Injecting some ideas

For collaboration between the different artists creating music and sound for vegastrike.
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chuck_starchaser
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Injecting some ideas

Post by chuck_starchaser »

First let me say that I always dream of getting involved in this forum; but I just can't; I got too much on my plate.
I just wanted to toss an idea or two.
Much of the music in Vegastrike is REALLY good; but in my opinion "not different enough". Much of it is in fact
VERY much music of the 2000's; not a shadow of a doubt about it. Ambiance, New Age. whatever. Much of it
even has bass and drums. What are the chances that 1 or 2 thousand years from now we will like the same kinds
of music we like today? Zero, I'd say.
But the problem is, what to do?
For the solution is not, as may be the tendency of some, to say "let's just have sounds; no harmony; no rhythm;
no constraints"; because that has been the philosophy of the 20th Century; --not even of the 21st. Complete
freedom from any notion of music is the natural reaction to having been subjected to too strict rules, for a
while. If you were living in the 22nd Century, and all musical structure had in fact been abolished, you'd
probably be looking for structure, rather than seeking freedom from it. Freedom from structure is a fashion and
a bias like any other fashion or bias.
Getting rid of ALL biases; not just popular pet peeves, takes a bit of philosophical discipline and an open mind.
Personally, I believe music not only needs structure, but IS structure; but musical structures in the 4th millenium
may be completely unlike anything we hear nowadays, or have ever heard before.
Starting from the most basic assumptions commonly made: That "music" *requires* 12 notes in the octave, a
semi-tone apart, that being a frequency ratio of 1.059... and infinite decimals --the 12th root of 2. Our present
day scale is very new, and it violates the most sacred rule about what our ancestors considered musical intervals.
Since the dawn of history, harmonic tone ratios were fractional numbers; NOT irrational ones. It so happens that
dividing the octave in 12 equal ratios happens to hit numbers that are pretty close to the Pythagorean scale.
The Pythagorean scale was based on frequency ratios that were rational numbers, alright; but ONLY involving
powers of 2 and 3: 4/3 for major 4th; 3/2 for perfect 5th; 9/8 for major 2nd; 81/64 for major third, etceteras.
But music wasn't always the slave of Pythagorean taste. Even ancient Greek music wasn't. It took a lot of killing
to get rid of all scales except Pythagorean, mostly in Middle Ages.
Ancient Greece had 7 basic scales and variations, NONE of them Pythagorean, or even close.
  • Dorian (11)
  • Phrygian (12)
  • Lydian (13)
  • HypoDorian (14)
  • HypoPhrigian (16)
  • HypoLydian (18)
  • MixoLydian (20)
The numbers in parenthesis are the numbers each scale was based on.
For example, the notes in the Dorian scale's octave were tuned like
Harmonic or Major:
  • 11/11 (one --the tonic)
  • 12/11
  • 13/11
  • 14/11
  • 16/11
  • 18/11
  • 20/11
  • 22/11 (two --the octave)
then,
Modal or Minor mode:
  • 11/11 (one --the tonic)
  • 11/10
  • 11/9
  • 11/8
  • 11/7
  • 11/6.5
  • 11/6
  • 11/5.5 (two --the octave)
Lydian was similar, but had 12 in the numerators or denominators.
And so on.
Plus many others, like Ptolemaic, and I forget the many names.

India had 104 different scales that were sanctioned by the Vedas, and who knows how many
that were not. The Indian musical system is completely different from the Greek: They had
a collection of musical ratios, "shrutis", that numbered 66 in the octave.
Musical scales were small collections of these shrutis, without a common numeric base, but
seemingly random assortments.

The funny thing is that we have NO IDEA what any of the hundreds of ancient musical scales
sounds like. We've just never heard them; period. Why? Because they are almost lost...
The 12-tone, equal tempered western scale has, because of its cheap simplicity, eclipsed
all we ever considered music. Like a McDonnald's franchise on steroids.

This is a pity.

But there are groups of musicians out there dedicated to "microtonalism". There are softwares
you can get to compose and render microtonal music. And there's tons of theory and philosophy
of music to read.
I recommend the book "Genesis of a Music" by Harry Partch.

At minimum, you could take... the Aera have 8 appendages? How about writing Aera music in
the HypoPhrigian scale (base 16), and using rhythms based on 8 beats; and structure that often
spans 8 bars between chord changes? (and 64 between modulations?). Just tossing ideas.
And maybe the Arlaan like hexagons and the number 6... How about Phrygian scale (base 12)?
As for humans, maybe purists would play MixoLydian instruments (base 20), as 5 is the number
of man.
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Re: Injecting some ideas

Post by snow_Cat »

^- - ^ Way back when I still studied music I was required to read and perform music written in other tuning schemes as part of the history component; and I believe that 'pop' music is more to blame for the poor state or music, more than the 12-EOF system has. Primarily becasue it keeps to two types of keys: Major and Minor, and even though dissonants (while some times cumbersome to express) work, they are exceptionaly rare.

A piece from the Godfather (I forget which one) for example uses a dissonant key to convey a feeling of discouragement when there should be hope; however people who have only been exposed to 'pop' music have never heard tonality of this type and without exception have responded with a feeling of 'fear' or 'anger', and did not reconise the sound as 'music'. Particularly annoying for me (who has wanderd down a few career paths) and my (professional musician) cousin when we try to enjoy what we reconise as a great piece of art.

Hell, most music-programs don't teach outside the circle of fifths until its time for compostion.
^ - -^ Grating as 'pop' music is, imagine how much worse it would be if the artists had access to tones that were not harmonics of each other from their instruments, as well as their voices.

^- - ^ Personally, I ised to write medleys in external: wikipedia.org dual-tone multi-frequency, but that was partly because I would get very bored while demonstrating tele-com equipment at trade shows day, after day...


^ - -^ So... we could aim for something like a Gregorian Chant in the style of C-64 ?
{Random c64 videos; Abort, Retry?}
'live' performances C64 Orchestra: 'classic' performances: Artist Interviews
edit wrote:before I get an email about this;
I mean Augmented/Diminished :|
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Re: Injecting some ideas

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Frankly, I don't care for any sort of equal temperament; not EDO-12, nor 19, 24, 31, 50, or even 100. Why? I think
equal temperaments are a throw-back. They were invented to be able to transpose. In the age of electronics and
digital music, transpositions could be done easily & exactly with "Function"-like keys on top of musical keyboards.

What I'd like to add, for those who've never heard non-equal-temper, exact musical ratios, is that there's a lot of
meaning that can be conveyed through them. Take the ratio of Major 3rd, for example.
The "Pagan" major 3rd, 5/4, a bit lower in pitch than the major 3rd in a standard keyboard, has a feeling (to me)
of simple enthusiasm, sunny sunrise, waking up refreshed, or taking a step forward.
The "Ecclesiastic" (Pythagorean) major 3rd, 81/64, a bit higher in pitch than the major 3rd in a standard keyboard,
has a completely different feeling to it: It is not so emotional; a lot more intellectual, complex... It conveys to me
images of complex architecture, or being lost in a house of mirrors, or the workings of a mechanical golem. It also
conveys a feeling of like a strict social order. 5/4 and 81/64 are worlds apart, even if they are both close in pitch
to the equal tempered abomination we call today a "major third" (four semitones).
What today's major third does for us is sound an off-tune note, which ambiguously suggests to the ear 5/4 or 81/64,
but actually sounding neither one.
The same applies to the Minor 3rd. Our present interval (3 semitones) falls between perfect harmonic ratios, and
is happily ambiguous on them too.
The diminished 7th, similarly, sits on the fence between the Pythagorean 8/9 and Pagan 9/10; but what we NEVER
hear (and we miss out) is 7/8, a wee bit more than a wee bit lower than 2 semitones below the octave... This is
the so-called "note of the elephant".
6/7 we never heard; not even close; nor its mirror image 7/6. These are about 2 and a half semitones.
Two very meaningful (and dramatic) ratios fall on either side of the (dissonant) 6-semitone Diminished 5th: They
are 11/7 and 14/11. Let me say that to whatever extent "dissonant music" may have an appeal, 90% of is by the
very remote suggestion of these ratios when we play the diminished 5th.

Equal temperament has so frustrated us with its inaccuracy, it has fostered ambiguity in speech and in thought.
Politicians speaking meaninglessness would probably not be tolerated if equal temperament hadn't been invented.
We've grown apathetic about distinguishing truth from falsehood; and it doesn't surprise me: If we can't hear Truth
in music, the noblest art, what chance is there of hearing it elsewhere?

I'm not sure I can fault "modern music". The average musician today is deeply frustrated but doesn't know why; and
this frustration may come out in any random direction. The frustration is with the scale; but they may blame the
chord or the rhythm. We're forced to try and write poetry using a language with only 12 words, out of which only
three are defined; and if we fail we're reminded that Bach did it. Well, thanks Bach!, and FU.

YouTube not working for me today; I'll check out the links tonight maybe.
For my final Greek Sociology class presentation at the University of Winnipeg, I used a Commodore-64 to demo
the old Greek scales and some music.
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Re: Injecting some ideas

Post by snow_Cat »

^ - -^ I agree whole heartedly; I use strongly prefer reasonant tuning, rather than fixed steps, no stupid beat frequency above 10hz distorting the crap out of your echo;

^- - ^ Anyways we can discuss R.Duffin's books.google.caHow Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and Why You Should Care) but that has been scholar.google.cadone to death.

^ - -^ So back on track; we now have complete creative freedom in arbitairly picking tones for our music, do we rely on human composition or create a set of themes in different modes that will be selected and mixed by the game engine to both create a wide variety of music and convey information about the current system; or do we use a set of human compositions that will provide consitency.

[edit: LOL! EOF causes dithering distortion in the frequency spectrum.]
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Re: Injecting some ideas

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Frankly, whether it's implemented as generative music or statically composed music is
something I wouldn't care as long as it's good. I never thought much about generative music,
but then John Cage proved me wrong. Either way, what I'd personally like to see (hear) is a
distinction made between races, at least; maybe factions later. If I'm flying through Aera
space, it would make sense to hear Aera music. Same thing for Rlaan. And their musics
should sound alien.
I don't know what the state of the sound system is at. Klauss and I once brainstormed lots
about sound and music.
Klauss has been working on the sound system for a long time and always almost ready to
commit; but I think that what it is is basically a sound basis for a sound system, not
necessarily any fancy stuff, yet; so I don't know of there being much built in support for
controlling generative music; and don't think there is. But I could be wrong.
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Re: Injecting some ideas

Post by snow_Cat »

^- - ^ If it supports multiple tracks and rudimentary FFT support then generated music should be no problem.
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Re: Injecting some ideas

Post by Turbo »

Remember also that eastern Asia has its own completely different musical heritage. My wife is a better musician than me, and trained in music theory, and she tells me that the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans' music are based on different scales than western music, and they use dissonance. It does not generally sound like music to someone not classically trained.

Here are some examples of how different it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0T60Pd_HnA (I don't know the story behind this one)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-dPC-srIbs&NR=1 (this one I saw on stage in Beijing, a somewhat tragical comedy as I recall)

Wikipedia has a frequency chart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_musicology

I was also thinking that one thing that is unlikely to change in 2 millenia is that the historians will make mistakes. As a reeenactor, I see things that are "wrong" in museums and books sometimes -- jewelry worn updside down, items' purpose misidentified, etc. I say "wrong" having created and used the items, thus I know what works and that what the museum or author is presenting does not work. In this thread, we have been talking about how such things happen with music. Therefore I think it would be funny to take a well-known song lyric, put it to another well-known music style, and present it (in the VS universe) as an reconstructed ancient tune, but which is atually an archeological/musicological "error." I will need a few days to develop and execute this idea.
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Re: Injecting some ideas

Post by snow_Cat »

^ -^- ^ This was the first thing that came to mind when you said that. EDIT: and I'm sorry. :D
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Re: Injecting some ideas

Post by Turbo »

:shock: Apparently I didn't make myself clear.

Imagine the lyrics of one song, using a completely different tune and style. Wait, you need not imagine, here's an example:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/do-wop ... =336288214#
(iTunes can preview it for you)
The lyrics are a classic European folk song, fit to a tune from 5 centuries later, so it's good comedy.
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Re: Injecting some ideas

Post by snow_Cat »

^ - -^ Yes, that is much more awesome than a mashup.
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Re: Injecting some ideas

Post by chuck_starchaser »

Sorry; I'm in a shader writing and testing frenzy right now; I'll catch up eventually.
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Re: Injecting some ideas

Post by klauss »

So much to read... and music... which is SO fun.

But one step at a disorderly time(*):
snow_Cat wrote:^- - ^ If it supports multiple tracks and rudimentary FFT support then generated music should be no problem.
It supports many tracks in many sub-scenes (right now I have a few basic scenes: music, cockpit, space, comm).

The idea of a scene is to be able to track and mix sources independently, and scenes have a priority, so when something happens on the "comm", then soundsystem can be programmed to automatically dim the other scenes according to their priority.

Ie: fancy yet simple stuff.

That is what's supported RIGHT NOW (it hasn't been integrated into VS though, I'm slowly doing that).

Now, about FFT, I'm planning support for complex DSP on sources. Mainly to provide arbitrary frequency-domain transforms (most notably fast convolution) of sources in a scenegraph-oriented way. This I haven't even fully designed yet, I'm only laying out the groundwork and low-level support basics. My idea was to provide complex and convincing environmental effects so that sources from the outside really feel like coming from the outside.

My dream is to have the player hear the cargo in the cargo bay rumble and take off his headphones to try to see if the sound is coming from RL or the game.

Now... given that there will be support for FFT processing, I don't see a reason why someone couldn't write (without too much overhead effort) a module for music synthesis. However... I've been experimenting with music synthesis in the frequency domain with FFTs and it's really imprecise. FFTs have too little frequency and time resolution for that, only weird pad-like sounds come out with any sort of quality, and few real instruments (I managed to synthesize a string section with very good results for instance - but no single string instrument, only entire sections). So I bet a sampler is still the best option.


(*) which means I'll be multi-posting - excuse my bad behavior, but I can't simply write a mamooth reply to all that has been said.
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Re: Injecting some ideas

Post by klauss »

chuck_starchaser wrote: Equal temperament has so frustrated us with its inaccuracy, it has fostered ambiguity in speech and in thought.
Politicians speaking meaninglessness would probably not be tolerated if equal temperament hadn't been invented.
We've grown apathetic about distinguishing truth from falsehood; and it doesn't surprise me: If we can't hear Truth
in music, the noblest art, what chance is there of hearing it elsewhere?

I'm not sure I can fault "modern music". The average musician today is deeply frustrated but doesn't know why; and
this frustration may come out in any random direction. The frustration is with the scale; but they may blame the
chord or the rhythm. We're forced to try and write poetry using a language with only 12 words, out of which only
three are defined; and if we fail we're reminded that Bach did it. Well, thanks Bach!, and FU.
It seems as if you assumed every western music piece used equal temperament, which is not right. Violinists, cellists, in fact any bowed string instrument player knows how to play on at least a few other scales, at the very least a few of the greek ones. They actually make a distinction when required, and many other subtleties keyboards can't.

Equal temperament was invented for keyboard instruments, and sometimes valved instruments, and it remains in use on those instruments, and on synthesizers. It is my (unproven) theory that this is why synthesizers sound detuned when playing "free tuning" instruments, like strings, we're accustomed to hearing the various scales on those instruments, not so much on keyboards, and synthesizers use equal temperament on all instruments.

I don't know of a program that can synthesize music with those subtleties accurately rendered, but it should be possible and relatively easy, if you annotate the key on which things are played, and stop that MIDI absurdity that C# = Df. Rosegarden at least is a program that lets you annotate in such a way, too bad its output goes through MIDI (so scratch that). Then again, MIDI has detuning controllers that could be used to produce the right tuning... I wonder if rosegarden could be patched for that.
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Re: Injecting some ideas

Post by snow_Cat »

those subtleties are the very the reason I paid 300 dollars for a proper MIDI synth based on the Yamaha chipset.

Irony being that because it was a PCI card I couldn't install it in my current workstation, only two PCI slots, and four PCI cards to choose from two of which are specailised network adaptors I need. :(
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