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| Published: Jun.25.2005 @ 5:06 pm
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Now let us play some melodies at IOI 100ms. That sounds more like the
music we know, isn't it? Scholars from different fields (e.g.
psychology, cognitive musicology) call this pace "the threshold of
subjective rhythmization", meaning that it is precisely around IOI
100ms that we can start projecting thesis and arsis values – more freely – over the
pulsations of a rhythmical surface.
Other scholars claim that that is only possible to a certain extent:
that is, we can only place a subjective accent every third pulsation.
Well, I doubt that, since in the many examples I carefully listened to
I was 100% sure that I can place accents every second pulsation.
Other theories – that successfully passed my personal testing – claim
that there can be only one subjective accent within a 200ms timespan.
That's true and it implies that, indeed, at IOI 100ms we can imagine
binary structures: 100ms + 100ms = 200ms.
It follows that it is around IOI 70ms (i.e. 200ms roughly divided by 3)
that we can only place thesis accents every third pulsation. Please
listen to such an IOI and decide for yourself if that is true. I guess
it is and it becomes more apparent at around IOI 75-80ms.
You should
become accustomed to these 2 thresholds (i.e. of binary and compound
rhythmization) as you will need to recognize and produce their
corresponding IOIs by heart. Please do practice them (a lot!) until you
seem to have gained a good grasp on their "sond and mood". In so doing,
watch carefully the way you place thesis values: if you can do that
every third pulsation only, you are performing an isochronal tempo
around 70-80ms. Conversely, if you can place accents both every third
or second pulsation then you must be performing an isochronal tempo
(isotempo) around 100ms (or more, so be careful not to loosen the isotempo too much).
If you are not a good instrumentalist, you might not be able to perform
these IOIs due to physiological restraints (i.e. they are too fast for
your unexperienced fingers). In this case, what can I say? Praktice,
praktice, praktice! Or rest content to recognizing them upon listening.
Try out as many isochronal melodies as you can: write them
down in Finale NotePad and play them at both 75ms (MM800) and 100ms
(MM600) and try to sense the differences by placing subjective accents,
as described above). |
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| Published: Jun.25.2005 @ 1:13 pm
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First, listen to any isochronal melody (i.e. a melody that displays
only one note-value) in this tempo. You will notice that pulsations
seem blurred and crowded. It's a sensation that you are very familiar
with from its visual correspondent, as photo-framed movies that we
perceive as continuous are based on the very same perceptual phenomenon
which psychologists call flicker or crepitus.
There is a comprehensive literature dedicated to this phenomenon but here we
shall only focus on the practical ways in which we can use it
musically.
On the one hand, you will notice that, at this speed, you won't be able
to perform instrumentally just any melody that you want, except for
some ascending or descending passages. No "do-mi-re-fa-mi-sol..." sequences –
only short one-way scales and arpeggios. In fact, I doubt that you can
keep the isochronicity stable for more than 5 pulsations – for a fistfull
of fingers, so to speak...
On the other hand, while listening to a IOI 50ms melody, try to tell
which pulsations are accents (thesis) and which are non-accents (arsis)
and you will see how tricky this taxonomy is at this tempo. Usually, we
are prone to consider as thesis pulsations those notes that
represent melodic peaks (both upper and lower).
These said, you can tell now that you know how to recognize a
crepitus-specific IOI. It sonds blurred, you cannot play just any melody
that you want at this speed and you do not discern thesis vs. arsis
pulsations the way you do it at slower rates, where you generally can
tell that a "tick" is followed or preceded by one or two "tocks". At IOI 50ms, if you pay
enough attention, you will be able to discern many more "tocks" (arsis values)
in a row. Strange, isn't it?
Feel free to practice some short scales and arpeggios and listen to
several melodies in this isochronal tempo until you are sure you've got
it right so that you won't mistake it for the next IOI. |
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| Published: Jun.25.2005 @ 1:11 pm
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In order to get to know what happens at different IOIs, you will need a
non-Maelzel metronome. That is, a metronome that tick-tocks beyond the
216 to 40 BPM (beats per minute) range.
There are several ways to get to one: for instance, you can use a music
editor (Finale NotePad is good and it is a freeware) or purchase a good electronic
metronome.Another thing that we need is to get used with millisecond measurments
and forget about BPMs (at least for a while...). As we shall see, there
are beat-specific IOIs, but they will be regarded here just as a part of the
larger musically relevant temporal scope.
Last but not least, it would be good for you to have a musical
instrument at hand in order to start practicing whatever IOI will be
described in the following entries.
Please do not expect to find here too many references to the books and
articles that I based my theory upon. This is just a blog, not a
scholarly lecture. However, if you want to read some of the "academic"
stuff that I wrote, e-mail me and I'll gladly send you a few articles
and studies that comply with academic standards.
That said, I will start describing perceptual phenomena related to IOIs
from 50 to 800 millisecond. As a matter of convenience, I will do that
for IOIs which are 50ms apart (i.e. 50, 100, 150, 200, 250ms etc). That
does NOT mean that all relevant time-related perceptual phenomena take
place at precisely these values, but this "tempered" scale is good for
a start. It settles a conventional grid whence we can fine-tune our
educated-to-become temporal acuity.
Let's go! |
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| Published: Jun.25.2005 @ 9:03 am
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Besides the nuissance with the "dry" disciplines that must be seriously
taken into account, there is still a major barrier for us before being
able to master musical time differently: our sturdily sedimented
cultural heritage. We are so accustomed to see rhythm as a...
rhythmical activity that switching to a non-ratio-dependent
musico-temporal system is, for a member of the Western culture, like
having to sing an Arab, (i.e. non-tempered-dodecaphonic,
strangely-to-us tuned) tune. Or, if you prefer, like asking Monteverdi
to dig – out of blue – Wagnerian harmony (I think, of course, of
Tristan und Isolde).That's why I mentioned earlier the few thousands hours of learning and
practice necessary for a novice to reach a basic yet workable command
on his/her overall temporal competence. We must become time-jugglers
and do with discrete time things that others can't. I assume that, if
there will ever be a community of such jugglers, it will baffle
experimental psychologists, used to conduct their experiments with
subjects that are either normal individuals or musicians – but both
knowing that, in the main, musical time is about rhythm and ratios (1 +
1 = 2, remember?).
The conquest of our overall temporal competence is mainly about
fighting inertia – something similar to musicians' hardly achieved
capability to solfeggiate anything, thus overpassing sonorous polarity.
Polarity (sounds) = inertia (discrete time). You surely have had the
opportunity to experience sonorous polarity the moment you tried to
play a tune on your instrument and simultaneously sing it, say, a minor
second above.
But there is still a long way to go before entering the battle against
pulsatory inertia. For now we shall just muster a series of isochronal
tempi in order for us to see what happens between IOI
(inter-onset-interval) 50 milisecond and 1500 milisecond – a fair scope
of our ability to assess isochronicity. |
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| Published: Jun.24.2005 @ 4:32 pm
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| Years ago I used to play around linking on the piano short excrepts of
music. First bars from the Bachs, Beethovens, Scriabins, Schuberts etc.
I then happened to know by heart – in their "original" tempi. I was
amazed to see that I could quickly switch from one tempo to another
while having no idea whatsoever whether they established or not any of
the known & currently used durational ratios. "Man, I thought,
that's amazing!". In the years to come I started to study this ability
and discovered that it is not only possible to link (rhythmically)
remote isochronal tempi without relating their durations (i.e. to
integers or one to another), but that there is a huge literature
supporting that. It is just that the literature is, in the main, not
about music but about psychology and perception.Yes, it is possible to master musical time in the absence of
duration-relating. The "bad" news is that in order to acheive that one
has to get deeply involved in "dry" disciplines such as perceptual
psychology, experimental psychology, cognitive musicology and the like.
In addition, it takes as much time as it takes for a musician to look
at a score and instantly sound in his/her mind the music he/she sees.
Or to imagine notated music upon hearing an orchestrated song: "That's
A Major with the third in the bass... now it goes to d7 minor with a
suspended fourth...". Let's say that after a few thousands hours of
practice and learning you will be able to tell – mutatis mutandis –
similar things about "strange" discrete-time structures: "That's a
minimum-acton-related pace moving now to a temporal-gap-defined
timespan and finally swithching to a resonance-specific pulse"...
pardon my French.
In addition to that, there already exists a fairly developed musical
notation (i.e. the "zeuxilogic" or "perceptual" notation) to illustrate
this different vision over musical time. I had to create it as the
classical notation was not fit to illustrate perceptual phenomena
(which constitute the basis of the mentioned vision).
With a notation at hand, theoretically, we should be able to both write
down more temporal structures than classical notation allowed us to and
to imagine or perform music that is written by means of
perceptual/zeuxilogic notation. That sounds to me like something that
musicians are generally supposed to do: notate and read music. |
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| Published: Jun.24.2005 @ 3:13 pm
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When Pizzaro conquered the Incans he found there over 23,000 km of
roads used by a population who had missed to invent the wheel.That made me think of the fact that in music theory we might have
missed to invent rhythm and, in consequence, come with another solution
for our relationship with discrete time. Most times we switch from one isochronal tempo to another in music we
relate durations. We use simple-to-complex ratios to do that and it
seems that that's it with musical time. In so doing we
miss to cope with our overall temporal competence, which is far more
complex than that. So complex that no future, alternative theory, will
ever claim to encompass it all. However, what classical rhythm theory
does cover is, in my opinion, too narrow to be left unchallenged.
The ideea is that classical rhythm theory is like an invented wheel
that somehow efaces the emergence of a presumably better alternative. Have you
ever wondered why there are so many books, professors and academic
interest on pitch theories and – comparatively – so little stuff about
musical time theory? Well, I think that's precisely because today
rhythm theory is so simple that it does not claim for more widespread
academic effort. Two quavers make a crotchet. 1 + 1 = 2. Are you happy
with that? Do you need a dedicated course in every music academy to develop for you this principle? I guess not.
But what happens if you want to jot down rhytmical surfaces that
definitely seem to overpass the constraints of the duration-relational
frame? Tag them as "rubato" or, worse, "free rhythm"? Shrug? Let the
computer tell you what is there?
With this blog I will try to answer these and many other related
questions in a "gaia scienza" manner. So, prepare to curse and bless
while discovering, along with the blogger, the creative story of
"discrete time before the wheel was invented". |
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