Saturday, July 12, 2008

Must read article on mathematical analysis of traditional musical structure.

Dmitri Tymoczko transforms musical representation int higher-level mathematical spaces to find that the twin constraints of harmony and melody (in traditional structures) are captured within particular bounded regions of these spaces.

Bonus points :
The mathematician Rachel Hall and I are also exploring some interesting resemblances between music theory and economics. Similar geometrical spaces appear in both disciplines, and questions about how to measure distances between musical chords are very similar to questions about how to measure the distance between economic states.


(hat-tip zby)

Update : your annoying Flash site may look cool, Dmitri, but it prevents me linking directly to your great essay on scale-networks in Debussy and giving it all that lovely Google-juice. FAIL!

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