Some thoughts on Foundation of Rhythm Theory

[woggle]

Thank you for the link. Here is an example of the ambiguity in polyrhythms I am talking about. This is a westafrican polyrhythm starting with a pulze of 6 over 4, where he first emphasizes 4 as basic pulze, then the 6 as basic pulze and then he triples the 6, which adds a new feeling to the rhythm. It is wonderful.

He explains what is happening starting from 1.10

interesting - there is a whole area of study of bistable figures


and his talk reminds me of that but I've not seen anything on bistable musical material such as that drummer talks about (there's stuff on melodic bistability I vaguely remember but can't remember anything on bistable grooves - auditory stream analysis is the area to look in)

[jancivil]

He explains what is happening starting from 1.10

"Triplets in six is a rhythm we don't have in western notation."

He's doing more than 'triplets in six', the six is already triplets vis a vis four, now we have 18.
If you want to see that kind of thing notated, I showed you it above. As nested tuplets.

But he has a cool idea. In the first place, the 18 is felt, the particular interest is in, founded in, its relationship to the 4 time.
We already know through compound time and hemiola that we can take the 3 or the 2 emphasis where both exist. Now both exist on another level.
if even the 18 becomes the new pulse, great. But we're dealing in something actually easily notated. The essential interest here is 3:2, now it's 9:2.
9:2 is two levels of 3; notated, the next level of triplets is nested.

11 [or 7 or 5 or 13] is not a factor of another number. We don't go to 88 in order to deal with 8. It isn't practical and there is no reason for it, except in avoidance of the true statement "11 in the time of". But more fundamentally, if we need to get rid of 11:8, or 11 in the time of a half note, why not get rid of the triplet and do this tortured thing I went to show you with the tied values? You aren't following.

But if the thread has to be restricted to 3 and 2, I'm good with that, I can do something else.

[IncarnateX]

Musicians should not have that problem.

What musician should have of problems and what they actually have may differ you know. 20 years ago I had a an african teacher that claimed he have had several problems with Western Students teaching them polyrhythms, basically due to the fact that we want to understand almost everything in 4/4. And since I was one of them, I experienced exactly what he meant. So much for arguments about me fabricating problems and solutions.

And I am of course not going to let you tell me what to argue about or not, what to consider a musical idea or not, or anything else related to music.

Apart from that I wish you and everyone else here a merry christmas.

Over and out

[jancivil]

You stated that you don't have interest in something you'd argued about.

Of course people have that kind of problem. It doesn't change anything about the musical idea.

my sequencer wouldn't give shit about what parameter I wrote a 3 against 4 in and it will sound exactly the same. Humans however, their "computer" can be more tricky...

In service of "Thus, there are no prime pulse besides the one your brain arbitrarily chooses for you."
Then you show a video where a man states 'this four pulse on the hihat is where I'm coming from'. Yes, by emphasis his nested triplets might now persuade us to feel the 4 as the cross-rhythm. (And yes, you could have a machine do it flat and we maybe don't know what to do with it. That's not musical.)
The word 'arbitrarily' is not apt. It's just argumentative. Trying to justify it you've really contradicted yourself. I am not going to enjoy being bullshitted any better because of Xmas season, sorry.

[IncarnateX]

You stated that you don't have interest in something you'd argued about.

Of course people have that kind of problem. It doesn't change anything about the musical idea.

my sequencer wouldn't give shit about what parameter I wrote a 3 against 4 in and it will sound exactly the same. Humans however, their "computer" can be more tricky...

In service of "Thus, there are no prime pulse besides the one your brain arbitrarily chooses for you."
Then you show a video where a man states 'this four pulse on the hihat is where I'm coming from'. Yes, when he emphasizes his nested triplets, we might now tend to feel the 4 as the cross-rhythm. The word 'arbitrarily' is not apt. It's just argumentative. Trying to justify it you've really contradicted yourself. I am not going to enjoy being bullshitted any better because of Xmas season, sorry.

Nice try, but no contradiction, you can of course "hint" the change of feeling like he does ( it is called priming within psychology) but ideally the rhythm could be reversible by the choises of your brain only.

Now you take on that patronizing attitude that makes all your knowledge useless and yourself nothing but an aggressive piece of shit who wants to start a fight for the sake of fighting. It is pathetic, lay off.

[woggle]

You stated that you don't have interest in something you'd argued about.

Of course people have that kind of problem. It doesn't change anything about the musical idea.

my sequencer wouldn't give shit about what parameter I wrote a 3 against 4 in and it will sound exactly the same. Humans however, their "computer" can be more tricky...

In service of "Thus, there are no prime pulse besides the one your brain arbitrarily chooses for you."
Then you show a video where a man states 'this four pulse on the hihat is where I'm coming from'. Yes, when he emphasizes his nested triplets, we might now tend to feel the 4 as the cross-rhythm. The word 'arbitrarily' is not apt. It's just argumentative. Trying to justify it you've really contradicted yourself. I am not going to enjoy being bullshitted any better because of Xmas season, sorry.

but in the bistable or multistable cases the stimulus remains the same whilst the perception changes - and whilst the studies currently seem biased toward pitch groupings there is enough there to indicate rhythmical groupings work similarly. I vaguely remember talking with Jeff Pressing (who had major expertise in this area) about this at a conference a year or two before he died.

[jancivil]

"Nice try, but no contradiction..."

'ideally' isn't musical. By showing that there is emphasis, which was my point all along, you have entirely contradicted this 'ideally' and 'in the machine, flatly, there is no difference'. Bringing up psychology again doesn't change that, it only emphasizes this salient difference

So great, you're going to stick with what you know rather than interest a conversation, but it's my fault. You're arguing in order to be right, I have gone to some lengths to show you how some things work.

[jancivil]

a video where a man states 'this four pulse on the hihat is where I'm coming from'. Yes, when he emphasizes his nested triplets, we might now tend to feel the 4 as the cross-rhythm.

but in the bistable or multistable cases the stimulus remains the same whilst the perception changes - and whilst the studies currently seem biased toward pitch groupings there is enough there to indicate rhythmical groupings work similarly. I vaguely remember talking with Jeff Pressing (who had major expertise in this area) about this at a conference a year or two before he died.

I understand this.

I don't think, eg., 11 is going to be bistable to say 4/4, I was trying to show a difference in result between triplets (triplets being a function of the expectation of two as a base) and the other thing. Even nested triplets. IE: 9 is a different problem than 11, or 7, or 13. Probably 5, although I think we can be entrained to that more readily.

This is a product of expectation, I grant that much of the psychology.

[IncarnateX]

You're arguing in order to be right.

Wow! That projection must hurt! I tried to back off from this politely several posts ago but you just can not lay off can you?

"ideally isn't musical"! My God from where do you pull out all these truisms?
Wait don't tell me. I have an idea and I do not really wish to know.

[woggle]

"Nice try, but no contradiction..."

'ideally' isn't musical. By showing that there is emphasis, which was my point all along, you have entirely contradicted this 'ideally' and 'in the machine, flatly, there is no difference'. Bringing up psychology again doesn't change that, it only emphasizes this salient difference

So great, you're going to stick with what you know rather than interest a conversation, but it's my fault. You're arguing in order to be right, I have gone to some lengths to show you how some things work.

the psychology shows that there is no need for emphasis change for the perceived rhythm to change.

[jancivil]

projection

No, it isn't about 'me' being right. There is material here which you could learn from, but no.

"Ideally" ie., 'objectively' or as I put it 'the machine, flatly' doing that 3:4 or what-have-you is not musical activity. When you show the drummer emphasizing, or 'priming', that shows what I was saying, it's the opposite of 'ideally'. He said 'where I'm coming from', which only refutes 'arbitrarily'. Your argument here is ad hominem and not more.

[jancivil]

'ideally' isn't musical. By showing that there is emphasis, which was my point all along, you have entirely contradicted this 'ideally' and 'in the machine, flatly, there is no difference'. Bringing up psychology again doesn't change that, it only emphasizes this salient difference

the psychology shows that there is no need for emphasis change for the perceived rhythm to change.

Is it your position that this will be true for every case? The psychologist in the thread has granted 'priming' as per that demonstration in the video. I agree with that drummer, I started to feel the hihat as 'interest'. I don't know from the psychology. I think with no new emphasis I'm going with the hihat for the pulse. I could be mistaken.

I think with basically 6:4 that we can go either way. I think w. eg., 11 in the time of 8 we're entrained enough to that product of 2 to tend towards it as pulse and 11 is interesting vis a vis that expectation.

[woggle]

"Nice try, but no contradiction..."

'ideally' isn't musical. By showing that there is emphasis, which was my point all along, you have entirely contradicted this 'ideally' and 'in the machine, flatly, there is no difference'. Bringing up psychology again doesn't change that, it only emphasizes this salient difference

the psychology shows that there is no need for emphasis change for the perceived rhythm to change.

Is it your position that this will be true for every case? The psychologist in the thread has granted 'priming' as per that demonstration in the video. I agree with that drummer, I started to feel the hihat as 'interest'.

I think with basically 6:4 that we can go either way. I think w. eg., 11 in the time of 8 we're entrained enough to that product of 2 to tend towards it as pulse and 11 is interesting vis a vis that expectation.

I got a PhD in Psychiatry - cognitive neuroscience really - so I'm happy to be my expert here rather than rely on "the psychologist in the thread" who I happen to agree with anyway. Your point about pulse is not supported by every musical system. Not every culture uses 'regular' clock rates as the foundation for rhythm. Some use sequences of long and short beats that are expanded and contracted in time and cannot be reduced to some system of regular pulses as is the common in the west

And I wouldn't really consider playing 11:7 or even 4:3 or 3:2 as particularly rhythmical in nature, they're just exercises one might set. You really need to be playing something much more musically subtle than simple ratios to get a rhythm of actual interest.

[jancivil]

But to take that 11 as the basis in order to say "2 vs 11", you're still saying 2 in the time of 11, the notation of it is [truly] not as simple as making 3 vis a vis 4 into 12/8.
There is no getting around it being "11 in the time of _".

[jancivil]

Not every culture uses 'regular' clock rates as the foundation for rhythm. Some use sequences of long and short beats that are expanded and contracted in time and cannot be reduced to some system of regular pulses as is the common in the west

That's a whole new goalpost. I have not taken the position that 'every culture uses regular clock rates'. As per the demonstration of nested tuplets, essentially [3 times 3] vs [2], we are dealing with a changed expectation. I think I can grant perception of that [particular 3:2 type] could change even flatly presented, but I'm skeptical that this is true per se.