Thanks for the tip. I was also waiting for this to come out. I'm off to Amazon.... Victor ----- Original Message ----- From: Anthony Palomba Date: Wednesday, March 9, 2011 2:16 am Subject: Re: [Csnd] Recommended book: A Geometry of Music To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk > I gotta say I am super excited to finally be getting this book too. > I found some articles about Tymoczko's work years ago but they > were lacking in specifics. I can't wait to really start digging into more details. > > I agree, it is a truly ground breaking way of representing tonal > spaces. What I am really excited about is exploring the ability to > take other computational geometric forms and project/map them into > these chord spaces. > > I plan on implementing my own python version as soon as I get it. > > > > > Anthony > > > > > On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 7:52 PM, Michael Gogins wrote: > I've received my copy of Dmitri Tymoczko's new book, _A Geometry of > Music: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice_ > (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). > > In my view, this is a very important book in music theory, and I > highly recommend it to any computer music person with any sort of > interest in anything like chords, scales, and voice-leading. > > I find that the work of Tymoczko (and his colleagues Clifton > Callender, Rachel Hall, Adrian Childs, etc.) in elaborating a > geometric theory of chords and voice-leadings facilitates generative > composition in ways that other formal or mathematical approaches to > music theory, such as the generative grammar of Jackendoff and > Lerdahl, simply do not (at least, not for me). I have composed a > number of works based on generating movements in chord spaces, either > directly moving chords as points in multi-dimensional spaces, or > applying neo-Riemannian operations such as the Generalized Contextual > Group of Fiore and Satyendra as implemented in such chord spaces, and > I presented a paper on this work of mine at the 2006 ICMC. > > The great thing about the geometric approach is its ability to greatly > simplify and easily automate operations upon pitches and chords, > across various scales of musical structure, and including recursive > operations. It helps a great deal that the mathematics involved is not > very complicated once some quite basic principles of group theory and > quotient spaces are assimilated -- no need to learn category theory or > differential geometry! The required principles are presented with > exemplary clarity in Tymoczko's book. Furthermore, operations can be > efficiently implemented (for example, finding a well-formed > voice-leading by selecting the shortest of multiple paths through > multi-octave chord space is of O(log N) complexity and can be > implemented in a page or so of Python, whereas voice-leading by > formalizing the rules of _Gradus ad Parnassum_ is I guess of O(C^N) > complexity and takes multiple pages of code). > > Just as Hiller and Isaacson, and Xenakis' sieves, opened up the use of > stochastic processes for algorithmic composition on various scales of > musical structure, and thus brought considerable variety and power > into atonal algorithmic composition, so operations in music spaces of > varying degrees of abstraction open up a good chunk of the resources > of tonality and extended tonality for algorithmic composition. > > -- > Michael Gogins > Irreducible Productions > http://www.michael-gogins.com > Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com > > > Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker > https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599 > Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here > To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound" > > Dr Victor Lazzarini, Senior Lecturer, Dept. of Music, National University of Ireland, Maynooth Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599 Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"