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Mode - key nomenclature
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bachus



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PostPosted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 7:04 am    Post subject: Mode - key nomenclature Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Part of my program involves creating a composition API so I want to get my nomenclature right. At present I am using the term mode to indicate any pattern of sequential half-steps that sum to 12; key is used to mean an ordered pitch class built from a mode using a particular pitch name (C, B-flat, etc) as scale degree I (the tonic in Western music). Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.
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DrJustice



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PostPosted: Thu Jan 07, 2010 8:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

The way I understand it is that mode usually refers to the set of the 7 standard modes of the major scale, and that everything else is called a scale. The latter also includes the modes in some of the references I use. I may well be wrong though (I'm testing my knowledge here Smile), so let's hear what Carlo has to say.

DJ
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bachus



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PostPosted: Sat Jan 09, 2010 7:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Thanks Dr.Justice. While hoping Carlo will respond...

Quote:
Wikipedia: Mode :
A "scale" is an ordered series of intervals, which, along with the key or tonic (first tone), defines that scale's intervals or steps. However, "mode" is usually used in the sense of "scale" applied only to the 7 specific diatonic scales (using only the seven tones of the scale without chromatic alterations) that follow the tonic note.


Quote:
Encyclopedia Britannica: Mode :
in music, any of several ways of ordering the notes of a scale according to the intervals they form with the tonic, thus providing a theoretical framework for the melody.


Quote:
Harvard Dictionary of Music (1966, page 452) : Mode :
...in any given key (i.e., for any given tone center, e.g., A) a great number of modes are possible.


As I read them it is only this last that is consistent with my usage. But every where I look I find something different and/or confusing. I would find it interesting as to how others think of mode scale and key.

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Acoustic Interloper



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PostPosted: Mon Jan 11, 2010 2:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I usually think in terms of mode and tonic, for whatever that is worth.

Scrabble-to-MIDI's textual config file has entries like this:

mode:ionian(major):A java.lang.Integer -12
mode:ionian(major):I java.lang.Integer 0
mode:ionian(major):O java.lang.Integer 12
mode:ionian(major):U java.lang.Integer 0
mode:ionian(major):R java.lang.Integer 7
mode:ionian(major):S java.lang.Integer -5
mode:ionian(major):T java.lang.Integer 19
mode:ionian(major):Y java.lang.Integer -17

for mapping tiles to pitches at an offset from the tonic (note that this particular representation is not octave invariant), these entries:

scale:0 java.lang.String dorian
scale:1 java.lang.String dorian
scale:2 java.lang.String minorpentatonic
scale:3 java.lang.String dorian

for selecting which mode to apply to a midi channel at performance time, and

tonic:0 java.lang.Integer 50
tonic:1 java.lang.Integer 38
tonic:2 java.lang.Integer 50
tonic:3 java.lang.Integer 50
tonic:4 java.lang.Integer 50
tonic:5 java.lang.Integer 50
tonic:6 java.lang.Integer 38
tonic:7 java.lang.Integer 50
tonic:8 java.lang.Integer 45
tonic:9 java.lang.Integer 38

for picking the baseline tonic for a channel. So I have used mode to define the intervals and scale to select a mode, mostly because I saw no reason to invent another term, even if my usage is not entirely correct. Out of those and a slew of other config parameters, only mode is not definable during performance, but only because I haven't felt the need to bring it to a GUI.

As far as hard code versus run-time data goes, the above are all run time data in scrabble-to-midi, but with most modern languages there is middle ground, which is to put non-generic code into a plugin loaded at run time. That is how Scrabble-to-midi loads the "composition," which is code that maps game state to midi events. In fact the game itself is a plugin, and could be something other than scrabble.

Not sure if this is useful, but it's been useful to me. I have two sections of CSC 243 Java Programming to teach starting Jan. 19, and I expect we'll be extending this further.

Here's a thought. I don't have "repeat" structures in scrabble-to-midi yet, but what I plan is to add undo/redo, actually similar to PhotoShop's "history" where you can jump back or forward multiple levels in one hop, in order to get "repeat." Moreover, I am going to add an undo/redo tree instead of the usual stack, so a player can go back and make a different choice without losing the original played sequence. I have to figure out how this relates to scrabble scoring, but the essential point for scrabble-to-midi is that in adding "repeat" I also wind up adding exploration of improvisational alternatives. Maybe this is an important difference between composition versus improvisation, i.e., the exploratory nature of the latter at performance time.

Interesting threads!

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MusicMan11712



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PostPosted: Tue Jan 12, 2010 3:46 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

This is an interesting topic and the program you are developing sounds intriguing. Dr. Justice's explanation sounded like what I learned in HS music theory class. So I pulled out my class notes!

With no sharps or flats, from low to high, on a staff:
Dorian mode goes from D to D with 1/2 steps between (a) the 2nd and 3rd notes in the sequence and (b) the 6th and 7th notes in the sequence.
Phrygian mode goes from E to E with 1/2 steps between (a) the 1st and 2nd notes in the sequence and (b) the 5th and 6th notes in the sequence.
and so on with (in order):
lydian, mixolydian, aeolian [aka minor], locrian, and ionian [aka major].

In The Untuning of the Sky, Ideas of Music in English Poetry, 1500-1700, John Hollander refers to the modes as Greek scales. Other books I have seems to indicate some shifts in music (Medieval to Renaissance to Baroque) that paved the way for what I grew up with calling The Traditional System of Notation in Western Music. I will defer to others with much more knowledge of the history of music on what all happened. But I think somewhere along the line notes, keys, sharps and flats, scales, temperment, etc. came into being.

Joseph Machlis, in his Introduction to Contemporary Music, refers to what I grew up calling modes as "medieval scales." The modes, he says,
Quote:
served as the basis for European art music for a thousand years--from Gregorian chants of the sixth century to the materpeices of Palestrina at the end of the sixteenth. The adjective modal describes the type of meoldy and harmony prevailing during this period, as distinguished from tonal, which refers to the major-minor harmony that supplanted the modes.


Then came "Contemporary Music" or "Music of the Twentieth Century." For me this includes a lot of experimentation playing with, "deconstructing," wreaking havoc, etc. with (among other things) tonality. The debunking of the sanctity of "traditional western music," as codified through "traditional notation" also includes cultural diversity. For me, this is part of the exploration of all things other than the "what we've been taught as 'correct.'"

So, when I explore new-to-me software, Wmidi, which converts my movement of the stylus on my WACOM tablet into midi data (notes and CCs), the designer includes 272 scales/modes or whatever you want to call them. (See the pdf in the zipped file at: www.nicolasfournel.com/wmidi.htm)

Practically speaking scales/modes/whatever you call them are: sequences of notes (or perhaps an ordered listing of notes) that are featured as (or perhaps which define) the important notes (or tones) in a section of music.

I would think that any use of terminology in your compositional API that embodies the notion of modality, tonality, and beyond--from the Greek modes to the 272 or more variations should work.

For what its worth, Fournel just refers to them all as scales, including the modes and the variations, although for many people scales are things that they practice to develop technological proficiency with a sound making device [aka instrument].

I don't understand java and really don't consider myself a computer programmer, but I am intrigued by what Dale has done. Extrapolating a bit, the idea of basic "modes" with properties which can be overriden to make variations is intriguing. I would assume that number of notes (or tones) in a scale could be one property. Another would be the pattern of relationships between each of the notes (or tones) from 1 to n. etc.

Anyhow, I hope this all makes sense and is useful.

--Steve





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bachus



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PostPosted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 1:40 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Acoustic Interloper wrote:
I usually think in terms of mode and tonic, for whatever that is worth. ...
...So I have used mode to define the intervals and scale to select a mode,...

These definitions of mode, tonic and scale are very agreeable and essentially may be what I will use. But for scale: my system defines that as a single instance of an octave sequence with scale degrees as indices mapping to Pitch objects. It is used literally as a template.

Most interactions with the music API relating to these things would hopefully be done through a Key object that includes mode, tonic and scale, but also data symbols and values that provide, or provide access to, domain knowledge, both technical and aesthetic, as both data and method.

Acoustic Interloper wrote:
... but with most modern languages there is middle ground, which is to put non-generic code into a plugin loaded at run time. That is how Scrabble-to-midi loads the "composition," which is code that maps game state to midi events. In fact the game itself is a plugin, and could be something other than scrabble.

Very nice abstraction. Very powerful. I think I will put it to use, thank you.

Acoustic Interloper wrote:
Maybe this is an important difference between composition versus improvisation, i.e., the exploratory nature of the latter at performance time.


I would have said: for the most part both involve exploration of very similar materials with very similar tools and resources. But I'm really clueless when it comes to improvisation. Can you expand on the distinction you make in terms of exploratory nature?

BTW I've implemented tuples, though not yet added their labeling in score. Also no end of other mostly little problems with formatting to be addressed. Coding eats all my time Shocked


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PostPosted: Sun Jan 17, 2010 9:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

bachus wrote:

Acoustic Interloper wrote:
Maybe this is an important difference between composition versus improvisation, i.e., the exploratory nature of the latter at performance time.


I would have said: for the most part both involve exploration of very similar materials with very similar tools and resources. But I'm really clueless when it comes to improvisation. Can you expand on the distinction you make in terms of exploratory nature?

The intended distinction was, "the exploratory nature of the latter at performance time." Traditional composition, while still open to interpretation by performers, attempts to refine and denote more information at composition time. At least that is how I understand it. Improvisation takes partial compositions with a higher percentage of intentional "loose ends" and binds them at performance time.

For me this is all grounded in a "superpositional" model of the compositional...improvisational continuum that I believe I must have gone on about at some point at EM2009. A piece is a superposition of alternative "states" or "design decisions" with implicit or explicit probabilities associated with each "state decision." A probability of 1 of course means a part of the composition that is set in stone. Superpositions of alternatives with probabilities between 0 and 1, typically, depend in part on other alternatives -- an individual replacement of an alternate chord for an original chord triggers an alternate chord sequence for example, similar with alternate instrument voicing, and so on -- and the more non-1 decision points there are, the more the piece encourages and in fact requires improvisation. So for me it is a matter of degree, the degree to which the compositional structure embeds alternative paths that performers can select during performance.

One could, potentially, put that sort of thing into a compositional notation, but I am not sure how. (Play this sequence with 67% probability, this with 33%, and so on). Notation gets sticky when these sorts of alternatives can appear at multiple levels of scale (scale in the sense of zooming in or out to the details of the structure).

For a current concrete example, when I "composed" the Scrabble-to-MIDI piece over which I improvised on NYE, I selected a collection of instrument voices, tempo, accents patterns, tonics, modes and some other config parameters ahead of time to give the piece certain transitions, certain feels in places, and certain support for MIDI guitar improvisation at performance time. The piece was not entirely "bound" however, because I did not nail down all the details of these config parameter transitions.

Moreover, the Scrabble game itself has the stochastic mechanism of tile selection. I should probably make it possible to replay a given game (actually that is in the system for testing purposes, but not brought out to the GUI just now). As things stand for music performance, each game is new as in real life. Unlike strictly aleatory music, the stochastic selection of tiles is modulated by the Scrabble playing skills of the players (vocabulary, game strategy, and so on), and the modulation of the stochastic tile selection does have an impact on the phrases that are generated. So, while I regard this Scrabble plugin + my plan of loosely bound config parameter changes as the composition, there are a great number of decisions that do not get bound until play time.

Here is a quote from Ian Carr's Miles: The Definitive Biography, Chapter 11, that bears on this topic:
Herbie Hancock wrote:

By the time we got to ESP (an album), Miles said, 'I don't want to play chords anymore' ... I guess what he wanted to go for was the core of the music ... Here's how I look at it ...now I don't know if this is the way Miles looks at it, but a composition is an example of a conception, so Miles, rather than play the composition, he wants to play the conception that the composition came from...That's why you hear melody fragments and you kind of hear the momentum and the sound of the tune somewhere -- something that distinguishes that tune from another one ... but maybe the chords are not there. Even when we were playing "Walkin'" or any of those other [familiar] things, he didn't want to play the chords after we played the melody.

Elsewhere I have read of Miles' transition out of this approach to music and into electric music influenced by rock-funk, blues, that he got "tired of playing quantum physics and wanted to play the blues," or something to that effect.

My improvisational skills are modest but slowly growing, but I have spent a fair amount of time studying human habit formation and skill acquisition. Modeling human acquisition and use of so-called "automatic processing" was my Ph.D. topic. Reactions that can occur during time-constrained performance have certain constraints. They are essentially non-cyclic reactions that consumed a fixed amount of memory and processing power. Otherwise, their processing time would be variable and therefore non-real-time. Jazz musicians who are masters at improvisation must have a great number of these non-cyclic reactions available to fire in parallel at performance time in order to improvise to the degree of sophistication that they do. Many of these reactions comes from repetitive training that creates reactions, not only to ensure fluency on an instrument, scale variations, key variations, chord variations, etc. at performance time, but fluency in selecting appropriate alternatives at performance time without consciously thinking about the decisions. Improvisers acquire real-time skill in binding unbound compositional alternatives at performance time.

What interests me is that a lot of "automatic processing" is automatable on a computer, but that leaves open the question of where does the inspiration, where do the decisions of an expert improviser come from at performance time? Some of this may be stochastic firings in the human nervous-muscular system, either just the general background noise present in any such electro-chemical system, or exhaustion of control caused by the complexity of the problem. Stochastic elements in the nervous system generate some random "Scrabble tiles," and then the highly trained automatic reactions interpret those stochastic events in the context of the piece being played, whatever constraints it "hard codes."

That is my working model for expert improvisation, which I am currently exploring with Scrabble-to-MIDI, with plans to design a game expressly for this purpose, hopefully over the summer.

Sorry for the long post. Congratulations on constructing a useful and thought-provoking piece of software!

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