells, nuclear shells)

Choose whatever mathematical concept you want, and make something musical with it. Or at least that's what I think the challenge is.

 

[Murmel]

Any mathematical concept?

2+2.

Come at me.