Natural rhythms?

[woggle]

https://www.nature.com/news/2004/041108 ... 08-12.html

"The team's analysis shows that fluctuations in pitch in music written by classic French composers vary much less than in British music. The difference mirrors the patterns of pitch found in the corresponding languages."

and this more recent special issue of frontiers in psychology on the relationship between music and language

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3338120/

[jancivil]

Speakin' o' this perfection sought thru the number three and the enforcement against vulgarity in The Church music:

... the isorhythmic motet of the 14th century managed to derive decisive structural benefit from the systematic application of given rhythmic patterns without the inescapable dance associations of its 13th-century predecessor.

https://www.britannica.com/art/isorhythm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu7-RV7XB9k

I was placed in "Honors" curriculum at school, which only really meant the normal two years of Music History and Music Theory were done in one year. So I had a guy in History that cared mostly about the music of The Church (a conservative) and we had such a concentration (we had to write essays, ok) I got really sick of it; and he and I mutually agreed I was outta there. BUT this bit out of all that was the one really interesting thing for me.
In Theory, I had an organist and a Messiaen freak and he hammered on that 'isorhythm' (although I don't think Messiaen had this other thing in mind, according to my reading).

But I found this (3x3 = 9 basically, the compounding of) particularly inspiring, albeit in the crossing against two for my own work later, duple vs triple emphasis [eg., here 4:9] in compound time; NB: this (12 is 4 as it is 'equally' 3) in African rhythm.

[donkey tugger]

If someone started to talk to you in iambic parameter in a converstation at a bus stop, you'd probably start wondering whether you should go find another bus stop.

Especially if it was about cutting off someone's bollocks and putting them in pigshite.

[herodotus]

Kvr, you never fail to impress. This kind of exchange is exactly what I was hoping for.



I myself don't believe that a dichotomy between 'natural' and 'artificial' makes much sense in music. All creative music is artificial by definition. But I thought that it could lead to an interesting discussion.

I will say that I have never understood why people thought that rhythms created within a metrical framework of 5, 7, 10, or 11 were somehow less 'natural' or 'musical' than rhythms created within a framework of 2, 3, 4, or 6. Same with changing meters and polymetrical structures. In fact, I have never met a rhythmic curiosity that I didn't like.

That's why I think the only 'nature' involved is human nature. Some people are attracted to rhythmic curiosities in the same way that some people are attracted to spicy food. In the human sense, both are as natural as a predilection for repetitive dance rhythms or caramel rolls. Humans are extremely variable organisms.

[Michael L]

I think the only 'nature' involved is human nature.

But if anything a human does is natural, the concept of 'natural rhythms' becomes meaningless.
I propose that musical rhythms which are grounded in our familiar biological rhythms are most 'natural,' but unfamiliar variation from those rhythms creates interest, and that is also 'natural' because we are biologically attracted to novelty!
The tension and resolution between the unfamiliar and familiar underlies much popular music, so the 'natural' and the 'novel' need each other.

[Gamma-UT]

But if anything a human does is natural, the concept of 'natural rhythms' becomes meaningless.

Well, if you're going to pursue this by lawyering on definitions:

artificial (adj): made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally, especially as a copy of something natural.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Life flows better in 3's, 5's and 6's.
9's and 11's before 4's.
And why wait for that redundent 8th to roll around, when 7 is just perfect

[jancivil]

speech, doubled by drums; then 'Why would anybody want to do that?'; then abstracted speech, doubled with drums.

https://youtu.be/8wTeBPeg5AE?t=3m23s

[jancivil]

But if anything a human does is natural, the concept of 'natural rhythms' becomes meaningless.

Where the discussion was before this, was a contention that the mensural notation reflected more 'the metrical feet' of "classical poetry" than unregulated speech. So distinctions between say what I showed from an answering machine conversational rhythm, which is as natural as the language (which is a problem to abstract from historical), vs measured language, meter of classical poetry etc, are not meaningless.
The reduction you want is absurd but to no real furtherance of the discussion and clarifying no point.


The Britannica article which seeks to encapsulate quite a lot into a blurb winds up stating some interesting things to check.

Abandoning all modal limitations, the isorhythmic motet of the 14th century managed to derive decisive structural benefit from the systematic application of given rhythmic patterns without the inescapable dance associations of its 13th-century predecessor.

I snipped the first bit because of the can o' worms it opens up. "Modal", meaning modal rhythm. This was to seek distance from, and supplant plainsong type of unmeasured (one may say freer, I suppose) rhythm with a system based on the "metric feet of classical poetry". This led to mensural notation, which would tend to be necessary to get polyphonic singing going, I guess.

This was a bit of snooze for me until we hit 'Isorhythm', which is a diminution of the primary line, ÷ by 2 and placed against it. I moved away from "History of Western Music" around this time to investigate and embrace other things in the world. I found this structural notion useful per se.
But let's note what Gamma noted, that by the time notation was a thing, really, use of language as a construct for music had become very regulated.

But when I look at, when I hear the Machaut, I find the 'inescapable dance rhythms' still inescapable.

[Aloysius]

I noticed that the natural rhythm of taking a dump differs depending on what one has consumed the night before.

[BertKoor]

I noticed that the natural rhythm of taking a dump differs depending on what one has consumed the night before.

I was going to say, the most natural rhythm (also for a controversial and provocative musician and tight arranger) is once a day.



Also music and speech are different things. What's natural in one is not in the other.

[Gamma-UT]

Perhaps the concept of tension <> resolution in tonal music is also related to certain rhythms and relations being more natural so that difference is defined as deviation (a breakthrough theory book, Geometry of Music explores this in detail.)

The issue I have with using Tymoczo's approach to determining what comes naturally (or any theory that says maths is fundamental to perception) is that the idea of parsimonious voice leading and other effects could easily be down to hundreds of years of conditioning. We can't rewind the tape of time to work out which came first.

However, there is another "geometry" book that could shed a bit of light on the idea of natural rhythms. It's "The Geometry of Musical Rhythm" by Godfried Toussaint. It tries to work out why Euclidean rhythms are so common across many cultures. I think it's interesting that the brain doesn't try to simply divide a number of pulses across a time but fit them into slots within some other meter in a reasonably even distribution.

Shorter paper (I think this preceded the book): https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e9d2/c ... 1627e3.pdf

IIRC, Toussaint reckons the clave son rhythm is one that turns up the most no matter where you are in the world.

[fmr]

Also music and speech are different things. What's natural in one is not in the other.

Music and speech are two different things, but speech still has its own rhythm (which varies from language to language).

BUT music and poetry (and poetry is not natural speech) are not that different. Actually, music and poetry very much evolved somehow embraced, changings in one sometimes leading to changes in the other. We can even say that musical forms derive mainly from two things: poetry (sung music) and dance (mainly instrumental music). And I think we all agree that poems have their own intrinsic rhythm, that's constant from verse to verse, and creates an inner "musicality" that in some minds almost leads to the music flowing naturally from them, almost as if it was written in the inner pulsing of the poem.

[jancivil]

Speech is language and language is from historical. The more ideas conveyed in language, the more syntax has to be considered; there is nothing innate from 'natural' here, it's a construct, an artifice.

I just showed some straight speech, nothing regulated to a meter, an answering machine 'leave your number and we'll get back to you' message doubled with drums. Then the rhetorical question 'who does this?'; "who would put a metronome on and transcribe somebody talking?"

A musician who likes this?
Again, this was an interest of mine at around the time I decided I would become a composer. The person I improvised with and had this whole life experience with tried it out with a composer of note who was steeped in the old school but has some fairly avant-garde music to show for it. And he immediately related it to some poetry.
So, this is generally why I wasn't in school by this time. It seems if you're really tied down by convention, but I personally don't think deriving rhythm from conversational speech rhythm is, at all. If we really took a look at what FZ meant by it in the solos - on the radio then - in records by Johnny "Guitar" Watson, it would reveal there is a sort of propulsion in it and a sort of declarative energy in it. And it would not be as easy to transcribe as duple/triple subdivisions of meter.

Is there something unmusical about it? I don't think so. I think that is a too-narrow way to look at music.

So we went into history a bit which shows a move to specifically regulated speech, after classicism; and a move away from a notion of the common folk and their inescapable dance rhythm.
Certain poetry of the 20th century did move away from the metrical, not everybody needed to be caring so much about 'feet' anymore.
Music has too, believe it or not.

[Michael L]

The issue I have with using Tymoczo's approach to determining what comes naturally (or any theory that says maths is fundamental to perception) is that the idea of parsimonious voice leading and other effects could easily be down to hundreds of years of conditioning. We can't rewind the tape of time to work out which came first.

Perhaps we can. Something is more likely to have evolved (e.g. be "natural") if it first appeared independently in lots of different places (convergent evolution). For those who may be unfamiliar, Tymoczko argues that:

"five features are present in a wide range of genres, Western and non-Western, past and present, and that they jointly contribute to a sense of tonality:

1. Conjunct melodic motion.
Melodies tend to move by short distances from note to note.

2. Acoustic consonance.
Consonant harmonies are preferred to dissonant harmonies, and tend to be used at points of musical stability.

3. Harmonic consistency.
The harmonies in a passage of music, whatever they may be, tend to be structurally similar to one another.

4. Limited macroharmony.
I use the term "macroharmony" to refer to the total collection of notes heard over moderate spans of musical time. Tonal music tends to use relatively small macroharmonies, often involving five to eight notes.

5. Centricity.
Over moderate spans of musical time, one note is heard as being more prominent than the others, appearing more frequently and serving as a goal of musical motion."

I realise this thread is about tonality not rhythm, but we have been noting correspondences so I will add this 5-note rhythmic motif.

Now I am off to have a deeper look at Toussaint....