It is a historical fact that most genres of music in all cultures have an
identifiable, fairly regular meter, sometimes changing over time. It is
equally a historical fact that most genres of music in all cultures have
"scales" of repeated pitch-classes, usually no more than about 12. Surely
this means something. These facts are a very, very narrow selection from the
possibilities.

-----Original Message-----
From: MintMilano@aol.com 
To: csound@maths.ex.ac.uk 
Date: Friday, June 18, 1999 12:51 PM
Subject: re techno bashing


>In a message dated 6/18/99, 10:17:36 AM, kconder@interaccess.com writes:
><that held a beat.
>
>sounds like a good selling point to me. The hell with 'beats'. This term is
>generally used to mean simple, metric, repetitive rhythm, the kind of
>tiresome 4/4 that's already been 'beat' -en to death and then some. Csound
is
>just a tool, of course, which could be used to make any manner of
>composition, rhythmic or otherwise; the fact that few CSound compositions
>seem to exhibit conventional western music rhythms to me accurately
reflects
>the small portion of the overall possibilities of sound that those (already
>well-explored) ideas represent.
>
>
> and somebody else wrote: <if you want more than a few people to appreciate your music, it must have
>some kind of structure ( even if a very loose one ) - a beat is not needed
if
>and only if you can produce a rhythmic structure without one - this can be
>done.
>
>I have a lot of problems with this statement.  First of all, it is a misuse
>of the term 'structure'. When you say 'structure' what you mean is a
simple,
>repetitive pattern similar to  conventional western pop music. I don't
>believe it is possible to make a piece of music or sound without structure,
>because music exists in time, which is linear; therefore, when it is over,
>you can look back at whatever happened in a linear way, and there's your
>structure. It may be an abstract, amorphous, jagged, complex, nonrepetitive
>structure, but it's still structure, in fact it is closer to what I
>understand the term structure to mean than an endless stream of 4/4 beats
>coming from a dance club.
>Furthermore, I take great exception to your opinion that the generalized
>music audience is incapable of appreciating anything without a rhythmic
>structure or beat. Who are you to proclaim this ? How could we know what
>others would appreciate tomorrow - or even today ? Humans are not
hard-coded
>machines that can only perceive sound driven by beats. I've seen all kinds
of
>people captivated by the experience of intense, abstract sounds and images
in
>all manner of situations, from the movie theater to the art gallery,
concert
>halls, small clubs and coffehouses, and living rooms. And then there's the
>theater, video arcade, amusement park, the great outdoors. Have a little
>imagination.
>Mark Milano