[LAD] Music, Undecidability, and the tiling problem (was Re: update: OT-ish: realtime 2d placement algorithms :-/)

[Arnout Engelen]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:59:45AM -0400, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 11:48 AM, Niels Mayer <nielsmayer at gmail.com> wrote:
> > music making involves fitting together "tiles" (musical passages,
> > patterns, etc) that are highly constrained in terms of "geometry"
> > (pitch, key, time-signature, BPM, starting and ending pitches or
> > chords). 
> 
> but i would submit that if you offered this description of making music to
> musicians who play instruments or sing, they would find it unrecognizable.

Actually, I think most musicians would recognise this concept (though perhaps
not when explained with too technical nomenclature), especially those who ever
dabbled in composition, improvisation or even just playing together with 
someone else. Generally, a 'pleasing' piece contains enough 'structure' (chord
progressions, chorus/verse/chorus, melody line vs counter-melody, even 'genre'
in a way, etc) for the structure to be recognisable (instead of dissonant and 
random), yet not so much that it'd get predictable/boring.

It doesn't seem far-fetched to use a computer to recognise (impro-visor) and/or
apply (sibelius/finale plugins etc) those structures - at least to some extent.
How far this envelope can be pushed and integrated into a composers' workflow -
well - that's just interesting :).


Arnout