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Music and mathematics have many similarities, both requiring creativity and exploration to create something original. Musicians should strive for originality and understand how constraints can lead to beauty. Hunter Hendrix and Bell Witch are examples of how to create something from constraints and evoke emotion. Education about mathematics and music can help musicians understand the fundamentals of composition and how to create something authentically. Ultimately, the goal is to capture the 'Flow State' and record an artistic moment.
Complexity involves many components and is highly interconnected, while difficulty is something far away from one's current knowledge. Examples of complexity include composing music and proving dualities in mathematics, while playing an instrument to a high level is an example of something difficult. Learning something complex or hard requires effort, relevance, and moments of inspiration. The Howard Isomorphism is an example of a complex theorem due to its complicated equivalence relation and many generators. Pain can prime an individual to absorb knowledge when facing a difficult task.
Learning a complex skill requires setting a goal and dedicating time and effort to reach it. Creative projects such as music and mathematics involve running into hurdles and harvesting questions from them. Answering questions is easy, but developing the correct questions to try and chase the answer to is hard. Creative projects often reveal parts of ourselves that we may not have known before, and Iran Ram taught that the goal is to not get stuck and to keep making progress, no matter how small. Interacting with others and understanding a subset of the knowledge is key to learning the project.
The speaker believes that music should learn from mathematics and strive for more originality, citing the example of bars in 2020 playing the same music as 1980 and 1990. He uses the example of the anime Yu-Gi-Oh to illustrate his point, where a player has to use dice and can only summon a monster if it fits in a square grid on the board. This analogy can be applied to music, with the grid being the history of music and the unfolded dice being particular compositions. It is important that the piece fits into the geometry of what is around it and is not placed too far away from the action, as it would be out of context and have little meaning.
Musicians and mathematicians can create something that fits perfectly into the world by finding the 'golden spot' in history yet to be discovered. Hunter Hendrix, formerly of the band Listening Commission, is an example of this. Research should not only produce mathematics, but also explain how it fits into the big picture. Bell Witch's song Mira Reaper is an example of how constraints can lead to beauty. The song is incredibly slow-paced and limited musically, with only two musicians performing the entirety of it. It has a simple song structure and limited lyrics, leaving only atmosphere, mood, narrative, emotional communication, implication and etc. to create true art.
Mira River is an 83 minute metal song that has no rhythm, harmony, or melody, yet is extraordinarily rich. It is an example of how constraints can create beauty, similar to the Fundamental Theorem of Abelian Groups which defines the structure of a particular mathematical object. Mathematicians have an affinity for mathematics, which is the art of thought, and Finitely Generated Appealing Groups are lists of axioms that can emerge into something beautiful. This is demonstrated by the Constrained Theorem, which shows that the axioms that define mathematical objects become what defines its beauty. Education about mathematics makes it sound like the story is the other way around, but really it is the examples that come first and then the theorem, similar to music where the creator intuitively brings an idea out of them and then creates a list of constraints to define it.
Writing a song requires a shift in perspective from creating to raising. It begins with a blank score and a piano, and the most important aspect is the chord progression. After it is complete, the writer should listen to the song and ask themselves what it needs, offering their knowledge and experience to the song. Once the song is complete, it should evoke emotion in the listener. Music and Mathematics both involve creating something from constraints, with a song being an abstract theoretical object and physical realizations being an instance of it. It is best done in a flow state, where the concept of self is absent.
Mathematics and music have similarities in terms of establishing relationships between chords. Mathematics is focused on solving problems, while music is more about creating something unique. Computation and mathematics can also be found in art, as musical techniques such as harmonic tempo can be used to create variation in a piece of music. This is achieved by changing the rate of chord changes, creating a relaxed feel in the verse and a celebratory feel in the chorus, while still maintaining the same number of chord changes per bar.
Music composition can be daunting for beginners, but writing chord progressions is a great starting point. It allows the composer to express their own personality through the music and provides a sense of satisfaction and excitement. To achieve harmonic tempo fluctuations, the tempo of the song can be changed from one bit to the next or the number of notes in a bar can be altered. Advanced music writing involves harmonizing complex chords and progressions, and understanding the harmonics of instruments and how they create resonance.
Music is an instrument for expressing emotion, but it is important to create original art instead of replicating existing pieces. To achieve this, inspiration should be taken from existing works, but with a personal touch to create something new. Architecture and music have similar structures, but music can also connect people to the past through hearing the era in which it was recorded. Conservatoriums of music exist to reproduce the way Mozart and other ancient music would have been played. Ultimately, the goal of music is to capture the mysterious 'Flow State' and record an artistic moment.
Music is a powerful tool for forming communities, but the speaker believes that creativity and exploration are more important than the social aspects of music. He believes that opinionated artwork is essential, and that both accepted and rejected pieces are necessary for creating something authentically. Creating something original requires a journey of development and exploration, and one must be connected to their authentic self during the creation process. Michael Hewitt's philosophy can help further this discussion, as repetition and recreation are important to understanding oneself and creating something authentically.
Complexity and difficulty are two distinct concepts. Complexity involves many different components and is highly connected, while difficulty is something that is far away from one's current state of knowledge. Examples of complexity include composing music using software instruments and proving dualities in mathematics. Playing an instrument to a high level is an example of something that is difficult but can be easy for someone who has already gone through the journey. The Howard Isomorphism is an example of a complex theorem due to its complicated equivalence relation and many generators.
Learning something complex or hard requires effort and may require moments of inspiration. Reading large bodies of theory is often boring and ineffective. Learning something must be relevant to the individual in order to be effective, either by being interesting, solving a problem or providing a benefit. When faced with a difficult task, being in pain can prime an individual to absorb knowledge.
Learning a complex skill requires making what is being learned relevant. To do this, one should set themselves a goal, such as creating a solo album. This will provide a guiding light, showing what to pay attention to and what to ignore. The journey from nothing to a physical album is not easy and will have many hurdles, but with focus and dedication, the goal can be achieved.
Creative projects such as music and mathematics involve running into hurdles and harvesting questions from them. This allows for answers to be found from resources such as online tutorials, textbooks, courses, friends, online blogs or random experimentation. Answering questions is easy, but developing the correct questions to try and chase the answer to is hard. People may give up due to the difficulty of the problems, or other mental barriers. Learning how to get past these hurdles is part of learning the creative project.
Creative projects often reveal parts of ourselves that we may not have known before. Iran Ram taught that the goal is to not get stuck and to keep making progress, no matter how small. The process of learning is like a diagram with a blue region representing what is known and a green region representing what is learned. We learn by interacting with others and understanding a subset of the knowledge. As we go further into the project, we may uncover uncomfortable sides of ourselves and this should be encouraged as part of the artistic process.
Mathematicians are held to a high standard of originality and receive no financial reward for ideas that have already been proven. Music, however, has a lack of originality, with many genres being homogeneous and repetitive. As a composer, the speaker believes that music should learn from mathematics and strive for more originality. He uses the example of bars in 2020 playing the same music as 1980 and 1990, and how heavy metal musicians are scared of being too avant-garde. The speaker uses the example of the anime Yu-Gi-Oh to illustrate his point.
Yugioh is based on a card game but in episode 49, Miracle Dimension Summon Black Magician, players have to use dice and can only summon a monster if it fits in a square grid on the board. In a dramatic moment, Yugi is about to put down his dice and it fits perfectly into the outlined square. This analogy can be applied to music, with the grid being the history of music and the unfolded dice being particular compositions. It is important that the piece fits into the geometry of what is around it and is not placed too far away from the action, as it would be out of context and have little meaning.
The speaker discusses how musicians and mathematicians can create something that fits perfectly into the world that has been created before. They explain that the 'golden spot' is to slot a creation in at the perfect point in history that has yet to be discovered. They use the example of Hunter Hendrix, formerly of the band Listening Commission, to illustrate this point. The speaker also explains that research should not just produce mathematics, but also explain how it fits into the big picture. They then use the example of Bell Witch's song Mira Reaper to explain how constraints can lead to beauty, and how true art is achieved when description of beauty is foreign.
Reaper is a soulful and mournful song, dedicated to a deceased close friend and former member of the band. It is incredibly slow paced and limited melodically, harmonically, rhythmically and instrumentally, with only two musicians performing the entirety of it. Despite its length of 83 minutes, it is unmistakably metal, with a simple song structure and limited lyrics. It is stripped back, with drawn out melodic lines and a linear harmonic development, and no real rhythm. What is left is only the most difficult parts of musical composition: atmosphere, mood, narrative, emotional communication, implication and etc.
Mira River is an 83 minute metal song that has no rhythm, harmony, or melody, yet is extraordinarily rich. It is an example of how constraints can create beauty, similar to the Fundamental Theorem of Abelian Groups which defines the structure of a particular mathematical object. To a mathematician, this structure is undeniable and the person who generated it achieved liftoff. Mira River is an example of how abstract axioms can be defined as features of beauty.
Mathematicians have an affinity for mathematics, which is the art of thought. Finitely generated appealing groups are lists of axioms that can emerge into something beautiful. This is demonstrated by the Constrained Theorem, which shows that the axioms that define mathematical objects become what defines its beauty. In the case of a billion groups, the axioms came after the examples. Education about mathematics makes it sound like the story is the other way around, but really it is the examples that come first and then the theorem. This is similar to music, where the creator intuitively brings an idea out of them and then creates a list of constraints to define it.
Music and Mathematics both involve creating something from constraints, whether that be starting with a theorem and removing hypotheses, starting with examples and constructing a mathematical object, or starting with an idea and seeing what constraints become apparent. A song is identified by its familiarity, but it is also an abstract theoretical object, with physical realizations of it being an instance of the song.
Composing a song requires a shift in perspective from creating to raising. It is best done in a flow state, where the concept of self is absent. An example of raising an idea is when a joke is told at a party and everyone laughs, including the teller. The speaker's favorite song on their album was created in a romantic moment in three hours of not being present or aware of themselves. At the end, they were surprised by the result, analyzing it and noting the different elements of the song.
Writing a song begins with a blank score and a piano. The most important aspect of a song is the chord progression, so it is worth spending a lot of time on it. After the chord progression is complete, the writer should listen to the song and ask themselves what it needs. They should think of themselves as parents, offering their knowledge and experience to the song. Once the song is complete, it should evoke emotion in the listener.
Mathematics and music have similarities in terms of establishing relationships between chords and listening to the results. However, there are differences between the two. Mathematics is focused on solving problems, while music is more about creating something unique. Mathematics also has the ability to create new theories and concepts, which may not necessarily solve a problem, but can inspire a person to explore further. Ultimately, chords are the most important part of music and by listening and experimenting, one can create something authentic and unique.
Computation and mathematics can be discovered in art, but not necessarily to solve a problem. Musical techniques such as harmonic tempo can be used to create variation in a piece of music. This is achieved by changing the rate of chord changes, for example in pop music the chord progression in the chorus changes every bar, whereas in the verse it changes every two bars. This slower harmonic tempo in the verse gives a more relaxed feel, while the faster harmonic tempo in the chorus creates a celebratory feel. Variation in harmonic tempo can be achieved while still maintaining the same number of chord changes per bar.
The speaker discussed how to achieve fluctuation in harmonic tempo. This can be done by changing the tempo of the song from one bit to the next bit or changing the number of notes that are played inside a particular bar. To demonstrate, the speaker played two sections of a common point channel. The first was a bit lengthy, while the second had a much quicker time signature. The second version had the same number of chord changes per bar, but the harmonic tempo had increased, creating a higher sensation of intensity. The speaker concluded by discussing in harmonic and harmonic functions.
Music composition can be difficult for beginners, but writing chord progressions is a great starting point. It is a concept that is easy to learn but difficult to master, and can help to create a sense of satisfaction and excitement in the composer. Depending on the type of musician, starting with musical ideas may be more beneficial, as it allows the composer to express their own personality through the music. Harmonizing complex chords and progressions is an integral part of advanced music writing, and understanding the harmonics of instruments and how they create resonance is essential.
Music is an amenable instrument for expression, allowing beginners to express their emotions with their voice. However, it is important to create original art, as opposed to just replicating existing pieces. The ultimate goal of music is to generate content, creating art that captures the mysterious 'Flow State' and records an artistic moment. This is done by taking inspiration from existing pieces, but adding one's own personality to the art to create something new.
Musicians who produce five songs from five different places five different times may have copied the same material, but it is not true art as it lacks the personal element. The Human Experience is integral to artwork, as it is the moment of man against the universe, whether described by science or art. To create something truly unique and genuine, one must be strict in disciplining themselves and developing their art, connecting to the flow state and creating true art.
Architecture and music have similarities in that they can both be structural and animate when experienced. Music can connect people to the past through hearing the era in which it was recorded. King Crimson's albums from the 60s are a good example of this, as they are full of the 60s sound yet forward thinking. Unfortunately, we don't have recordings of Beethoven and other ancient music, which is a shame. This is why conservatoriums of music exist to reproduce the way Mozart and others would have played.
Music has been used for centuries to form communities and bring people together. However, the speaker believes that creativity and exploration are the most important aspects of music. He is dismissive of the social aspects of music, but acknowledges their importance. He believes that opinionated artwork is important and that music should be seen as a creative and exploratory enterprise. He also believes that what is rejected is just as important as what is accepted in the creation of artwork.
Pop music is a complex component of subcultures and communities which has an impact on borders and culture. There is a tension between the platonic ideal and the original instantiation, and repetition can be an act of creative freedom. Michael Hewitt is a philosopher who could help further this discussion, and repetition and recreation are important to understanding oneself. Releasing a thing is distinct from this, and is like a mathematician solving a problem.
Creating something authentically requires a journey of development and exploration. Solving a problem in a textbook is still mathematics, but it is not the same as being a full-fledged mathematician. Similarly, producing music is not the same as creating something authentically. To create something authentically, one must be confident and be able to present their ideas to the world. Doing something repetitively is still mathematics or music, but it is not the same as creating something original. To create something original, one must be connected to their authentic self during the creation process.
foreign the subtitle is music and music composition and creating mathematics but I think that's a lot more foreign so as an introduction I want to pose the following question how does one learn something complex and let's recall the distinction between that which is complex and that which is hard so something which is complex involves many different things so it's highly connected to lots of different stuff and those different things are relevant to the concept at hand whereas something which is hard is something which is very far away from your current state of knowledge right so we have the following table as a few examples so complex would be composing music using software instruments this requires just so many different moving components and it is simply a nightmare to learn even just one of them but more on that later and then an example of something about looking apart would be playing an instrument to a high level foreign activity behind that which is hard but a reality of objectivity thinking of the optimal on to that which is complex so playing an instrument to a very high level could be perfectly easy for somebody that has already gone through that journey and just is simply able to play in instrument to a high level that means that that is not hard to them it's easy because it's close to their current state of knowledge but then there would be something else that that person finds hard that they haven't put in that history of practice for uh these are two musical examples and then to give mathematical examples would be something complex could be a simple uh duality or simple to prove Duality so the concrete examples uh that I have is the current Howard isomorphism so at least the way that I am most familiar with this theorem um and for those who don't know this is a important theorem that in terms of foundational relationship between theoretical computer science and formal logic it's a nightmare of a theorem to get through but that's because there are so many uh components involved in it so you have to understand it's very complicated equivalence relation which has many many different generators and there are many different reasons why these generators are there and each individual one of them is completely easy there's nothing difficult about comprehending each individual one but there are so many and and the combination of all of them together is necessary for this theorem to hold that it becomes something which is very complex but it's not necessarily hard uh
and then a mathematical example of something that is very hard would be constructing a proof which has a trick inside it so a proof with a trick so you can see there's that subjectivity once again if you know what the trick is then this is not putting which is very far away from your current state of knowledge and so therefore it's easy for you but if you don't know the trick it can be very very difficult in order to construct this trick and to just kind of invent it on your on your own so I was going to put any exercise in harsh horns uh famous slash Infamous textbook algebraic geometry is a good example of that which is hard so you have to sit down and sometimes there is only one idea which is relevant but the construct that idea is um really requires a moment of uh inspiration okay so that gives you a distinction between that which is complex and that which is hard and so the question is how do we learn something which is complex right and the reason why this is a relevant question is I have this strong belief that passively reading large bodies of Theory uh it's boring and ineffective now I have met people who would definitely disagree with this they're very happy to sit down and just learn every single definition in the entire textbook of hard Sean and they have they have a merry old time while they're doing that but I'm not one of those people I find it um well let me put it this way there was a quote from uh my auntie who is also scheduled to talk inside their seminar scenarios I wonder if she'll say this same line um machine this thing that she likes to say uh it is impossible to learn something irrelevant to you so maybe impossible is being a bit too brutal uh but whatever let's stick with that it's impossible to learn something irrelevant to you so how could something be relevant to you so it could be relevant to you if it's highly highly interesting or if it solves a problem of yours or if it gains you some kind of benefit and what is good about being in that position is that you are absolutely primed to absorb knowledge right so say you were trying to compose some music using software instruments now you might find that even changing the frame rate or the beats per minute or the time signature or something else completely basic like that you might find that so unbelievably difficult and it will cause you so much pain you're sitting there clicking everything and you're like why on Earth is this not just so goddamn simple but I can't do it so at that point in time you're in pain
and so if somebody were to come in and just tell you oh the way that you do the thing that you're trying to do is like this then that will relieve you of pain and that means that you're going to pay very acute attention to that person telling you that right and you're much more likely to pay attention to that when you're in that state of being then if you were walking down the street and you had no uh relationship to software music blocks or whatever somebody were to come up to you and they said if you're ever using the software Ableton Live then the way that you can change the time signature is like this you're going to forget that information because it's irrelevant to you so part of learning something complex is to make what you're learning relevant okay so let's put that down as an ad theme and that might seem like a tautology but the reason why it's not is because you kind of want to look at the complements of this statement so that which is not relevant but it's still part of the complex thing that you're trying to learn you can go ahead and ignore it and so how do you have this Guiding Light of what do I ignore and what do I pay attention to well the answer to that is you set yourself a doll you set yourself a project so for example the way that I learned anything about developing music using software is I just decided that I wanted to create a solo album uh I've always been interested in writing music and I've got fed up with relying on other people so I decided let's just do it myself and I was met with the world of software instruments because I don't play enough instruments to be able to just record everything on my own and also I didn't want to do that and also this was during covert so I wasn't even able to do it um Etc so I was doing a bit clearly lockdowns I should say uh and the way that I learned anything was I said I'm just going to write an album right I'm just going to start with nothing and I'm going to end with an album which I can post on Spotify and then I can send to my friends I'm going to end with a physical thing right and there is a massive journey in between there so if I draw a little diagram this is me when I have nothing this is me when I have an an album amazing journey ending Journey looks like this well that's a very optimistic drawing of the path it's much more white it's much more like that but anyway let's go with this drawing and you'll find that there are hurdles along the way so here's the first hurdle which is uh creating a new project
and here is another hurdle and it's doing something sophisticated like uh equalizers or having a Reverb or alternative sounds and then there's even more over here maybe you do want to do some recording of some description and I've got absolutely no idea how to do that I might not even have access to the equipment that's necessary and then and then honestly these hurdles they they just keep coming um then there's the actual release of the music Etc and what is nice about this method is you're intentionally running into these hurdles right and the reason why you're intentionally running into these hurdles is because you can harvest the hurdles for questions so when you run into first hurdle creating a new project you're immediately hit with questions you are harvesting questions from this hurdle you're saying what possibilities are out there what type of project do I want what do I want it to sound like what do I want to do with it what are the possibilities out there and once you have these questions you can then go to your resource with those questions be that resource in an online tutorial a textbook a course a friend an online blog or a random experimentation yourself whatever method you're going to do to try to answer those questions the point is that's not the hard part answering questions is easy right you just you just got to work out the answer what is hard is developing the correct questions to try and Chase the answer to okay so really what's going on in the peripheral is there's kind of this outer ring of stuff and it incorporates more than just the questions and the hurdles and it incorporates more than just the answers to those questions incorporates all of that plus a little bit on the peripheral and everything inside this green region is what you end up learning okay and then on the outside is everything that there is to know foreign so if problems are so great why do people ever give up you might find the problems here hard you might find it annoying you might have other mental barriers that stop you from being able to finish the projects that you start there are many different reasons why and I'm not stuck I'm just I'm just harvesting yeah exactly it's just harvesting well there's I think one of one of the key points that I want to make in today's talk is that I think developing music and also developing mathematics I think any creative um project uh is completely intertwined with myself so learning how to get past these hurdles is part of learning the
self and so you might be somebody that just sits there harvesting questions on hurdles forever and you might be doing that because you're scared of failure and you never knew that about yourself and then as you go further into this project you start unlayering these uncomfortable sides of yourself and you realize this or maybe you do it because you're a perfectionist or maybe maybe you do it because you're thorough like it doesn't necessarily have to be a negative reason why you're doing that but this harvesting of questions uh is going to end up giving you more than you what you bargain for at the very least that's been my experience with that and after talking to other artists and other creators they tend to say the same so you're revealing part of yourself as you're developing uh these creative projects and I think that's in fact to be encouraged because the artistic process is a crucial part of the art itself so there are many different reasons why you might get stuck um but one of the best uh lessons that I got in my mathematical education this is from Iran Ram he simply said the goal is to not get stuck and that's what students say and I said I'll just work on the question but I got stuck well the goal is to not get stuck so if you're stuck why are you stuck how could we get unstuck what could it look like if this problem was a tree how would you climb it you know whatever stupid thing you need in order to just keep making movements is a beneficial thing so I think you're inherently going to end up battling parts of self when you battle a creative project anyway to finish this uh diagram the green region is what you'll learn and if you talk to anybody who has done something to a very very high level who you think is very impressive I am highly certain that they will give you something uh similar to this diagram in that no one knows everything that's not possible but you following this green region inside the blue and then the point of having multiple experts is that you have multiple different green blobs inside the blue and then those green blobs can interact with each other and they can both develop each other's green blobs Etc and this is really the way that you learn things like nobody knows geometry and nobody knows Reaper the program or Ableton Live but instead you know some subset of it due to um past interference that were Guided by by that which was relevant to you okay let me move on next pretty good part two the feedback loop foreign mathematics
and music so one thing that I found very interesting from uh interesting as a musician when I was studying mathematics is mathematics has a crushing strictness to originality so if you come up with an idea but it's already been thought of too bad you get basically nothing for that nothing you get no you get no money for that you get other stuff from it but you don't get money for that so a typical experience as a mathematician will think very very hard and they'll do a lot of mathematics and then they'll discover something only to find that the result was already proven elsewhere now this can be painful as a mathematician but in my opinion this attitude is painfully absent inside the discipline of music so I I haven't prepared this but believe me I could I could play for you five different songs from five different countries across five different decades where you literally would not be able to tell that I've even played something different if I just played you those 30 second samples you would say well you you played and repeated the exact same thing five times but they are they are different countries different cultures different people different bands different decades it's mind-blowing and really quite devastating how homogeneous and repetitive uh some music is so in particular I'm a heavy metal musician and there's a reason why I say that but we can talk about that later um but I identify as a heavy metal musician and this in front of music it's just it's just not okay man like you can go to bars in 2020 and hear Verbatim what you heard back in 1980 1990 and I understand why people do that and I think that there is depth to it and I think the Deep part of that is the concept of sub cultures and sub communities Etc but I'm a composer and I care about music itself and not the people involved so much but from the perspective of somebody that cares about the music I think this is bad and I think that music has something to learn from mathematicians in that originality is not arcade and it's not something that you just put in for the sake of um trying to show off your creativity and things like that I think that musicians get very scared of being too avant-garde and they want to reel it back to something real but personally I think that you can go too far in that direction as well so there's an analogy that I have here and it comes from a television show and the television show is the famous anime Yu-Gi-Oh uh I believe the card game came first if anybody in the audience knows please
tell me I think the card game came first and then after that was the TV show uh but there's a very particular episode that I want to talk about Dan could you just Chuck up these two photos that I had prepared please sure we'll do on the next two free boards around yeah that's right okay just one moment yeah different so Yu-Gi-Oh is based on a card game but in this particular episode I wrote down the name of the episode it's episode 49 titled Miracle Dimension summon black magician and Inside the episode there's a variation on the card game where the players have to involve Dice and they can only summon a monster if they can physically fit in unfolded Kano map of the dice on the Square grid which is the board right so if you look at the photo on the right you can see that Yugi is about to put down his thighs and it's going to unfold perfectly if your mental geometry is good enough to see that this piece fits perfectly into the little person that is just that is kind of outlined I guess I can do with my pen that's going to go here wait a minute does it take that final Square as well that's going to go like that and the the first photo is such a dramatic moment in the episode and I never watched this show that much I never liked it so much but this is a point that has stuck with me for literally since I was a child um the entire game people are putting down Kano Maps like this so this is the way that they are unfolding their dice onto the board and there's no rule that means you have to do it in this particular way but it's just kind of like these are the obvious ones these are these are the ways to unfold the dice that people are most familiar with and I'm sure as we play in this game more you're most familiar with these patterns but the patterns captured in the photo on the right is also valid and it fits perfectly inside the board amongst what is around it so the analogy here is think about the grid as the history of music and think about the unfolded dice as particular compositions right now you can see that what is so beautiful about this particular play inside this game is usually able to find the perfect piece that fits into the geometry of what is around it perfectly and if he had done this on a space away from the board away from the action so imagine an infinite grid and we've done this very far away that would have been out of context and somewhat meaningless and so it would have been difficult to understand what it really was that UD actually did and had he done it over the
top of other pieces well that wouldn't be allowed in the game but what that would be inside our analogy is reproducing that which has already been done and so it wouldn't fits in perfectly instead it would overlap with what has already been created so I think that this is such a good way to think about what counts as good at creation so this exists for mathematicians and it exists for musicians as well the golden spot is to slot your Creation in to the perfect point in history that slots in with that which is around it but has yet not been discovered because what happens is after this play has been played you look at it and you think to yourself how did anybody not notice that right that was destined to be there but nobody thought of it until this person did that's the reason why it's such genius it was a true moment of insight and some of the musicians in the heavy metal Community are absolutely doing this there's um Hunter Hendrix Who uh recently changed their name because they have Transitions and that's really bad of me that I can't remember their transition name forgive me uh x Hunter it's from the band listening commission is the current band name so you can just look that up I think that she is in total ingenious uh developing music that could have been written by Metallica in the 80s but absolutely wasn't and in such a way where you think man how did nobody do this before right and then you have the same thing with mathematics so one thing that I was taught inside my masters is that writing a paper is not just producing mathematics but explaining how it fits into the big picture so research is meant to fit in with that which is around it there are ideas inside this world and how they connect to each other and how do they influence each other and how do they fit in with respect to each other is an important part of research so that's another link that I like a lot and we can think about that okay well 3.1 constraints and beauty we have a quote foreign s become the description of the beauty true art has been achieved so let me explain what I mean by this and I'm going to do this by way of example so let me talk about another set of musicians Bell Witch absolutely Geniuses of Paul have an incredibly beautiful song called Mira Reaper and I think that the title of the talk is a lyric from this song it's either a lyric or some guiding philosophy that they used inside the creation of their lyrics but it was it was Bell winch that uh constructed that original quote
um mirror Reaper is a Soulful and mournful Journey Through the grief of two musicians who dedicate a portion of the song to their deceased close friend who was once also a member of the band now this song is incredibly slow paced and it has every exception coming as a necessity to that which precedes it it is noteworthy because this song is incredibly Limited uh melodically it's incredibly Limited harmonically it's incredibly limited rhythmically it's incredibly Limited instrumentally in fact only two musicians were acquired in order to perform the entirety of it uh it's incredibly long it's 83 minutes in length and it's a simple song it is unmistakably metal so let me put that word down that controversial scary word uh and it's incredibly limited lyrically uh considering its length okay so let's have a look at this see if you can try to imagine what this song sounds like if you've never heard it before it's 83 minutes it's massive it is completely stripped it's not it's all completely strict a script of a lot of Melody Harmony and Rhythm but it is so so so restricted the melodic lines that you hear are very drawn out there's only a tiny handful of them and they're never given to you in the spotlight they're never like right in front of your face here is the triumphant Melody there is absolutely nothing like that harmonically is the same I mean the whole thing is one incredibly drawn out chord progression in streaming and beautiful but that it's not harmonically rich it's quite linear in its harmonic development uh I would say there's basically no rhythm at all there is one climax right toward the center where the drums pick up in some kind of definable pace but there's a level of busyness that the drum kit is required to have before you can even distinguish a base and I would say that the drums avoid this the entire way through um but yeah it's still definitely metal so all of that seems to completely define what we would consider metal because you think of intensely in business and density and not things drawn out anything in the long songs so so what does this have in it right my question is if this is what it doesn't have what what what is inside this thing and my answer to that question is what is left is only the most difficult parts of musical composition so I want to write some of these down I'll jump down to the first board again so we have atmosphere we have mood we have narrative we have emotional communication foreign we have implication and I think the one Etc
so I would say that this song is extraordinarily rich in all of these things and all of these are very very difficult in order to compose into a piece of music let alone one that's 83 minutes long and let alone one that holds as much uh attention as what Mira River does so what's the point I'm trying to make I'm not just fanboying here although I am definitely doing that um the point is that I can't tell you what is beautiful about this piece of art without using exactly the same sentences that I used in order to tell you it's restrictions right so think of this like a math problem imagine if we said okay we want to construct a song and it has to be anything minutes long and it has to be metal and it has to have no rhythm no Harmony no Melody Etc then you wouldn't just think that it's impossible or maybe possible but you'd only end up with something stupid or at the very least you would think what could that be right I don't immediately have understanding of what that collection of axioms amount to and then you hear mirror Reaper and you say to yourself that's it that's 100 it I have a complete understanding of that system the system being the piece of being music which is defined via sorry according to those restrictions You Now understand it in full after hearing it and so it defines these abstract axioms and so we have achieved to liftoff these are no longer meaningless constraints instead they are defining features of beauty so I think this is the strongest link between mathematics and music because in mathematics you see this concept all the time so the example that comes to mind is the fundamental theorem of a billion groups and this basically ruins that if a isn't a billion group then their exists are an element of the integers and their existence is chi one defines Chi 2 which defines dot dot dot up to K N which is also an element of the integers uh and an ISO and isomorphism from A to Z to the power of R direct sum z k one direct sum dot dot dot direct sum z k sub n okay so this is an example of what we call in mathematics a structure theorem it gives you the structure of a particular mathematical object now what I mean by what do I mean by the structure right I mean that's kind of a totally ambiguous thing to say and it's kind of a totally subjective thing to say as well but the point is that to a mathematician this is just undeniably the way that you want to think about a billion groups and the person is finally generated the billion groups did I leave that out yes I did
sorry about that finally generated this is the way that we want to think about finally generated a billion groups and what what do I mean by the way that we want to it's it's artistic right and that's that's kind of my whole point like we as mathematicians uh like the rest of you but we have some affiliation and affliction and Affinity toward mathematics and Mathematics is the art of thought so it's like how do we how do we want to think about these objects now keep using this phrase how do we want to the point is this defines something a finitely generated appealing group is just a list of axioms and mathematicians get um get made fun of for being interested in quote-unquote random lists of axioms but a theorem I think it shows you that it's not random the point is this emerges into something and so we have achieved that liftoff so that which constrains the mathematical objects becomes uh what defines its beauty uh as realized by this conocrine theorem so the direct technology is the theorem is the song and the axioms which Define the mathematical object are the constraints which the song abides by challenge this a little will so in the case of a billion groups it's certain that this class of examples came first and then the axioms came afterwards so in a sense it's rather opposite to your example with the song Because perhaps they started with those as [Music] constraints and then came up with something that fit those aesthetic constraints yeah that's a really good point so the reason why it seems that way is because I'm doing the same thing right now when I'm educating you about music that mathematics education does when it educates people about mathematics it makes it sound like the story is here are the constraints and then here's the theorem here's the constraints and here's the theorem but really it's the opposite way around it's like here are the examples here's the theorem and well here's a theorem that we want so I guess it's the mathematical objects that we want to uh tie down and then you construct the axioms from there I would say that you have the same thing in music where you are intuitively designing some creative thing and then as you start doing it there's an idea in there but the idea is some like abstract confusing thing right and the only one that really has access to it is the creator themselves and they're intuitively bringing that idea out of them and then through the creation or before the creation or after the creation a list of like constraints that defines
what that idea is becomes apparent but you see this in both music and Mathematics so mathematicians do both as well so sometimes you have a theorem and you say what if I get rid of this hypothesis right so then you're really starting with their constraints and then you're seeing where you can go what kind of theorem you can generate but there's also the opposite which is we have these examples and we want to construct a mathematical object that behaves well so how can we Define that object in the most minimal way that's still Advance the structure or you're somewhere in the middle and you're kind of doing math and then from that in idea immersions that you then eventually pin down all that exists inside music as well so you might just start off creating something and then what constraints becomes apparent later and then you can also have the thing where you concretely set out at the start I'm going to do this and then you try to do it does that make sense yeah that makes sense yeah so although that exists in maths I actually just think that strengthens the analogy because I think the next music as well creation of music okay so I'm going to make sure on time I want to actually give you some help on writing music rather than just waxing lyrical about it the entire time so let's move on to section three uh how to actually compose so this is going to be more practical hmm what is a song music played first Speaker does not sound the same as music played through headphones however this does not create hesitation when the song is to be identified played out loud through headphones thrown classmakers or even live by physical instruments one quickly latches onto the sense of familiarity when the favorite song plays a mathematician might say a song is identified up to Natural equivalents or something like this as were the musician to play around note at a non-crucial moment it would be very dramatic in that moment to suggest that an entirely different song has been played let us now draw a distinction between a song and an instance of a song emotionally it feels as though this settles the dispute an instance of a song is the familiar concept a recording on a CD a live performance a cover Etc however the excited energy which pushes the concept of an instance of a song into Clarity simultaneously pushes the concept of a song into abstraction the song becomes a theoretical object and an instance of a song a physical realization of its platonic counterpart so you kind of have this perfect
platonic universe where a song exists as an idea and then you have our ugly physical Universe where a physical realization of the song exists in multitude right there are many different ways that you can physically realize a song where this becomes most interesting is in the mind of a composer so how does one compose when what they create is not what they are driven by right so they are driven by a song but they create an instance of a song so there's kind of this complex thing how do we create that which we are not driven by uh the answer begins at a shift in perspective one ought not four a song One not create a song but instead one must raise a song so you're driven by the platonic counterpart and you're trying to give as greater physical Injustice to this as you can with the means that you have so the important part is don't create instead due to life of better word raise so a good test is to seeing whether what you created feels like it was somebody else right and there are many examples of this in life have you ever been to the party and you've told just an awesome joke and absolutely everybody laughed including yourself and it kind of comes to you in that moment it doesn't feel like you created it that experience is identical to somebody else coming in and telling the joke it was just for some reason you right that's a that's an example of raising an idea because you kind of do that accidentally it was done authentically it was done in in a semi-flow state I don't know whether you can call that moment or Flow State but the ideal state for creation is flow where the concept of self is most absent right um I can tell you from my experience uh my favorite song of my album object is comic book Channel I adore this thing to pieces and it's by far the one that I feel like I put least effort into but that's so clearly not true because it's so clearly the most complicated one um anyway I remember the moment where I was lying in bed and I just I thought the album was basically finished right I had all the songs and I was just about to start doing the production and everything and then I literally just was Devon to my computer and it was a super romantic moment and I went in just for three hours I was totally not present and not aware of myself and at the end of that I looked at this thing that I've composed and I was playing it and I was genuinely having moments of like oh wow that's really interesting because that does this and then that does that like I'm analyzing it and I'm like oh so it
kind of does this thing Etc right so that is exactly how I talk about other people's songs that I find fascinating it does not feel like I created it whereas I'll take like the the counter example is the track legend of the crocos and that one is the most man-made piece of music ever and I can feel every struggle and bit of my personality in every single second in that song but I think that the goal is to hit that flow state so that it is equally as fascinating to you afterwards as it is uh anybody else Okay so the way that I write a song is if I lost my pen maybe my Pen's out of battery so you're letting charge like quickly while I keep talking so concretely what do I do I start with a blank score and I always start with piano now I first started my musical Life as a Pianist and that might be why it doesn't really matter I'll start with a photographing one or whatever but I think that I think I do think the piano is the best one it's got a really nice mapping from the keys to the notes that you see on the screen um but I guess it doesn't really matter I start with a blank Spore and I write chords so a chord progression is the most important thing I cannot stress this enough you can play block chords with no reasonable Rhythm or Melody Associated to it in like terrible 8-bit crappy sound you know even just pure tones and it and if the chord progression is good it will still make you feel something emotional so you should spend so so so much time writing a really good genuinely emotionally compelling chord progression and once you've got a good one there is basically nothing you can do to ruin that after that you're just going to be paying attention keep in mind what I said about raising a song as opposed to creating it so just just listen to it and ask yourself what does it need there's a quote from the drama Metallica right what has to come next and I quite like this as well you listen to it and you say ah okay maybe it needs a bit of maybe it needs some drums to underline it maybe it needs a bit more uh movement maybe it needs some rhythmic embellishments or something and the point is think about yourself as parents so if you notice your child might like tennis like I don't know you kind of look at them and you get to know your child and you're like oh maybe we should get them tennis lessons your duty as a parent is to go and get them tennis lessons so you're the experienced one with knowledge of stuff in the world and you offer it to young child and you let
them authentically discover themselves through your influence that's what you're doing with music okay so you as the mature one you're meant to be saying oh maybe you need you know rhythmic sorry maybe you need harmonic um Tempo variations or you know and whatever musical techniques that you're aware of maybe you need transposition maybe you need an inversion and so you kind of offer it to the song and you do the experimentation and You observe and you see whether the song is Happy or whether it's unhappy see whether it fits authentically and the result of this is that you end up with something that feels like it's not what you wanted to do at all but what you've got is authentic and you've got there by truly listening as opposed to analytically thinking so the summary is by far the most important part is chords and start there and then listen and that's it that's all that I do well it's a bit more complicated than that but that's definitely going to get you started this doesn't sound much like mathematics to me I mean isn't there a large component of generative exploration and then kind of critical culling in any art and including music it isn't so much like that in mathematics is it I mean the generative part I mean I guess you can come up with ideas for solving a problem generative in a way but it's I mean I'm not a musician so I don't know what it feels like but do they feel similar to you it's a it's a good question so um so okay let's remember another one of my favorite quotes the interesting part of an equality is not how the two sides are the same but how they're different so sure maybe we've established some relationships between the two of them now let's talk about some of the differences one big difference is that mathematics is so um focused on solving problems right like you can write down the problem and you can say let's solve this and then you develop a theory that maybe goes ahead and does that and that doesn't have such a great analogy over in music I don't think that we're doing that in music so much um but what mathematics does have alongside solving problems is just kind of the creation of math right so you could decide that I believe in a future of like mathematical computer science or mathematical musicology or mathematical I don't know whatever whatever you're so inspired by and you believe that there is death inside a particular concept that is not necessarily going to solve a problem them if you were to explore but you believe that you're going to get
math out of it and what do I mean by get math out of it I mean whatever you mean as math as the subjective artist right so follow that intuition and see if you can discover something so that's the similarity for me because I think that my word doesn't do so much for solving problems so I believe in the concept of computation and I believe that there is mathematics to be found inside there and constructing yeah concrete semantics for composition for yeah as in composing functions um or composing morphisms inside a category is is not acutely going to solve a problem but it's more we notice that there is something lurking there and that something is only describable to an Intuit or by an intuitive mathematician and as I go into that I anticipate to find something and I don't even know what that thing is it might not solve a problem so that's the side of mathematics that I think is very similar to this so the generation of content and then the critical culling and the looking and the observing and the experimenting and seeing whether there is a there and all that kind of stuff that's the part that I think is incredibly similar [Music] yeah but solving problems I'm not sure if that's so analogous over on the music side all right I did have a couple of pieces of music uh planned so I should cut to the point where I actually use that so I spoke briefly about um musical techniques right and I oh I just said this out loud but I said uh harmonic tempo and harmonic Tempo is the rate at which chord changes happen and a famous example of this or not a famous example but a good example um it's pop music because what happens a lot is you'll have the chord progression for the chorus where the chord changes every bar and then for the verse you have the same chord progression but it changes every two bars or something so since it's changing level two bars the harmonic movement is slower you as the listener are receiving more uh less coin changes per second and so the harmonic Tempo is slower in the verse and it's faster in the chorus and that extra movement of Harmony helps give you that celebratory feel of a chorus so I think that this is a really interesting musical technique and it was one that I used well I'm doing this later that I used inside a comic book channel the piece that I mentioned earlier but I noticed that I had this interesting spin on it so what we could ask is what if we achieved variation in harmonic tempo but maintained the number of chord changes per bar
maybe that doesn't mean the first one so this is again one of those research directions right it sounds impossible it's like I just defined it as the race at which you receive chord changes but if we maintain the number of chord changes per bar then how can we achieve fluctuation in harmonic Tempo well that's when you start getting creative we can change the tempo of the song from one bit to to the next bit and that means we're receiving more coin changes per second but the number of coin changes per bar is maintaining the same or we can change the number of notes that are played inside a particular bar so we can change the time signature so what I have prepared is one section of comet Point Channel which is a bit lengthy it's a little bit more than one minute I believe and then the next bit which is basically you're a pain of the harmonic ideas but it's at a much quicker uh time signature and what you want to pay attention to is that there is still the same number of color changes per bar but the harmonic Tempo has definitely increased in the second version of it and you'll notice that gives you a way higher sensation of intensity so notice the intent the difference in intensity between the first simple and the second server okay Dan could you please play the common mode exactly where it's called it's going to be called comic books one or something just the first yes [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign it's got such a shorter duration right um but the same number of coordinate changes happens and they happen at the same point with respect to the bars it's just that two beats per bar have been removed in the second playthrough um and what's cool is to listen to that and decide what that does to the music and how you want to use that as as a as a technique okay uh I had lots more content but I'm definitely gonna have to leave it there I'd be more than happy to do another talk if there was sufficient interest in me doing so but I think I'm going to leave it uh there today because I'd like to see if there are any questions thank you thanks a lot well you're welcome I like changing this question I'm not sure I was talking about in harmonic before what does that mean um all right I think there are two terms and harmonic and in harmonic in harmonic what's in harmonica I'm getting the harmonic functions in um yeah this is more the technical side of music
so you're not all understanding waves and the way that musical instruments create resonance and everything so they're the harmonics of an instrument and you can you can play with this as musical techniques that guitar can do impeach harmonics for example um that doesn't have anything to do with the concept of Harmony as I was using it inside today's talk but one thing that you can talk about is oh what's it called so it's in harmonic or something I mean in harmonic it just means non-harmonic right and so you can try to create good music with ideas and people have done some pretty clever things with that especially in heavy metal I would say because if you don't have Harmony everything you have and then you create intensity uh yeah I don't think I can make anything that's awesome don't have to take the ai's question too deeply uh other questions for will how do you see that Christian will uh do you think that's training yeah so I really want to give this like chord thing as a starting point um the reason why is because what is really crushing about getting to about composing music for the first time is just having a piece of music that sucks right and you put so much effort into it and so much love and passion but it's just bad so a really good way to get yourself feeling good is to write a nicely unemployed progression because first as I said it's really difficult to kind of do something after that that ruins it so you're going to end up with something reasonable at the end it will make you feel good about yourself and make you excited to keep composing two one of the most complex parts of advanced music writing is harmony providing so balancing complex harmonies Etc and chord progression is like your first introduction to that so writing chords is a concept which is easy to learn and difficult to master so it's a very good entry point um it also depends on what type of musician you are so some people like to start music with ideas and stuff like this and I think that's legitimate because going back to the idea that you find your musical personality as part of your own personality it probably means that if you're a musician then the music is already inside you just have absolutely no idea how to communicate that yet so starting with something else is probably not going to generate that music which is already inside you so maybe a good starting point would be to connect with yourself first and then draw out some of these ideas and see if you can express them through your Native
Instrument I think vital is particularly uh easy not easy but then calling vocals an instrument it's the most amenable instrument to expression is my opinion so if you're a workless you can start by expressing your emotion with your instrument which is your voice and that can be a really good starting point as well I think it's much more difficult to express yourself with like a drum kit for example although time that whole thing can be done so yeah I can definitely be restricting but it's a very good starting point so that's what I always suggest to beginners if you're focusing For the First Time start with chords anything else yeah I'm never sure if my microphone's gonna work I have a question like so you're kind of like lamenting the fact that you know chord progressions and like music can be somewhat non-creative or derivative across time periods and so I I'm wondering like what is the ultimate goal of music in your mind so that's a really good question um I think that we're artists and I think that we're generating art and I just can't feel good about art that is completely derivative okay so you could take influence and you can take inspiration you can take an idea and do it in your own way and make your own personality out of it Etc but I just don't believe that you've done art I think you've done um his historic preservation that's what I think you've done if you take a piece of music and you reproduce you know a style you're not going to literally know from that reproduce it but you so what can happen is you accidentally get to a point where success becomes synonymous with oh yeah that sounds like the stuff I like right and that's a really dangerous headspace to get into because you're just going to end up with mimicry um if you if you let that part of yourself grow too much so what do I think the point of music is I think the point is to generate content and the content that we're creating needs to be art and what is art well art is many things but in past it is the like recording of the history of a of an artistic moment and what is an artistic moment well it's that mysterious place that is Untouchable by science and logic that we call the Flow State so when you enter into that you connect with something deeper and you can bring that forward if you're attuned to be able to do so and that artistic moment is beautiful and the generation of such things is the point is one of the points of music and art more generally so I think that's my answer to that
that's a very good question so when you're talking about like you know you could produce five five people across five songs from five different places five different times like are you speaking of like plagiarists who have literally like copy pasted that thing or you're just speaking of like they didn't search hard enough to like verify that their thing was original like could they not have just produced those things like originally as well yeah I mean maybe they did but I somehow struggled to believe it if there's five of them across five different decades and they all sound like this super famous right so my point wouldn't be that they haven't searched enough to like into the literature to verify that their album is like able to be released in the in the way that mathematicians have to um my point is that those musicians haven't personalized it and so it's it's not art it's my opinion I haven't listened to something that encapsulates a part of yourself because it hasn't come from your personality instead it's come from your experience of appreciating this these particular sounds that you have managed to reproduce by yourself right so I think that the Human Experience is a crucial part of artwork because I think the artistic moment is a crucial part of the artwork and the artistic moments is man against this crazy universe that we live in be it described by science or by Art right so it's that mystical X place that we get to and that is so deeply personal and humans are different across each other that there is no reason to believe that you're going to um generate the same idea twice something that happens mathematicians do that for example so sure that could happen but I think it's more common inside music because there is this truly accidental thing that you can do where you start off with an instrument and everything that you're doing just sounds bad and bad and bad when you try to write stuff and it sounds stupid right until eventually you're right it's riff that in actuality just sounds like something that you like and you think that what you've done is create something good but you haven't created something good you've created something else right and there's a big big distinction between those two things and if you are strict at disciplining yourself in that way as you grow as an artist then you can develop into something truly unique and genuine that is able to connect frequently with that flow State and therefore true art um a lot a lot of the time you can
connect with that frequently Mrs which is the goal I mean that takes years to get yourself to that point so it's kind of like mental Prime like thought crimes or mental discipline I think that's a big part of it so the AI I was talking earlier about some book on architecture that it's has access to there's an interesting idea there about the one of the things you experience I mean architecture I guess is a bit of similarity to music in the sense that there's it's kind of like oh especially written music is largely structural and there's a little form to it and maybe architecture is similar but then you you kind of animate it with life when you occupy it or play it but in architecture there's this effective time right where a building is there for a long time and it's in the same place and by being in it you you feel connected to the Past I guess a critique of and your desire for originality is is maybe a bit of a rejection of that purpose of music right I mean so what if you're just repeating the same songs isn't that part of the point to connect you to the Past man I'm conflicted on that right so you could take a classic album like Pink Floyd's dark side of the moon or something and you can hear what era that was recorded in right you can hear the snare you can you can hear the vocals like it is unmistakable what era that album was recording it right and I think that that is a really strong analogy of what you're talking about with architecture like when it came out it was a brand spanking new and everyone was like oh my God there's no clear and beautiful this sounds and then you jump forward to 2020 and you're like oh man there's not even any audio tune in this what what gives so you still have that concept and that can be really beautiful to experience and that's one of the benefits of that album another good example is um uh King Crimson King Crimson have albums from like the 60s and even earlier sometimes that are so full of that 60s sound yet it's so forward thinking it's it's so part of that artwork the the fact that it comes with the era that it was um created in the problem is that we have uh only recently learned how to record music right so we don't have recordings of Beethoven and we don't have recordings of like um the Psalms from the Bible and that music has been lost for example and that's a massive shame and that's the reason why it's one of the reasons why we have these conservatoriums of music that doing just reproduce the way that Mozart himself would have played this
piece and the way that Beethoven himself and playing this piece so sure I can see legitimacy to that um I think that you've abstracted the musician from that no which is not a bad thing right so it's like you've got the piece of music and maybe maybe Beethoven if it's a piece by Beethoven then maybe Beethoven is connected to that piece of music but then the next guy at the conservatorium that plays it in exactly the way that Beethoven would have that guy is not really relevant right it's like the piece is relevant and Beethoven is relevant and he's just on a very good job at reproducing it so yeah you get that historical perspective and that's legitimate I think that there's a difference between that and just creating a new song that sounds totally like Beethoven and there literally could have just been written by Beethoven even though it's not literally one of Beethoven's songs and then going out and producing it and you know performing it and claiming that you and I have Etc look I'm very yes I think I'm making a deeper critique of that so I mean you think of music as primarily perhaps a creative Enterprise an exploratory Enterprise but you could take a different view which is arguably a much older view where music probably for our ancestors didn't change for tens of thousands of years and it's like 99.99 about the social aspect the kind of cultural aspect that you you referred to at the beginning of this talk but maybe a little bit dismissive towards um is that not most of the value of music like helping to form uh communities of people okay okay you're completely correct that I'm overly dismissive of this I allow myself to be a little bit for a number of different reasons I have an opinion that it's important to be opinionated in artwork because if what you've reject is just as important as what you accept in the creation of your own artwork anyway I'll try not to say too much about that but since music is a creative and explorative thing for me I don't hold back internally from letting that just be what music is like what else could it be right and then in in academic and intellectual and Mentor mindset I can sit there and say oh yes there is also this other side of music that brings people together and develops communities and you know there's also the Practical side of the tone of your voice is so so contemptuous but okay yeah this is kind of my point right like I I unashamedly being creative explorers here of um The Mention Of Music to the point where that's so conflated that I
struggle to see what else there is and I understand that it's there but it's so not also not my interest that it that I I struggle to even perceive for this music it's like other stuff to me to me that's some so what is pop music I think pop music is the generation of Industries and companies and then what is what is the reproduction of Music Inside small venues I think that's new generation of subcultures and communities and um and also that has impact on Border uh community and culture so it's not really like music in my perception it's more like some it's a component of this complex thing which I would refer to a subculture and sub-community Etc so I have this well slip in my mind into the identification of music and creation of the next exploration Etc and that's why I represent that side of it so strongly um the other side of it is the and there's interesting stuff in it it's just not where I lay my heart so to speak so you suggested that that's the most important part of music and I would disagree with that I would say that has a very tangible um relationship with music where what can I see in the world that music has done for me and it's okay this person wears tattoos and has piercings and has a shirt that says Slayer on it um right and if I go to this event I will hear they say I think you're you're trying hard to not see the value in the other side but all right there was there was some other question I think I have another one but well there's uh there seems to be needing to be a strong tension in your thought between um the platonic um Flash the ideal and the original instantiation um when one thing you might consider in this regard is that repetition itself um horrible can become an Act of creative freedom and I I think I saw certain aspects of your discussion that could take you down that path and then another suggestion I have is that in in focusing on the original you're also highly focused on the authentic and everything that um belongs to that ideation so um a philosopher I might suggest for you to to open up this discussion is um named Michael Hewitt and I I left a link in the in the other server on the Discord stuff yeah yeah for you so you could um look at that and it it might help you a little bit yeah going in that direction all right great thanks so I think that repetition and Recreation is an important part of coming to understand yourself I still draw distinction between releasing that thing right so it's like I would say it like a mathematician
solving and exercising quite Sean and then trying to publish that it's like what are you doing dude we've all solved that problem you haven't done anything right so solving that problem inside the textbook is a really important part of developing into a full-fledged mathematician but it's it's not the same as being a full-fledged mathematician but I appreciate the uh suggestion Michael who said will definitely definitely read into it I'm not sure I probably will but because like like you are undoubtedly doing mathematics when you do that exercise and like there is value in that right like the same as stage value and the repetition it's still mathematics it's still music it's still good it's just not the best it's like doing mathematics isn't publishing mathematics yeah yeah yeah yeah but there is something like real about publishing anything right if you are publishing something that's you've really gone out on a limb and you've really been confident and you've gone up to the world and you've and you've said hey I I have done something that you all should listen to like it's kind of an arrogant position to take and also in a world Like Music Man like we don't need more albums we just don't need more albums so if you're going to throw another one on that monolith of a pile then it better be worth doing that for right and so I think I've been journeyed towards becoming a musician that is capable of authentic creation and similarly for mathematician is a beautiful journey and there's a lot to discuss there you can talk to your friends about it talk to your family about it you can post colloquium is where you've discuss that with other people but the production of what gets created on your path toward authentic creation is not the same as a relational authentic creation is the way that I would look at it you're still doing mathematics for sure so like solving that problem if you did that on your own that's definitely in you performing mathematics and you're creating something musically um on your own even if you're trying to produce something that already exists and you're trying to work out how to do that and so you do that and you pull that off you definitely still done music but the closer to the authentic self that you are during the creation of Music the more musical you're being is my contention and simultaneously to that the more uh connected to the authentic self you are whilst you're creating the more original your music is going to be I think it's very difficult to create