SYLLABUS
INFO 424 - MUSICAL INFORMATICS
(timings are tentative)
Spring 2024
January 16 -18
1. Proportions in Music: Numbers and Sounds
Get acquainted, organizational.
Relationship between Music, Science, Philosophical and Social attitudes
Pythagoras, sounds and numbers.
vibrating strings and air columns
overtones/partials and their ratios
Rhythm: divisionary and additive systems; proportional notation.
Golden Section and Fibonacci series of numbers
Assignment #1 Proportions/Fibonacci due 1/25
January 23 - February 13
2. Acoustics and Psychoacoustics
How do we hear ? What is on a CD ?
complex waves, internal ear
A/D, sampling, D/A; binary numbers, "bumps"
What is a sound ?
frequency/pitch, amplitude/loudness, phase; formula
ranges and noticeable differences
timbre: overtones/partials
Computer sound analysis and synthesis
Fourier analysis
additive synthesis; building sounds from first principles
modifiers: AM, FM, glissando/sound bend, transients
Assignment #2 Computerss in Music due 2/1
Sets and Collections
operations with sets, Venn diagrams
modulation: intersection of sets
Multidimensional (Vector) Spaces
physical 3D space
musical space - sound parameters
Stockhausen - "...how time passes..."
continuous and discrete values
Assignment #3 Sets and Vectors due 2/13
Perception of sounds critical band: beats, difference (combination) tones
consonance and dissonance; intersection and union of partials
perceived loudness of complex tones
masking tones, the "cocktail" effect
chords and timbres; Rameau's harmony
blending timbres
Sound and Environment
spatialization
stereo field; polar coordinates
the role of phase
reverberation
perception of distance
"moving" sounds, Doppler effect
Assignment #4 Perception and Logarithms due 2/20
February 15 -March 7
3. Organized sounds I: selection of materials
- outside time --- BEING
Tunings
Pythagorean, Just, Mean, Equal-tempered
Harry Partch and Ben Johnston
Relations of order - scales and modes
tetrachords
pentatonic, pre-pentatonic, diatonic, chromatic, quarter-tone and other
synthetic or "artificial scales"
Messiaen's modes with limited transposition
Equivalence relations modulo m
octave equivalence and pitch classes
bars, beats, subdivisions
sieves
Assignment #6 Equivalence and Sieves due 2/29
Groups: symmetries
non-retrogradable rhythms
dorian and "gypsy" scales
P, I, R, RI and complex numbers representation
mappings, permutations
broken symmetry
meter - Mircea Eliade
Patterns
sets (cells, motives, isorhythms, etc.)
leit-motives in Wagner as mappings
tone-rows and series of proportions
objects/"windows"/Gruppen and collections of objects
isomorphisms in Boulez's domains technique
Hierarchies
tonal/modal hierarchies (degrees of scale, chromatic sounds)
Schenkerian analysis
relations of order; Directed Graphs - trees
non-tonal hierarchies, homomorphisms (?)
floating hierarchies - Herbert Brun
family tree of Oedipus
Assignment #7 Isomorphisms and hierarchies due 3/7
Controlled randomness
probability and weights
stochastic distributions
SPRING BREAK
March 19 - April 4
4. Organized sounds II: methods - in time --
BECOMING
Chance procedures
Cage - chance music
(pseudo) random numbers
equiprobable events
conditional probability
Assignment #8 Chance and Markov due 3/28
Directional processes
Markov chains
random walks
arborescences - Directed Graphs
Cantus firmus and species counterpoint
through-composed music
Self-similar processes
Brownian, 1/f noise
Cage's "square root" method
fractals and "fractal-like" compositions
Assignment #9 Random Walks and Fractals due 4/4
Developmental techniques
transpositions (I, R, RI)
augmentation, diminution
imitations; tonal, real
distortion
added notes and durations
non-linear processes
Determinism and causality
tonal music
functional harmony, chord progressions
dialectics (Hegel) - sonata form (?)
Game Theory - alternative to aleatorism
Assignment #10 Game Theory due 4/11
April 9 - 25
5. Music as a Complex Dynamic System --
CREATING/COMPOSING
Attractors
tonal/modal centers; leading tone "attraction"; secondary Dominants
examples of conflicting requirements: sieves and patterns
Oedip, Elektra, Greek tragedies
Lorenz attractor
Catastrophe theory
Morphogenetic music - Aurel Stroe
Reading Assignment (#11)
Brun - "From Musical Ideas to Computers" due 4/16
cellular automata and neural networks
stages of composition process - Herbert Brun
floating hierarchies
Information Theory
entropy = information and redundancy
Birkhof's Aesthetic Measure: Order/Complexity
inevitable decay of information in any composition
Assignment #12 Information Theory due 4/25
Computer-assisted Composition
the computer as a collaborator
time scales - common procedures at different levels
necessary features of composition/synthesis software
Manifolds and Composition as an Evolving Entity
comprehensive, "black box", software
DISSCO: unifying composition and synthesis
the "brewing" piece - the Evolving Entity
April 30 Discussion of Final Projects
Final project TBA
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