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Audio Production & Engineering Events Lectures & Presentations Research

AES Event: Technology and Creativity May 17 2017

Looking forward to being part of this panel discussion (click for tickets and info)

AES

The first event in a series, the AES London Committee present a discussion exploring the relationship between creativity and technology. Chaired by Phelan Kane (Chair of the AES London Regional Committee), the aim is to create a dynamic forum that features free flowing discussion and debate with contribution from panel and audience members alike.

The purpose of this evening is to explore the relationship between technology and creativity within the landscape of modern audio practice. What form does this relationship take? How do modern audio practitioners use technology creatively within their everyday practice and what role does the technology play? How important is the creative output of practitioners within the development of new audio paradigms? How is R&D influenced by current creative workflow trends? Does the realisation of R&D lead to new creative workflows and to what extent do creative workflows influence the R&D process?

Confirmed Panel Members:

  • Mandy Parnell – Mastering Engineer
  • Justin Paterson – Associate Professor of Music Technology, London College of Music, University of West London
  • Sarah Yule – Director of Channel Sales, ROLI
  • Milton Mermikides – Head of Composition & MMus Programme Director, University of Surrey
  • Justin Fraser – Producer / Engineer, Avid Certified Master Instructor
Categories
Composition Health & Training

Careful in the Guardian

A fantastic article by Guardian journalist/leukaemia warrior Hannah Partos on the Arts Council-funded project Careful  – which focuses on the lives of 4 nurses – written by Alex Mermikides, and with music (based on the sounds and rhythms of the hospital) by Milton Mermikides.

5753

 

Categories
Guitar Music Music Theory Research

Swing Friction in Johnny B. Goode

Swing friction is a term I coined in my PhD thesis and is defined as the differential of swing values between individual performers (or groups of performers). If the swing friction is significantly large and consistently maintained, it may form a characteristic of ensemble feel.

Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode (Berry 1958) provides an instructive example of swing friction. Berry, often considered the father of rock n’ roll, was instrumental in ‘straightening out’ the blues 12/8 shuffle rhythm into the archetypal electric guitar riff. Johnny B. Goode features this ‘straight 8th’ guitar rhythm, as well as equally straight lead playing juxtaposed with a stubbornly bouncy drum, bass and piano feel. Heavily swung quaver values occur in the ride cymbal pattern, often near the 67% mark, a significant deviation of over 52ms from the straight quaver at 170bpm. The guitar rhythm part however remains resolutely straight rarely venturing beyond 52% swing. This already large 15% discrepancy of swing value is exaggerated with the guitar part often sitting on top of the beat (ranging between 0% and -4% latency) leading to a mean separation of about 17% (≈60ms). The lead guitar is equally straight, although not pushed, and occasionally falling behind the beat. Piano interjections are loose but quavers are generally quite swung, mainly in the 60-67% range and repeated quaver triplets prevail. The bass plays mainly crotchets, with the occasional quaver (usually ≈67%). A representative extract from the track can be heard here:

Figure 1 shows a composite two bar template for the lead, rhythm, bass and drum parts, with time-feel components added. There is a huge gap between the swing values of the guitars and bass and drums. The vocal track tends to fall in between these two extremes.  In order to hear the effect of swing friction, This example contains electronic sequences of this section with varying time-feel values: 1) as from Figure 1, 2) all instruments at 67% 3) all at 52% 4) all at a middle ground of 60% and 5) back to the ‘true’ values for comparison.

Picture1

Figure 1. Composite swing and latency values for guitars, bass and drums in Johnny B. Goode.

 

The sequences have been rendered with MIDI instruments on purpose; although the section would sound better with human performers, but the elimination of the inflection they would inevitably provide allows focus on the power – and limitations – of the SLW model. Mean values for swing and latency have been provided, but the standard deviations of these values introduce the component of looseness or tightness, again different between players. Weighting elements also occur, (the cymbal has a slight emphasis on offbeat quavers for example,) with both mean and standard deviations). This extract plays the sequence first as Figure 1 then with swing, latency, weighting standard deviations from Figure 2  introduced, which add a clearly-defined randomness to each of three time-feel elements, and instruments, individually. There is a subtle but appreciable difference between the sequences; attention to the cymbal pattern, for instance, will reveal a slight offbeat emphasis and looseness.

 

 

 

Lead Guitar Rhythm Guitar Bass Drums
µs= 51 ∂s=1.5  µl= 2    ∂l=

µw= -3 ∂w= 2

µs= 52 ∂s=1

µl= -3 ∂l= 1

µw= -3 ∂w= 2

µs= 67 ∂s=2

µl= 0    ∂l= 1

µw= 4   ∂w= 2

µs= 67 ∂s=2

µl= 0    ∂l= 0

µw= 2   ∂w= 1

Figure 2 Mean and standard deviation values of swing, latency and

weighting (measured as dB level)

An averaging out of time-feel components over the entire track runs the risk of over-generalization and may incorrectly group specific mechanisms that occur only occasionally. There are for example, brief moments when the bass seems to join with the rhythm guitar’s straight quavers. There is also the assumption, with a single matrix per instrument, that all beats of the bar are the same, which ignores the emphasis on crotchets 2 and 4 in the drums. Matrices could be provided for beats 1 and 2, and beats 3 and 4 separately, or even weighting at the crotchet level, for greater sophistication when needed.

Despite these acknowledged limitations, the discretionary use of this type of analysis allows for an instructive and parsimonious description of ensemble time-feel elements.

Categories
Music

On liminalism

There is an obsession with musical categorisations and typologies. For the economies of marketing, education packages, community ‘identity’ and comfortable partitioning into high, low, serious & fun these artificial stylistic delineations persist. I am more interested in the common themes, processes and craft between these styles and the creation of musical works born of an open sharing. A challenging, blending and melding of the boundaries of musical style, and of the limits of music perception, processes and accessibility. For lack of a better term, and an awareness of the Russelian irony of naming a musical genre based on the resistance of genres, I quietly call this pursuit of universal musical craft liminalism.

Feel free to adopt or reject.

Categories
Data Sonification Learning & Teaching Lectures & Presentations

Noorderzon Festival

Am looking forward to this event and the opportunity to do something different and fun with the excellent Ensemble Montage.

Milton Mermikides & Ensemble Montage | Hidden Music

What does the skyline of New York sound like? How can you make a composition from your sleep patterns or blood cells? Music can be made from anything we find around us, from our names or birth dates to our cells, from atoms to stars. Composer and guitarist Milton Mermikides presents the fascinating origins and history of data sonification – the translation of information or patterns into sound and music – as well as a selection of his own compositions derived from sleep cycles, viruses, paintings, exoplanetary moons, traffic patterns and other ‘non-musical’ data. In addition, a string trio of the Ensemble Montage will demonstrate how these data sound and perform a new composition based on ‘the hidden music’ of Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival. Discover how music can reveal the patterns in the natural world, and give us both a theoretical and aesthetic appreciation of everything around us.

For students and subscribers of Studium Generale tickets are € 5,- 

Categories
Data Sonification Lectures & Presentations Top Posts

TedX Groningen: Everything We Do is Music

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Events Guitar Lectures & Presentations

IGRC2016 Timetable and Booking Now Open

The 2nd International Guitar Research Centre Conference (March 18-23, 2016) has attracted speakers and performers from every continent, and guitar style. It’s a fantastic line-up, and timetable shaping up.

Booking now open…

Categories
Music

Alexia Coley – Drive Me Wild

The fabulous Alexia Coley, for whom its an honour to work has a video out for her great soul tune: Drive Me Wild

That. Voice.

Categories
Composition Music Theory Research

Spiegel Im Spiegel on a Postcard

The most succinct analysis I can make of Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel Im Spiegel (a stunning and elegant work). Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/track/3rlqTqUOzu0zDwQFJe44gk

Spiegel Analysis

Categories
Data Sonification Electronic Works

Pendulum Music

Translation of pendulum waves to music using a simple pitch translation system on a 5-limit Yo scale. Watch the right hand edge and all will make sense! This little experiment turned out so well, I think it deserves a whole project. My head and ears are spinning.

Categories
Data Sonification Electronic Works Leukaemia Publications

Bloodlines on Radio 4 Midweek

A real pleasure to appear with my sister Alex to talk about the Bloodlines project (and data sonification in general) on BBC Radio 4’s Midweek on Wednesday 28th October hosted by the quite brilliant Libby Purves. Fellow guests included the delightful and inspirational Peggy Seeger and Amati’s James Buchanan.

Available here:

Categories
Data Sonification Research

Sonic Circles

The next in the series of Hidden Music data sonification works. Data sonification is a long term interest/project/passion of mine, which involves the systematic translation of ‘non-musical’ data into music.

Here I’ve taken Kandinsky’s beautiful 1926 painting Several Circles and translated it systematically into sound. Colour and vertical position are translated into timbre and pitch respectively, as the red cursor scans the image horizontally.

Whether Kandinsky was a synaesthete or not is disputed, but his fusion of music and visual art metaphor, working process and concept is well documented. From the link:

“Our response to his work should mirror our appreciation of music and should come from within, not from its likenesses to the visible world: “Colour is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer. The soul is the piano with its many strings.”
Kandinsky achieved pure abstraction by replacing the castles and hilltop towers of his early landscapes with stabs of paint or, as he saw them, musical notes and chords that would visually “sing” together. In this way, his swirling compositions were painted with polyphonic swathes of warm, high-pitched yellow that he might balance with a patch of cold, sonorous blue or a silent, black void.”

Thanks as ever to Anna Tanczos for the visuals.

 

 

Categories
Data Sonification Research

Distant Harmony

Here’s the first in a long series of data sonification experiments. This Hidden Music series is a long term interest/project/passion of mine, which involves the systematic translation of ‘non-musical’ data into music. Here’s a simple example, the orbital periods of the planets of the solar system translated into pitch and rhythm. The rhythms are simply created by speeding up the actual orbital periods by 25 octaves (doubling the speed 25 times), and the pitches are created by transposing them up 37 octaves. I haven’t quantized pitch or rhythm, so its both microtonal to the nearest cent  (100th of a semitone) and microtemporal (to the nearest millisecond), but I hear a clockwork beauty in this irrational/chaotic collection of ratios nonetheless. Stay tuned for some even more distant harmony from some ex-planets. I recommend a sub-bass speaker to really feel Uranus and Neptune’s drones. Thanks to Rob Scott for his space science brain, and my long term partner-in-nerd Anna Tanczos for the visuals.

 

Categories
Events Guitar Research

IGRC 2016 Call for Papers

The next international conference of the International Guitar Research Centre has been announced. It will take place 18th to 23rd March 2016. The call for papers, keynote speakers and headline concert artists can be found here. The deadline for proposals is midnight GMT on Friday 9th October 2015.

The IGRC has no stylistic or conceptual prejudice, if you are doing work that is innovative, creative and related to the guitar, we are interested. For further info

Categories
Music Music Theory Research

Harmonic Series vs. 12-Tone Equal Temperament

It’s hard (for me at least) to start talking about any aspect of musical theory without talking for an hour or writing several thousand words and/or producing many diagrams. So I’m going to try and just provide some vignette posts, little moments of insight in a hugely complex field of study.
Here let’s look at the harmonic series (the pitches that emerge by multiplying a frequency by the set of integers (1,2,3,4 …) and its relationship to 12-tone equal temperament (the ‘standard’ division of the octave into 12 equal divisions).
The following diagram courtesy of the incredible programmer Dean McNamee (and Mathematica) shows how the pitches generated through the harmonic series differ from 12-tone equal temperament.

harmonic-distance-1-20

 

The X-axis names the harmonic number (ending at the 20th harmonic) and the Y-axis is the deviation from the nearest even-tempered note (where for example -0.2 is 20% of a semitone flatter than equal temperament). If you look carefully, you’ll see that the fundamental and all the octave equivalents (harmonic numbers 1,2,4,8, 16 etc.) align perfectly with the even-tempered equivalents. In fact these powers of 2 are the only point where the harmonic series meets up (exactly) with 12-TET. These points are circled in red below.

Annotated Harmonic series vs 12-TET

The ‘non-octave’ harmonics are indicated with different coloured arrows (showing in which way they differ from equal temperament). The 3rd harmonic (indicated in orange) is about 2 cents (a mere 2% of a semitone) sharper than the equal tempered equivalent (a perfect 5th), and so of course are its octave equivalents the 6th, 12th, 24th etc. The 9th harmonic is about 4 cents sharper (as it is ‘affected’ by two 3rd harmonics), and is indicated with 2 orange arrows. This ‘stacking’ (and unstacking) of the 3rd harmonic is what is used to create the Pythagorean scale, also known as a 3-limit scale, since we only allow the 3rd (and 2nd) harmonic as tools to reach musical notes.

The 5th harmonic is significantly flatter than the 12-TET equivalent (and the cause of the many historical temperaments that have emerged in polyphonic music. The 10th harmonic has the same ≈14 cents discrepancy. The 15th ends up about being 12 cents flatter, since 15 = 3*5, it uses the 3rd harmonic (which makes it ≈2 cents sharper than 12-TET) and the 5th harmonic (≈14 cents flatter) resulting in an overall drop of about 12 cents (note the contrary orange and yellow arrows). Incidentally, the use of the 3rd and 5th harmonic (together with the trivial 2nd harmonic), creates the 5-limit system of tuning, with its extensive and beautiful use in Hindustani music.

You’ll see that the other prime-numbered harmonics get their own coloured arrows (7th=green, 11th = blue, 13th = purple etc.). The 11th is about as far from 12-TET that is possible, which is why Harry Partch stops there in his 11-limit 43-note universe. Since the primes never end so the harmonic pathways of tuning are (theoretically) endless.

Another way to see the relationship between the harmonic series and 12-TET is to visualise the harmonics resting at points on an infinitely expanding spiral. Each sweep of the spiral represents an octave, and the 12 equally spaced slices of the octave pizza represent each 12-tone slice. This has the advantage of indicating where in the octave each harmonic lies, as well as the octave relationships between sets of harmonics (e.g. between the 3rd ,6th, 12th and 24th harmonics  etc.). Here’s a beautiful rendering by Skye Lofander (whose website musicpatterns.dk has many awesome visualitions of musical concepts and is highly recommended).

Ligedeling vs naturtoner

You’ll notice that the harmonics get closer and closer together, and essentially ‘sweep’ through the 12-TET discrepancy in an ever (but never completely) flattening upward slope. Here’s Dean’s rendering which shows the same phenomenon emerging with the first 500 harmonics:

harmonic-distance-1-500

 

So along the way the 12-TET and harmonic series will get ‘close enough’ most certainly for human perception (which is a couple of cents on a good day) and acoustic instruments (which waver considerably in temperature and human execution). Even a slight head-turn will invoke enough doppler shift to make fractions of a cent meaningless in real terms.

So which is ‘better’ 12-TET or tuning derived from the harmonic series (also known as just (i.e. ‘true’) intonation)? And what incantation of the harmonic series is more ‘pure’? Is 4 jumps up the 3rd harmonic more ‘natural’ than one jump up the 5th harmonic? They both roughly approximate the major 3rd (the first a ‘Pythagorean third’ ≈8 cents sharper than 12-TET, the second a ‘just 3rd’ at ≈14 cents flatter). Some have attempted a measure of harmonicity (see Vals and Monzos), but its relationship to subjective experience is sketchy at best. Can one think of 12-TET as existing way, way up the harmonic series (so still harmonic), is it a ‘good enough fit’, or wholly incompatible with the harmonic series? What’s inate and wha’t encultered? Why 12 equal divisions and why not some other number?

EDOs

Just intonation enthusiasts can get heated about its superiority to 12-TET, but there is no doubt that the limiting of notes to 12, close-to, or exactly evenly-spaced has led to the creation of countless, otherwise impossible, musical creations and activities.

The best answer is that they are different, and both available to every composer, get over it, embrace and enjoy.

P.S. this was 3 times longer than planned. Apologies.

Categories
Concerts & Gigs Live Electronics Music

John Williams (Candle)Light on the Edge

On Saturday 6th June 2015, I’ll be performing with John Williams, Gary Ryan and friends at the beautiful Shakespeare Globe in London. Among other works, we’ll be performing Phillip Houghton’s sumptuous Light on the Edge by candlelight. I’ll be providing electronics (courtesy of Ableton and one of my many MIDI controllers) and it should be rather magical, unless of course I accidentally play Chloe’s playlist of Wheels on the Bus and other hi-energy toddler classics.

Click the pretty picture for info and tickets.

Pretty

 

Categories
Learning & Teaching Music

A Painful Lesson in Sampling Rates

Van SamplenAn audio sampling rate is the frequency at which an audio signal has been captured. You can think of it like the frame rate in movies, capturing a series of photographs from which a seemingly smooth film can be generated. The sampling rate for CDs is 44.1kHz (that’s 44,100 samples per second between you and me), but other sampling rates exist 48kHz, 96Kz, 192Khz etc. It’s a contentious issue – beyond the scope of this wee post – about how high is high enough and why that may be the case but it is vital to ensure that whatever rate an audio file is recorded at, that’s the rate that it should be played back (unless you want the speed and pitch of the original recording to change of course). Essentially its like a record player and a record. A record may have been produced at 33rpm, and to ensure you hear the intended pitch and speed the record player has to spin at the same speed. Simple.

So what happens if we spin a record (or playback a digital audio file) at a higher rate than it was recorded? Well it’s pitch becomes higher and its speed increases. Play back at a slower rate and its lower in pitch and, well, slower.

What’s more, if we play a file (or record) at twice its intended rate (a 44.1kHz file at 88.2kHz), its duration is halved (of course) and its pitch goes up an octave. In contrast, a file played back at half of its recorded rate drops an octave (you can hear this used musically in loop pedals).

An octave (derived from halving or doubling a frequency) has a kind of musical equivalence. (It’s called the Law of Octave Equivalence no less), but what of other frequency relationships? Here things get a bit complicated.  Our experience of pitch is logarithmic, so that the multiplication of a frequency produces a particular musical interval. Double a frequency it goes up an octave, halve it it goes down an octave, multiply by  ≈1.059463 and the pitch goes up one (equal-tempered) semitone. This catchy number is actually the 12th root of 2, which makes sense if you think about it. Multiply it by itself 12 times and it reaches 2, because there are 12 ‘equal’ jumps between in each octave in the 12-tone equal-tempered system.

To help us understand this, let’s imagine an octave as a physical vertical object, then we can slice it into a number of equal slices (say a tower block with a number of equal storeys). Again, I say ‘equal’ because each slice is the same musical interval but that in fact means that it is the same multiplication every time (that’s the whole logarithmic thing). The convention is to divide the octave into 1200 cents. Why are they called cents if there are 1200 of them? It makes no cents HAHA – well because often the octave is divided in 12 big slices (known as semitones or half steps) and each of them has 100 cents. So 100 cents is a semitone (in the US half-step), 200 cents is a tone (whole-step), 700 cents is a perfect 5th and so on.

So how can we calculate the resulting musical interval from a dispcrepancy in sampling rates?

We use this equation.

cents = 1200 × log2 (f2 / f1)

That’s it.

So, imagine an audio file was recorded at 44.1kHz (f1) and played back at 48kHz (f2), the cents difference would be

1200 × log2 (48000 / 44100)

This comes to ≈146.7 cents, which is just shy of one and a half semitones. A no-person’s land in most musical situations, and if you were trying to play along on the guitar you could go up one fret (one semitone) and still be a quarter tone flat, but 2 frets would be over a quarter tone sharp. Most ears forgive a few cents here and there, and a keen musician can bend into a few cents more but a 46.7 (or 53.2) cent differential is about as cold sweat nightmare of a musical situation imaginable. A bass player would face the same problems, and a keyboardist would have to resort to Herbie Hancock style pitch bends, or embark on a desperate hunt for the operating manual to readjust the tuning reference. Failing that they could run away at just the right speed to allow the doppler effect to drop the pitch.

Would you like to know what it sounds and feels like? Just ask Van Halen and their audience, who suffered this exact ordeal when a backing track (or keyboard triggered sample) recorded at 44.1kHz played back at 48kHz during a live performance of ‘Jump’ – not the most obscure of their tunes. Eddie desperately tries to adjust by shifting frets but is cursed by the mathematics.

Funny or painful, you decide. The jump that EVH desperately offers at 2:02 is fraught with all the tragedy of the human condition. But at the very least, this remains an important lesson in the importance of sampling rates, logarithmic scales and their relation to musical intervals. Thanks Van Halen!

Categories
Fundraising Leukaemia Music Stuff to Buy

Towards The Sunlight – Digital Release

Following the successful (emotional, fun, wonderful) EGO concert at Bush Hall – a charity concert (raising close to £4000) with some of the finest musicians and friends one could hope to know – here’s another good reason to donate some more to the worthy charities. The Eclectic Guitar Orchestra’s Towards the Sunlight is a collection of donated tracks from the players and all proceeds will go to Leukaemia Research and the Anthony Nolan Trust. Enjoy.

Categories
Music Music Theory Research

Beyond the Imaginary Barline

Patterns in Sight Reading Preferences

It’s possible to gain an incredible fluency at music reading, absorbing large sections of music at a glance. I remember as a youngster being in awe at those who could instantly transform squiggles into beguiling sounds, as if there was no barrier between the symbols, the musical brain and the appropriate finger movements. Even without an instrument to hand, they could somehow hear the page. However, music reading seems to differ from word reading in that it can be quite easily tripped up. With word reading you can read wrds wtht vwls frly cnfdntly, or when they are uʍop ǝpᴉsdn, or even ndsᴉpǝ poʍu ɐup qɐɔʞʍɐɹps. However the odd enharmonic or dotted rather than tied note in music notation, can momentarily derail even an experienced reader.

What I’ve found puzzling is that there is no one unanimous convention for notation, nor a system that will please all the people all the time. So in this short article I will attempt to reveal some of music notation’s hidden conventions and reader preferences.

Some disclaimers:

  • This is a ‘study’ of a mere 54 participants, ranging from intermediate to highly experienced note readers. All from Facebook, and most of whom are my friends, so make of that what you will.
  • We are limiting ourselves to 4/4, single notes and no rests. A major restriction, but one must start somewhere.
  • This is very lazy research. I spent a few seconds googling relevant terms, but basically wanted to follow through these ideas prima vista. I’m sure if I looked for 7 seconds longer I’d find Ideathief & Twatamaholey’s comprehensive and beautifully argued 1973 thesis on the topic. So be it.
  • I have no affiliation with Big Quaver.

 

Ok so Figure 1, shows a series of numbered extracts, from which the subject indicates a preference (or no preference).

Figure 1

Figure 1: The Test

 

You may want to make a note of your preferences at this point, before we look at the results from our cohort of readers.

We’ll break these down in sections so we can discuss the various implications.

The Extent of Imaginary Barlines

Examples 1-3 test the concept of the imaginary barline – the idea that we should notate as if 4/4 was actually 2 consecutive 2/4 bars, separated by an invisible barline. Of course, semibreves (and dotted minims) violate this regularly, so we might consider them honorary exceptions to this rule. But this begs the question, at what point does the imaginary barline ‘kick in’?

Figure 2

Figure 2 presents the results of the first 3 exercises

 

Figure 2 Preferences for Examples 1-3, testing the limits of the imaginary barline. Notice how preference is eroded by the weaker ‘bridge posts’. (NB NP= no preference and please note also that due to rounding errors, the percentages in this – and other examples – may not add up to 100% exactly, please get over it.)

You’ll notice that in all 3 cases, a central minim is preferred over an imaginary barline. At this point I’m going to suggest some terminology, let’s call the formation with a central minim (covering beats 2 and 3) as a minim bridge. It seems that readers tolerate this well. Note that positing the minim bridge allows us to talk of – among other things – crotchet bridges on beats 1& to 2& and their implications in sight reading.

Notice that the preference for the minim bridge reduces as we subdivide the material on beats 1 and 4). 1a has a minim bridge well supported by a crotchet post on either end, clearly presenting beats 1 and 4. 1b and 1c on the other hand have weaker posts, the quavers and semiquavers respectively, slightly masking the clarity of beats 1 and 4.

We could in fact imagine minim bridges of different strengths. While the majority may prefer a minim bridge to an imaginary barline (IB), as the material at beats 1 and 4 become more complex, perhaps more people prefer the IB over the bridge presentation (see Figure 3)

Figure 3

Figure 3 Hard and weak minim bridges with imaginary barline equivalents, and a suggested preference curve. (Click to embiggen)

The limited data supports this, but it’s only a tentative suggestion. Furthermore, I suspect that there will be a significant proportion of readers who will always prefer (or at least tolerate) a minim bridge regardless of the content in the rest of the bar.

Bridge Stability

So far we’ve seen that there is a general preference for minim bridges over imaginary barlines, less so perhaps as the minim’s supporting posts on beats 1 and 4 become more complex. But what of the minim bridge itself? How robust is it to any complexities? The answer, it seems, is not very. Figure 5 shows that when the minim bridge is divided into a quaver-crotchet-quaver pattern (a crotchet bridge formation), preference swings dramatically to the imaginary barline presentation, and slightly more so when the beats 1 and 4 posts are made more complex. So a fractal//Inception-style bridge-within-a-bridge is too much for many readers to bear, although a good 1 in 4 readers actually preferred it over IB. I suspect that some readers, don’t need any IB at all, and are happy to see a sequence of rhythmic values with no visual indication of beat 3. Let’s call these readers who can tolerate (or prefer) a sequence of rhythmic values over IB presentations as ‘sequential readers’.

Figure 4

Figure 4. A minim bridge collapses for most people when it is subdivided into a crotchet bridge. Still, those 1 in 4 sequential readers prefer it to IB.

 Crotchet Bridges and Imaginary Quarter-Barlines

So we’ve dealt to some degree with minim bridges and their relationship to the imaginary barline, and their kryptonite (the fractal bridge), but what of bridges on beats 1 and 2, and beats 3 and 4? In other words, do the same principles scale down from the whole bar to the half bar?

Figure 5

Figure 5 Testing the Crotchet Bridge (or crotchet IB)

 

Examples 6 and 7 address this question. You’ll see in Figure 6 that the majority prefer the crotchet bridge to (beat 2 and 4) imaginary barlines (6a over 6b) although this preference is less common than at the whole bar level (1a over 1b). However the crotchet bridge (surprisingly to me) seems far more susceptible to weakening than the minim bridge. Notice that as soon as we weaken the posts on the first and last quavers, preference sways over dramatically to the crotchet IB (7b over 7a). This was just a tentative study (quiz really) but if I knew of this phenomenon I would have interrogated the extent and nature of the fragile crotchet bridge more thoroughly.

Quaver Bridges, Patronizing Over-information and Even More Imaginary Barlines

Let’s look now at the quaver bridge (semiquaver-quaver-semiquaver). Figure 6 shows that a similar ratio of readers prefer quaver bridges to minim bridges (8a over 8b, as compared to 1a over 1b). However some subjects reported (without solicitation) that 8b was ‘horrible’ or ‘horrifying’. Why this ‘over-information’ created such a negative reaction (as compared to 1b) is not clear. It could be that it is simply the case of 4 instances over 1, or the shortened time scale is less tolerant of unnecessary fuss. I suspect it’s the sequential readers kicking up the fuss, I’ll check.

Figure 6

Figure 6 How to piss off a sequential reader.

 

The quaver bridge also allows us to check if the standard IB (splitting 4/4 into 2 2/4 bars) is sufficient once semiquavers are introduced. You’ll see in Figure 8 that in fact a slight majority of readers prefer to have imaginary barlines on every beat in the presence of semiquaver syncopation. A good portion preferred standard IB but one who didn’t was upset by the crotchet IB violation. He’ll recover in time.

Figure 7

Figure 7 Half vs. quarter imaginary barlines with semiquaver syncopation

Let’s now test sequential vs. standard IB vs crotchet IB in a syncopated semiquaver passage (Figure 9). The majority preferred crotchet IB (essentially 4 imaginary bars of 1/4), but a significant portion were happier with either no IB or standard IB presentations (Incidentally the former upset some readers presumably because it was the opposite of patronizing). Why did more prefer 10a to 10b (given 10c’s majority) is a bit puzzling. Perhaps there is an in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound sentiment in operation here (“if I don’t need one tie over beats 2 and 3, I don’t need any other”).

Figure 8

Figure 8 No vs. standard vs. crotchet IB with semiquaver syncopations.

 

Additive Meters vs. Imaginary Barlines

Aside from minim bridge and the trivial semibreve and dotted minim cases, there are relatively common violations of standard IB, in the context of additive meter. To test this, let’s compare preferences for 3+3+2 vs. 2+3+3 vs. 3+2+3 quaver groups. All of these violate standard IB but will any be preferred over it. In every case standard IB is preferred (11b, 12b and 13b), but around 20-30% went for the ‘full additive’ version. This was particularly true in the 3+3+2 formation rather than the other permutations (one of which was ‘offensive’ to some). Why would this be the case? They all violate standard IB so what else differentiates them? It may be that 3+3+2 is the most commonly seen of these meters (Butler 2006) or – and perhaps because – it has a clear beat 4 ‘post’ to anchor the reader. You’ll notice that readers clearly preferred standard IB over crotchet IB (11b, 12b and 13b over 11c, 12c and 13c).

It perhaps hits the sweet spot between rhythmic clarity and patronizing over information.

Figure 9

Figure 9 Additive meter vs. imaginary barlines

 

Conclusions

This was a limited, uncontrolled study glorified quiz with a small number of participants, all of whom could see each other’s responses. Still, useful (and surprising) concepts emerged. In particular, I think there is mileage in terms of the bridge concept, and a more flexible concept of the imaginary barline which adapts dynamically to subdivision and syncopation, as well as the sweet spot between fussy information and pure sequentualism. I’m also going to investigate preference patterns and consistencies (or otherwise) within (rather that between) subjects’ responses.

The preferences here may be merely suggestive of experience and convention (although how these conventions emerge is interesting of itself). It’s unlikely that our preferences are the results of evolutionary pressure – quick-read-this-syncopated-passage-to-distract-the-tiger scenarios – but it may tell us something about our music reading faculties, and whether an inexperienced notator’s (and Logic notation) can be so baffling . Whether these preferences are internally consistent or optimal may be questioned, but it’s useful to actually know what a majority of readers prefer when preparing scores. So let’s ask them (ourselves).

Many thanks to those who gave up their time and composure in completing this test. Very interested to hear your preferences, and any feedback below.

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Composition Music Theory Top Posts

The Modal Compass

NOTE: This Modal Compass has gone through some generations. The latest versions (©2024 Milton Mermikides) – as featured in Gresham Lecture ‘The Colour Spectrum of Scales and Modes’ are here:

And ‘left-handed’ Dark to Bright (©2024 Mermikides)

Created by Skye Løfvander (musicpatterns.dk) (2015 Løvander/Mermikides).

2015: Original. A way of visualising the relationship between the modes of the major scale. When I have time I’ll expand to other modal groups (and fix the dodgy alignments).

Modal Compass
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Guitar Lessons Jazz & Improvisation Learning & Teaching Music Theory

4 Levels of the Blues

GT240

For Guitar Techniques Issue 240, I’ve penned a little thing about different approaches to playing over a simple blues progression. THIS WAS SUCH A CONFUSING THING FOR ME TO LEARN GROWING UP. Why? Because

1) There are several effective approaches, and humans being humans can only give advice on what they know. I received conflicting advice from different great players on what to do, leaving me befuddled.

2) Blues playing can be both very simple and intuitive, and hugely complex. Learning to use both intuitive flair and theoretical sophistical takes time (not that I’m done, far from it).

This article to which I owe much to Jason Sidwell for the underlying themes offers 4 different approaches to playing on a 12-bar, 3 chord progression. I found it very useful, I hope you might too.

Categories
Events Guitar Guitar Lessons Jazz & Improvisation

Classical and Jazz Guitar Course in Le Marche, Italy

Urbino2Molto excited to be running a Jazz guitar course (with Bridget running the parallel Classical guitar course) in the stunning Palazzo Mannocchi in the Marche region of Italy 15-22 August 2015 with Helicon Arts. Italian food and wine, terraces, gorgeous views, 2 swimming pools, all food and trips catered and lots and lots of extended chords, guide-tome lines and tasteful phrasing.

Classical and Jazz Guitar Course in Le Marche, Italy

Ascoli-Piceno1 Palazzo9 Petritoli1

 

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Data Sonification Events Installations Publications Research

Hidden Music Exhibition Lewis Elton Gallery

Here’s some info for my Hidden Music exhibition 7-13 May 2015 at the Lewis Elton Gallery. A series of works created through translation of natural phenomena into sound.

Hidden Music

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Concerts & Gigs Fundraising Guitar Leukaemia

The Eclectic Guitar Orchestra with John Williams – Bush Hall April 8th 2015

EGO Poster

On the 10th anniversary of my bone marrow transplant, you are warmly invited to a concert of the Eclectic Guitar Orchestra, in support of leukaemia charities. April 8th 2015, 7.30pm Bush Hall (Shepherd’s Bush) Tickets a mere £25
Performers include the legendary John WilliamsGeorge Uki HrabDeclan ZapalaCraig OgdenBridget MermikidesJohn WheatcroftPeter Gregson Amanda CookSteve Goss Jake Willson and an ever growing list of amazing musicians.
Please join the Facebook event for ticketing information, how you can support the event, to express interest (so I can get an idea of numbers), and a bunch of other exciting stuff to be announced… visit again for unfolding information…

69033_ego_logo_small

Categories
Composition Data Sonification Music Theory

New York Skyline Melody Visualised

I asked my friend and many-time collaborator Anna Tanczos to visualise Villa-Lobos’s New York Skyline Melody for a recent lecture-presentation. The results are fantastic (I predict 1000s of views), and you can see exactly how Villa-Lobos translated the New York Skyline into a solo piano work (note the multiple voices with the foreground and background buildings). This piece has been a big inspiration to me the field of data sonification. For more on New York Skyline Melody and similar works see here, and for all things Data Sonification here.

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