Friends,

Everything in this universe is in its most simple form vibration.  High
or low, everything is eminating it's vibratory song.

Snowflakes are patterned by the frequencies that flow through them upon
freezing.

We are all the product of a great creational cosmic song that continues
to be sung.

It has taken me about several years to be able to produce frequencies
with mathematical and physical accuracy as a visual representation. I
hope you enjoy my video slide show, as it displays just a visual glimpse
into the wonders or our existence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkOAnfXlA5M
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkOAnfXlA5M>

Respectfully,

Kevin Dill [:)]

Albert Enstein said:
"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us "Universe," a part
limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and
feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical
delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few
persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this
prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living
creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to
achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in
itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.softology.com.au/voc.htm

I recently bought this program. It's quite cheap. It can generate midi
files plus a lot of other stuff. Worth having a look.

Alphacore Has Released several new Tracks for free to listen share and
download.. also read and learn more about the methods behind text_2_midi @

http://tinyurl.com/alphacore-blog

Thanks to all And Enjoy Alphacore

hi all,

some of you might be interested in
this--->http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7687286.stm

best regards

jacky

Here are some examples of the fractal tune sloth canons:

http://www.robertinventor.com/software/fractal_music_Sloth_canons/index.htm

With the first three examples, if you speed the tune up a bit, and remove the
quietest part, then it sounds the same (except that the volume of the first note
depends on the total number of parts in the tune). The tunes also almost repeat.
I made the first three to be as fractal as possible with this method.

Anyway if you follow the link there's more there about what makes the tune
fractal.

Sorry for delay, I've been working on the program and improving the website, had
a lot on. Also thanks for the information about fractint's capabilities for
generating penrose tilings using L-systems - I'd come across fractint before but
had no idea that it could do penrose tilings.

Thanks,

Robert

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hello Everyone,

  I'm producer of experimental live coding Sound Art I use the ruby coding
language to produce live improv sound compositions.

All Albums are Released as Free Downloads under the Creative Commons License
<a href="http://www.tinyurl.com/alphacore">Compositions of Alphacore</a>

I have open a Blog about Synestesia method.
Philosophical comments would be nice:

http://selfgeneratedmusic.blogspot.com/

Regards,

Lauri Gröhn

Hello Everyone I have Released all my music for free through my blog
feel free download share and review...

I'm a producer of Experimental Live Coding Sound Art


http://compositions-of-alphacore.blogspot.com/

Thanks Alphacore

There's a program that I first started using back in 1991, Fractint
<http://www.fractint.org/ftp/release.20.0/dos/frain200.zip>  , that has
a section on L-Systems, and I recall several different Penrose
variations in the list of stored L-System parameters.  It's a DOS
program, but you can run it at the command prompt (Start>Run> Cmd).  The
program also generates Mandelbrot & similar fractals, and the Lorenz,
Gingerbread & other dot cluster types.  There's an option for generating
sounds while the image is calculated.
--- In cnfractal_music@yahoogroups.com, "Robert Walker"
<yahoogroups@...> wrote:
>
> Hi there,
>
> While answering the last e-mail, I looked up L-System fractals
> in wikipedia, and I just came across this picture of a Penrose tiling
as an L-System:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pend05c.gif
>
> It's the same idea as my 3D fractal Penrose. If you did it like that
> and just superimposed a few more layers, in the same way
> - and if you were to draw the smallest tiles in a very light pen
> and use darker pens as the tiles got larger, then zoomed out
> until the smallest tiles of all merged to become continuous or
> nearly so the result would be a 2D fractal.
>
> To get a more continuous appearance, shade each of the larger
> tiles so that it is black at its boundary and shades to white at the
> centre, and as before use lighter pens for the smaller tiles
> - and superimpose by subtraction from white so that dark grey
> + light grey gives very dark grey - e.g. 90% intensity + 80 %
> intensity superimposes as 60% intensity (subtract 10% then 20%).
>
> The result would be a continuous 2D fractal. You could then take that
> into 3D by using the intensity as the 3D height.
>
> So that would be a way to make the Penrose tiling into a 3D
> fractal landscape. You could superimpose the coloured tiles
> over the landscape and you'd notice that the same type of
> feature in the landscape has the same pattern of tiles
> wrapping over it, so bringing out the larger and larger
> scale structures in the Penrose tilings more clearly than in the
> usual 2D representation. It might be a fun thing to do. I've got
> a Penrose tiling generating program which I wrote which I'm sure
> could be modified to do this and may give it a go some day
> when I have a bit of time.
>
> Robert
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hello everyone,
 
  Haven't added a word in the past, so it is about time I put my feminine two
cents worth. It doesn't matter a bit about how anyone looks at fractal music,
because in all reality it is different for everyone. No two people hear it
exactly the same. We all vibrate at different frequencies and not all of us get
the same thing out of music, or life. One person may feel the calming effect and
another an irritating effect. It is what they hear from it, how it resonates
with their own frequencies and vibration. I have  studied with Barbara Hero,
whom I call the Einstein of Music, Sound and Frequencies. She has the Lamboma
Keyboard and so much research, I have not been able to keep up with her genius.
Robert Walker has worked with her over the years and been instrumental in some
of her software used on the Lambdoma. Her website is www.lambdoma.com . I also
have a Lambdoma, have used it in treatment for myself and others, I will over
the next few years
  develop a method that people will be able to use the keyboard and create
Printable Fractal Art from their own Fractal Musical Frequencies. It will be
like taking an imprint of your iris and blowing it up, our eyes are the window
to our organs and our health, as fractal music created by ones self is a healing
modality and a window to our well being. We are able to look inside and create a
vibrational harmony to heal thyself. As I look at things a little differently
than others, I've been told, I vision our universe as a mathematical
calculation, everything in essence is and has a number related to it. Just think
about it. So if we take those numbers and turn them into a calculation on the
keyboard, or musical tones, cords, in certain frequencies, they turn into music
(sound) and then if you speed them up they turn into light and light turns
into infinity (infrared).I feel I have expressed my point of view, there is no
right or wrong, we all have our
  opinions and as long as we respect one another and realize that we are all
right in our own beliefs, we will then be the teacher and the student. For isn't
that what life is about.


Cheri DeShaw
Camp Comfort
1370 John St
Camano ISland, WA 98282
360 572-4220
760 567-6684 Cell

--- On Sat, 10/4/08, PhilJackson <pjackson1@...> wrote:

From: PhilJackson <pjackson1@...>
Subject: Re: [cnfractal_music] Re: Fractal music debates...
To: cnfractal_music@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, October 4, 2008, 8:19 PM






Hi all,

I agree with some of this.

> <Harlan>
> I agree with Phil (J) that concerns about "classification" are
> entirely unnecessary to the creative process. It's all about the
> ears - if it sounds good, do it.

<me>
I think that is aim of most people in this group, to produce something
that sounds good, or least interesting. Not as a mathematical proof.

<Harlan>
>
> The interesting part for me (aside from the listening), is figuring
> out what aspects of music are actually "fractal" in the same sense
> that we measure visual fractals. We take it for granted that we
> often "see" the way in which an image or object is self-similar.
> However, whether we see the fractal structure or not, it is
> mathematically demonstrable.

<me>
I think it would be a much easier chore with a graphic fractal. With
music, the waters are further muddied by the fact that in practice, a
lot of people do a good bit of editing and combining the output of
several things together these days. (Much to Shawn's chagrin ;-)

<Harlan>

>
> Assuming that music derived from a fractal is automatically fractal
> is something like taking a poem by Kipling, transliterating it using
> the Cyrillic alphabet and then presenting it as Russian poetry. The
> point here is simply that the desired outcome is by no means
> guaranteed.
>
> As I wrote earlier, it is possible to insure fractality by being
> careful with mapping. It is also possible that fractal structure
> exists without intent, but to be certain of this it is necessary to
> make some sort of measurement relative to pitch, interval, duration,
> dynamics, etc.
>

<me>
I would think the mapping important, or rather how you arrive at the
mapping. Graphically, you might iterate over sets of points in the
real/complex planes and paint a pixel a certain color depending upon how
many iterations of a complex equation occur before either an "escape
value" is reached or N iterations occur and you determine it will never
reach "escape velocity". Music-generating software would mostly follow
that same model I would think, though there are others. I think that
there was software at one time that produced notes at each iteration, so
not sure about that...

<Harlan>
> Often researchers try to link some concept of fractal dimension to
> genre or "likeability, " though this is not my focus. Some use MIDI
> renditions while others use audio files. The common thread is that
> all such efforts require identifying specific attributes for
> measurement.

<Me>
Interesting. If they are looking for "likeability" does that mean that
they are analyzing the "fluff" on top-40 radio stations? Surely not.

<Harlan>
>
> AND... none of this matters if one simply wishes to make music!
>

<me>
Quite true! I am sure that your research is quite challenging, but what
if you used your acquired knowledge thus far on this subject to actually
write a fractal music composition tool that was 100% aligned to your
ideal of what fractal music should be like?

Phil J.

>















[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I'd like to use some fractal signal generation in musical
composition.  There are some fractal generators in Jitter that output
matrices, but I'm stymied trying to get them into serial floats.
Though maybe one could just split the list, of course.

Hi all,

I agree with some of this.

> <Harlan>
> I agree with Phil (J) that concerns about "classification" are
> entirely unnecessary to the creative process. It's all about the
> ears - if it sounds good, do it.

<me>
I think that is aim of most people in this group, to produce something
that sounds good, or least interesting.  Not as a mathematical proof.

<Harlan>
>
> The interesting part for me (aside from the listening), is figuring
> out what aspects of music are actually "fractal" in the same sense
> that we measure visual fractals. We take it for granted that we
> often "see" the way in which an image or object is self-similar.
> However, whether we see the fractal structure or not, it is
> mathematically demonstrable.

<me>
I think it would be a much easier chore with a graphic fractal.  With
music, the waters are further muddied by the fact that in practice, a
lot of people do a good bit of editing and combining the output of
several things together these days.  (Much to Shawn's chagrin ;-)






<Harlan>

>
> Assuming that music derived from a fractal is automatically fractal
> is something like taking a poem by Kipling, transliterating it using
> the Cyrillic alphabet and then presenting it as Russian poetry. The
> point here is simply that the desired outcome is by no means
> guaranteed.
>
> As I wrote earlier, it is possible to insure fractality by being
> careful with mapping. It is also possible that fractal structure
> exists without intent, but to be certain of this it is necessary to
> make some sort of measurement relative to pitch, interval, duration,
> dynamics, etc.
>

<me>
I would think the mapping important, or rather how you arrive at the
mapping.  Graphically, you might iterate over sets of points in the
real/complex planes and paint a pixel a certain color depending upon how
many iterations of a complex equation occur before either an "escape
value" is reached or N iterations occur and you determine it will never
reach "escape velocity".  Music-generating software would mostly follow
that same model I would think, though there are others.  I think that
there was software at one time that produced notes at each iteration, so
not sure about that...

<Harlan>
> Often researchers try to link some concept of fractal dimension to
> genre or "likeability," though this is not my focus. Some use MIDI
> renditions while others use audio files. The common thread is that
> all such efforts require identifying specific attributes for
> measurement.

<Me>
Interesting.  If they are looking for "likeability" does that mean that
they are analyzing the "fluff" on top-40 radio stations?  Surely not.

<Harlan>
>
> AND... none of this matters if one simply wishes to make music!
>

<me>
Quite true!  I am sure that your research is quite challenging, but what
if you used your acquired knowledge thus far on this subject to actually
write a fractal music composition tool that was 100% aligned to your
ideal of what fractal music should be like?


Phil J.


>

I agree with Phil (J) that concerns about "classification" are
entirely unnecessary to the creative process.  It's all about the
ears - if it sounds good, do it.

The interesting part for me (aside from the listening), is figuring
out what aspects of music are actually "fractal" in the same sense
that we measure visual fractals. We take it for granted that we
often "see" the way in which an image or object is self-similar.
However, whether we see the fractal structure or not, it is
mathematically demonstrable.

A rich area of investigation lies in identifying where to find
fractal structure in the arts and in nature:

http://classes.yale.edu/Fractals/Panorama/welcome.html

In each case, it is important to be specific about what
characteristic of the object under consideration is actually
fractal.  A well-known example is the Mandelbrot set.  The "set" is
not fractal, but the boundary is.  In this case it is obvious to the
eye.

Given its intangible nature, music presents difficulties.  Just as
images can possess different fractal qualities, so can music.  In
some cases ears or a score are useful, but otherwise we must rely on
mathematical analysis, which means we need to be specific about what
musical characteristics we are measuring.

Assuming that music derived from a fractal is automatically fractal
is something like taking a poem by Kipling, transliterating it using
the Cyrillic alphabet and then presenting it as Russian poetry.  The
point here is simply that the desired outcome is by no means
guaranteed.

As I wrote earlier, it is possible to insure fractality by being
careful with mapping.  It is also possible that fractal structure
exists without intent, but to be certain of this it is necessary to
make some sort of measurement relative to pitch, interval, duration,
dynamics, etc.

Often researchers try to link some concept of fractal dimension to
genre or "likeability," though this is not my focus.  Some use MIDI
renditions while others use audio files.  The common thread is that
all such efforts require identifying specific attributes for
measurement.

AND... none of this matters if one simply wishes to make music!


Harlan



--- In cnfractal_music@yahoogroups.com, PhilJackson <pjackson1@...>
wrote:
>
> Indeed, if perhaps not the most amicable one - we've lost one member
> over it already....
>
> Really, you can all re-classify it as "broccoli music" and I don't
> really don't mind too much. My interest lies not in its esoteric
> properties, but whether my ears like the end result.  Whether it
follows
> one strict mathematical model or another is the very least of my
> concerns.  So many already will combine the output of several
different
> generative processes, and perhaps even remix with a variety of live
> instruments that "fractal music" is not being used as it's own end,
but
> simply as another "tool" to be incorporated into a larger work.
>
> Phil J.
>
> On Thu, 2008-10-02 at 02:04 +0000, fmshawn wrote:
> >
> > I think y'all should both debate it and make it!
> >
> > This has been one of the most lively discussions here in years!
> >
> > Back in 2000 I stirred up some debate here on what fractal music
> > really means. I tried to give it a definition, but I think in the
> > end, the definition I proposed was a little too loose to be
useful.
> > (Say that 5 times fast...)
> >
> > I do think, at the end of the day, the music based on the fractal
> > images is indeed fractal. And despite my (once legendary)
insistence
> > that humans don't putz with the output of their musical fractal
> > generators (I preferred 'pure' fractals), I still think that the
> > human
> > arrangements of fractally generated patterns also qualifies as
> > fractal.
> >
> > Shawn
> >
> > My earlier post, cleaned up a bit, may be found in our files
> > repository:
> >
http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/ICvkSLsTx10Ro8chEJg9hZSJYeNj4Klx_CrLTO_6C
> > 9Gqma9CitVVcMwmcaAW9kMDMFKeya87gzPnEkESLcX1Y267bvqjOu3F1xmR-
> > VnaUqc/FractalDefinitions1-shawns-take.doc
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

Hi there,

While answering the last e-mail, I looked up L-System fractals
in wikipedia, and I just came across this picture of a Penrose tiling as an
L-System:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pend05c.gif

It's the same idea as my 3D fractal Penrose. If you did it like that
and just superimposed a few more layers, in the same way
- and if you were to draw the smallest tiles in a very light pen
and use darker pens as the tiles got larger, then zoomed out
until the smallest tiles of all merged to become continuous or
nearly so the result would be a 2D fractal.

To get a more continuous appearance, shade each of the larger
tiles so that it is black at its boundary and shades to white at the
centre, and as before use lighter pens for the smaller tiles
- and superimpose by subtraction from white so that dark grey
+ light grey gives very dark grey - e.g. 90% intensity + 80 %
intensity superimposes as 60% intensity (subtract 10% then 20%).

The result would be a continuous 2D fractal. You could then take that
into 3D by using the intensity as the 3D height.

So that would be a way to make the Penrose tiling into a 3D
fractal landscape. You could superimpose the coloured tiles
over the landscape and you'd notice that the same type of
feature in the landscape has the same pattern of tiles
wrapping over it, so bringing out the larger and larger
scale structures in the Penrose tilings more clearly than in the
usual 2D representation. It might be a fun thing to do. I've got
a Penrose tiling generating program which I wrote which I'm sure
could be modified to do this and may give it a go some day
when I have a bit of time.

Robert

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Will,

That's an interesting thought. It might be a bit like those L-system trees with
flowers and leaves, like the ones you can make with my Virtual Flower program:
http://www.robertinventor.com/software/virtualflower/index.htm

The fractalness would come from the way a movement is structured
overall, with various levels of construction, and the themes would be
like the flowers and leaves bringing out that structure at the final level
of the fractal layer - well except the fractal structure if considered
rhythmically
to some extent may extend to within a theme as well.

I think that many tunes have a rhythmic fracticality and a good example
would come from dance music. Example, because my relatives play
them all the time, I hear a lot of scottish folk music - fiddle tunes
etc - and they are often very fractal in structure with each bar
usually in two halves which answer each other, then
bars group in twos as "call and answer" rhythmically,
those then fall in to four bar units with the two halves answering each
other, and the four bar units often make up an eight bar section of the tune
in a similar fashion. The tune may repeat that eight bar section twice,
followed by another eight bar section similarly constructed
that concludes the tune.

In the call and answer, there is a build up of melodic tension during the
call part, that is then released during the answer, but not completely,
until it is all finally released at the end of the last answer at the slowest
level.

I find you often get that in tunes, to the extent that if you
have a seven bar tune, especially if it is repeated a couple of times,
it can sound intersting and "unusual", I think because it breaks the
usual fractal structure we are used to hearing in tunes.

L-systems:.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-system

Robert


> To what degree would anybody consider Mozart's 41st symphony
fractal? It's constructed from very few microscopically small
musical units. Could one say that the level of fractal intensity is
a standard measure of excellence in Western Common Practice music?


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi Phil,

I'd say that I have two "hats" as it were. With my mathematical hat
on then I'm very interested in the fractal structure behind the music,
make tunes that make it as obvious as possible, and would certainly
welcome a scale of "fracticality".

With my fractal composing hat on then I am often doing what I can
to make the fractal structure of tunes less obvious, or obscuring it in
many ways, and trying to see how far I can take that process while
keeping the sense of shape and architecture in the music that you get
with the fractals.

I'd say that the most obviously fractal music is by no means the best
musically - any more than the most exact metronomic rhythm is the best
musical rhythm. That is another thing I've worked a lot on in my program,
ways of making the rhythm sound less metronomic and more natural.

Nor could one really say - if it is say x% fractal then that's the best
exact percent to aim for. It depends on the piece. Some very fractal
pieces may sound good while others may sound better musically
if they are only slightly fractal, to the extent that you can't pick out
the fractal at all by ear, just have a feeling of overall architecture
and things happening at many time scales.

So I don't think "fracticality" is any kind of a value measure, just another
interesting tool for construction and analysis of the music.

Robert

> Nice thoughts, Robert. I don't think we need to develop a scale of
"fracticality" as if we were measuring a hurricane or earthquake. It is
what it is. Just because a piece is a Cat 3 Major Fractal Music Work
does not make it good...but anyone feel free to do so if you wish.

Besides, a good number of folks will combine output from different
generators & perhaps even a live instrument or two to create their
pieces.

The ultimate criteria is "do you enjoy listening to it"?

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Indeed, if perhaps not the most amicable one - we've lost one member
over it already....

Really, you can all re-classify it as "broccoli music" and I don't
really don't mind too much. My interest lies not in its esoteric
properties, but whether my ears like the end result.  Whether it follows
one strict mathematical model or another is the very least of my
concerns.  So many already will combine the output of several different
generative processes, and perhaps even remix with a variety of live
instruments that "fractal music" is not being used as it's own end, but
simply as another "tool" to be incorporated into a larger work.

Phil J.

On Thu, 2008-10-02 at 02:04 +0000, fmshawn wrote:
>
> I think y'all should both debate it and make it!
>
> This has been one of the most lively discussions here in years!
>
> Back in 2000 I stirred up some debate here on what fractal music
> really means. I tried to give it a definition, but I think in the
> end, the definition I proposed was a little too loose to be useful.
> (Say that 5 times fast...)
>
> I do think, at the end of the day, the music based on the fractal
> images is indeed fractal. And despite my (once legendary) insistence
> that humans don't putz with the output of their musical fractal
> generators (I preferred 'pure' fractals), I still think that the
> human
> arrangements of fractally generated patterns also qualifies as
> fractal.
>
> Shawn
>
> My earlier post, cleaned up a bit, may be found in our files
> repository:
> http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/ICvkSLsTx10Ro8chEJg9hZSJYeNj4Klx_CrLTO_6C
> 9Gqma9CitVVcMwmcaAW9kMDMFKeya87gzPnEkESLcX1Y267bvqjOu3F1xmR-
> VnaUqc/FractalDefinitions1-shawns-take.doc
>
>
>
>
>

I think y'all should both debate it and make it!

This has been one of the most lively discussions here in years!

Back in 2000 I stirred up some debate here on what fractal music
really means.  I tried to give it a definition, but I think in the
end, the definition I proposed was a little too loose to be useful.
(Say that 5 times fast...)

I do think, at the end of the day, the music based on the fractal
images is indeed fractal.  And despite my (once legendary) insistence
that humans don't putz with the output of their musical fractal
generators (I preferred 'pure' fractals), I still think that the human
arrangements of fractally generated patterns also qualifies as
fractal.

Shawn


My earlier post, cleaned up a bit, may be found in our files
repository:
http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/ICvkSLsTx10Ro8chEJg9hZSJYeNj4Klx_CrLTO_6C
9Gqma9CitVVcMwmcaAW9kMDMFKeya87gzPnEkESLcX1Y267bvqjOu3F1xmR-
VnaUqc/FractalDefinitions1-shawns-take.doc

Hello,

This email message is a notification to let you know that
a file has been uploaded to the Files area of the cnfractal_music
group.

   File        : /FractalDefinitions1-shawns-take.doc
   Uploaded by : fmshawn <bulens@...>
   Description : Old post from 7/2000 on fractal definitions

You can access this file at the URL:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cnfractal_music/files/FractalDefinitions1-shawns-t\
ake.doc

To learn more about file sharing for your group, please visit:
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/groups/original/members/web/index.htmlfiles

Regards,

fmshawn <bulens@...>

Hi, Jacky.
 
First, a quick correction - I am not a Ph.D.  Perhaps the previous derisive talk
of me as an "academic" type gave you the wrong impression.  I am a perfectly
normal person who enjoys both music and mathematics. (Mind you, I hold nothing
against people with advanced degrees). 
 
> can any of you identify a fractal music by listening to it?
 
There is at least one type of fractal construction for which the answer is
"yes."  Composers began experimenting with "mensuration canons" about six
centuries ago (I believe the earliest example dates back to the late 14th
century).
 
The idea is to take a theme or motif and repeat it simultaneously at different
tempos.  It is a time-honored approach to composition.  I'm sure many of the
members of this group have either written software that does this or have at
least experimented with the technique.  Here is an example from one the geniuses
of that early period:
 
http://www.brotherstechnology.com/fractal-music/josquin.html .
 
The one caveat is that it is necessary to have a minimum of three levels of
scaling in order to exhibit the "power law relation" that is at the heart of the
concept of what it means for something (or anything) to be fractal.
 
I would add here that many fractal enthusiasts (of all kinds) express concern
over the idea that a fractal must posses endless or infinite scaling.  This is
NOT a requirement for identifying fractal structure.  Mathematical constructions
often have this property, but it's worth remembering that Mandelbrot's seminal
work on the subject was called "The Fractal Geometry of Nature."  Natural
fractals can only exhibit scaling symmetry over a limited range of scales.  I
believe music falls into this category.
 
> ...OR by analizing a midi file (if available)
 
This is a rich subject of research.  The answer is yes, but you must know what
kind of scaling symmetry you are looking for.
 
> OR by looking/analizing at a score
 
Mensuration canons lend themselves well to this.  Here is a different type
of example from Bach:
 
http://www.maa.org/mathtourist/mathtourist_9_3_08.html .
 
 
Best,
Harlan
 



----- Original Message ----
From: jacky schreiber <jackysch@...>
To: cnfractal_music@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 1, 2008 8:13:17 AM
Subject: Re: Re: [cnfractal_music] Re: Fractal Tunes and Some Clarification


Hi all,

I have a question for Lauri, Phil T, Phil J, Rober W, Dr. Brothers or
anyone who wants to answer,
can any of you identify a fractal music by listening to it? OR by analizing
a midi file (if available) OR by looking/analizing at a score (if
available)?

regards

jacky

----------- Mensaje Original ------------ --

De: Lauri Gröhn [lauri.grohn@ kolumbus. fi]
Para: cnfractal_music@ yahoogroups. com [cnfractal_music@ yahoogroups. com]
Cc:
Asunto: Re: [cnfractal_music] Re: Fractal Tunes and Some Clarification
Fecha: 01/10/2008 00:56:38
Mensaje:

On 29.9.2008, at 8.40, Phil Thompson wrote:

> And it doesn't remotely surprise me that Lauri would comment in
> support of you on this, because he's another person who arrived in
> the field very late in the day having developed techniques that had
> been in use by others in this field for over a decade.

I did my first experiments 1988 and some results of those are
available on my pages. The techniques is not the point but the music
generated without too much of human involvement.

Lauri Gröhn
http://selfgenerate dmusic.blogspot. com/

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]






[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

BTW just want to make very clear. I don't in any way think that the Tune Smithy
fractal tunes are the only musical analogues of a visual fractal. Clearly there
are many, e.g. the Bach Bourree for one, seen in one way.

It is just an example of one that I feel is perhaps particularly clear and easy
to analyse, also obviously one that I have worked on for some time, so can
easily talk about. I hope that it might perhaps suggest a few ideas to add to
the mix when looking for fractal structures elsewhere.

Robert

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Sorry, correction to that last e-mail - though probably it is obvious anyway
just in case it gets you confused:

The similarity is that if you play the tune faster, e.g. three times faster, and
if you then remove every third note in the tune, then it sounds the same as it
did before. Repeat that process any number of times and you still get the same
tune.

Should be

The similarity is that if you play the tune faster, e.g. three times faster, and
if you then remove ALL EXCEPT every third note in the tune, then it sounds the
same as it did before. Repeat that process any number of times and you still get
the same tune.

Robert

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi There,

This one is fractal by almost any definition - well the rhythm certainly. The
pitch also - that's assume you treat the pitch axis much as another space axis:
http://robertinventor.com/software/tunesmithy/tune_smithy_seeds.htm#fractalpitch\
es

The similarity would involve slowing down the time to stretch the time axis, and
spreading notes out in pitch (e.g. re-map subdivisions of a whole tone to
similar subdivisions of an octave or whatever) to zoom in to the pitch axis.

One could say that pitch is highly non linear because of things like preferred
intervals like octaves, fifths etc which we don't have in visual fractals. So
though mathematically that is certainly a good fractal, musically it doesn't
work quite as visual fractals do.

My sloth canons are fractal using a different kind of a similarity. It doesn't
have infinite divisibility of pitch or time. So you can only zoom in a few
steps. But you can zoom out a long way (though not for ever as eventually you
hit the limits of human pitch perception).

The similarity is that if you play the tune faster, e.g. three times faster, and
if you then remove every third note in the tune, then it sounds the same as it
did before. Repeat that process any number of times and you still get the same
tune.

Also if you take any phrase that occurs in the tune, and then play the tune for
long enough, then that phrase will recur. So there is that uniformity and the
fractal scaling effect.

Because pitch works so differently from vision, I think this is a better
analogue of the visual fractal. You can easily test to see if a tune is fractal
in this sense - by looking for a fractal construction of this type. It is
usually immediately obvious if you listen to any of the standard sloth canons in
Tune Smithy, what the seed phrase is, because you will hear a musical phrase
that keeps repeating at different transpositions (often with different step
sizes depending on the transposition but musically it sounds like a variant on
the "same phrase" each time). Once you identify that phrase, just count how many
notes it has, and if it has say seven notes, then eliminate all except every
seventh note in the tune. If the result still sounds the same as the original
tune - and if you can repeat that process for a large number of steps, then that
is the first requirement for it to be one of these sloth canons. Then if you
also get the almost periodicity, that any phrase in the tune of any length will
eventually repeat, that's the other requirement satisfied.

So it is very well defined mathematically. The only question is whether to call
this a fractal or not. The sloth canons that originally came with FTS use the
same technique as the Koch snowflake, so a very simple iterative construction.
The individual seed phrases are well defined and distinct.

There's another type that FTS can make, the fibonacci fractal tunes. These use
Fibonacci rhythms, which is a well defined pattern. An example of this pattern
is the sequence of wide and narrow rhombs along a row of a Penrose tiling.
Because of the inflation / deflation rules, you can show that you can compose a
short plus a long beat to make a new slower version of the long beat at the next
level, and use the original long beat as a new version of the short beat at the
next level. The result is the same identical rhythm, played more slowly. You get
it by omitting notes in the original tune, but this time you use a more
elaborate procedure. You look for a long beat followed by a short beat, and you
just omit the note that divides those two beats to be left with a single long
beat. The result is the same rhythm as before. You can use the same process to
go out and out as often as you like with the rhythm.

So long as you are working in the realm of rhythm, where it makes sense in
theory to slow down the rhythm by any arbitrary amount, then you can even make
the rhythm infinitely detailed like a visual fractal, as the inflation rule can
be used both ways either to zoom out for an existing pattern or to zoom in to
add more subdivisions to make even faster versions of the same rhythm.

You could pick out the fractal structure there in a fractal rhythm e.g. by
making the beats that mark out the slowest rhythm loudest of all, and the
fastest beats quietest until they get so quiet you can hardly hear them but
exceedingly rapid. In fact I could easily make an example of that using FTS if
anyone is interested (no example included with FTS at present because I have
only just thought of the idea of doing it while writing this).

The fibonacci rhythm is connected with the Penrose tiling which has a fractal
type structure because of the aperiodicity and the inflation rules. The usual
way the Penrose tiles are shown don't really bring this out as they are
extremely uniform seeming when you zoon out and see them from a distance, not
fractal like. But you could bring it out in some way if you  could make a 3D
landscape out of a Penrose tiling so that it undulates by bringing out the
underlying inflation rules that make it up.

I've not seen this suggested before so am thinking about it as I write. But I'm
pretty sure it could be done.

Something like this (might be not quite right yet):

Take a penrose large rhomb. Substitute the small and large rhombs as here:
http://tilings.math.uni-bielefeld.de/substitution_rules/penrose_rhomb
Raise the vertex in the middle of the broad rhomb by a large amount say by the
length of one of the edges in the tiling. Now substitute again for all the wide
and narrow rhombs in the tiling so far. Leave the narrow ones unchanged and
raise the centre of the broad rhombs again by the edge length, but this time in
the new tiling so the amount it is raised is smaller. Keep repeating the
process. Don't bother to try to keep the rhombs flat, just treat the tiling as a
texture that you allow to rise and fall to follow the undulations of the
landscape you are constructing.

Repeat the process and the result will look pretty much like a fractal. I'd need
to do some work to make sure it really is one or maybe you need to modify it in
some way. You would even get the infinite detail by going inwards to smaller and
smaller tiles as subdivisions of the original tile.

That then would give an infinitely spiky type fractal landscape a bit like a 3D
koch snowflake affair. Then in that fractal landsape, the fractal rhythms
correspond to the undulations along one of the rows of tiles.

Perhaps I might get out pen and paper and see if I can make this rigorous, for
now it is mainly arm waving.

But the 1D fractal rhythms of the fibonacci rhythms - they are very clear. The
rhythms anyway because that's just time, - and maybe two dimensional if you
include volume as the second dimension. Both are (more or less) linear and
straightforward and anything you can do with a visual fractal of this type you
can do equally well with a rhythm. So the cantor set type fractal you can do as
a rhythm with fluctuating volumes or a fibonacci rhythm ditto. This time the two
similiarities are - slowing down the time - and adjusting the volume range and
threshold if necessary so that you can hear very quiet notes or small
differences in volume.

Pitch is more tricky because the way we hear pitch is so different from volume
and time, but I think the sloth canons anyway are a form of audible pitch
fractal structure.

Just a few thoughts there. I can make those fractal rhythm examples though with
FTS. Maybe I'll give that a go. Got a bit of programming I must do tomorrow but
could try it out in a day or two. Also maybe have a go at that 2D penrose
fractal idea if I have a bit of time for it :-).

Thanks, hope this helps,

Robert


.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

To what degree would anybody consider Mozart's 41st symphony
fractal?  It's constructed from very few microscopically small
musical units.  Could one say that the level of fractal intensity is
a standard measure of excellence in Western Common Practice music?

On 1.10.2008, at 15.13, jacky schreiber wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I have a question for Lauri, Phil T, Phil J, Rober W, Dr. Brothers or
> anyone who wants to answer,
> can any of you identify a fractal music by listening to it? OR by
> analizing
> a midi file (if available) OR by looking/analizing at a score (if
> available)?

I have never heard any real fractal music. Does it even exist? Of
course my SW can generate music from any fractal picture, but it is
not fractal music.
Lauri Gröhn
http://www.synestesia.fi/

>
> regards
>
>
> jacky
>
> ----------- Mensaje Original --------------
>
> De: Lauri Gröhn [lauri.grohn@...]
> Para: cnfractal_music@yahoogroups.com
> [cnfractal_music@yahoogroups.com]
> Cc:
> Asunto: Re: [cnfractal_music] Re: Fractal Tunes and Some Clarification
> Fecha: 01/10/2008 00:56:38
> Mensaje:
>
>
> On 29.9.2008, at 8.40, Phil Thompson wrote:
>
>> And it doesn't remotely surprise me that Lauri would comment in
>> support of you on this, because he's another person who arrived in
>> the field very late in the day having developed techniques that had
>> been in use by others in this field for over a decade.
>
> I did my first experiments 1988 and some results of those are
> available on my pages. The techniques is not the point but the music
> generated without too much of human involvement.
>
> Lauri Gröhn
> http://selfgeneratedmusic.blogspot.com/
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

Hi all,

I have a question for Lauri, Phil T, Phil J, Rober W, Dr. Brothers or
anyone who wants to answer,
can any of you identify a fractal music by listening to it? OR by analizing
a midi file (if available) OR by looking/analizing at a score (if
available)?

regards


jacky

----------- Mensaje Original --------------

De: Lauri Gröhn [lauri.grohn@...]
Para: cnfractal_music@yahoogroups.com [cnfractal_music@yahoogroups.com]
Cc:
Asunto: Re: [cnfractal_music] Re: Fractal Tunes and Some Clarification
Fecha: 01/10/2008 00:56:38
Mensaje:


On 29.9.2008, at 8.40, Phil Thompson wrote:

> And it doesn't remotely surprise me that Lauri would comment in
> support of you on this, because he's another person who arrived in
> the field very late in the day having developed techniques that had
> been in use by others in this field for over a decade.

I did my first experiments 1988 and some results of those are
available on my pages. The techniques is not the point but the music
generated without too much of human involvement.

Lauri Gröhn
http://selfgeneratedmusic.blogspot.com/

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

On 29.9.2008, at 8.40, Phil Thompson wrote:

> And it doesn't remotely surprise me that Lauri would comment in
> support of you on this, because he's another person who arrived in
> the field very late in the day having developed techniques that had
> been in use by others in this field for over a decade.

I did my first experiments 1988 and some results of those are
available on my pages. The techniques is not the point but the music
generated without too much of human involvement.

Lauri Gröhn
http://selfgeneratedmusic.blogspot.com/



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Hi, Phil (T).

I nothing about you other than the fact that you are talented and
passionate about your music.  You should probably listen to your
friends, take a deep breath, and continue doing what you naturally do.

Your anger at me is misdirected.  Perhaps you should channel your
respect for Benoit into realizing that there are a host of wonderful
reasons for him to set me on this path.  If you truly believe that
music and images should have the same standard with regard to fractal
classification, then you and I share a fundamental agreement on the
subject.

It also follows that there are many misconceptions out there.

It is unfortunate that you hold such ill-will.  The example of the
Koch curve I mentioned TO THE ENTIRE GROUP was a response your
assertion that *I* am somehow the one who wishes to treat graphics
and music differently.  I took this to be a sincere discussion and
yet, for whatever reason, you felt compelled to mock me.  I hope you
at least understand now that your assertion was simply wrong.

Like others in this group, I am only one person with many interests
and responsibilities.  I plug ahead and have enjoyed the
input of others.  You still seem to miss the point that there is no
competition here and that I am working primarily on mathematical
analysis.

Anyone can use the term "fractal music" however they like.  History
is replete with terms that come to have multiple meanings.  In this
case, Benoit's original term makes no sense without a mathematical
underpinning and, by extension, my work would be meaningless without
having a rigorous frame of reference and clearly defined terms.  If,
for the sake of everyone present and future, we can avoid confusion,
all the better.  Either way, the music goes on.

As I believe you've said, why should you give a "rat's ass" what I
think?  It sounds, however, like you do.  People who understand the
math and wish to share their work and their insights with me already
do that.  You have no obligation here.

Contrary to your angry assertions, "my" definition of "fractal music"
deliberately casts a wide net with regard to music that possesses
*some kind* of power-law relation.  One of the big challenges,
particularly with non-algorithmic music, is figuring out what forms
such relations might take.  I find that challenge compelling.

I also find that even heartfelt issues can be more effectively
discussed in civil tones.

Harlan

Nice thoughts, Robert.  I don't think we need to develop a scale of
"fracticality" as if we were measuring a hurricane or earthquake.  It is
what it is.  Just because a piece is a Cat 3 Major Fractal Music Work
does not make it good...but anyone feel free to do so if you wish.

Besides, a good number of folks will combine output from different
generators & perhaps even a live instrument or two to create their
pieces.

The ultimate criteria is "do you enjoy listening to it"?

Phil J.



On Mon, 2008-09-29 at 17:47 -0700, Robert Walker wrote:
> Just another thought, maybe it will help. I anyway don't think of
> fractal as a value
> judgement, any kind of a way of deciding whether the music is better
> or not.
> I don't think Harlan is either from what I read on his web site.
> Rather more in
> a mathematical spirit, trying to give the word a precise mathematical
> meaning
> as far as he can, in a field where such precise meanings seem to be a
> bit
> elusive..
>
> That may be a reason for using a more neutral term such as "scaling
> properties"
> and reserving fractal music for music derived from fractals in any way
> (apart from the trivial things that are clearly not fractal at all).
> Especially
> given the consensus of usage that has sprung up in the field.
>
> The person who coins a word doesn't usually have the last word on how
> it
> is to be used. Since Mandelbrot apparently hasn't got much involved
> in
> fractal music, he may not be the best person at this point to decide
> how
> the word should be used in this field, not yet anyway, and if so of
> course,
> he is in no position to decide who should make that decision either
> and
> I shouldn't think he has tried to do that. I'm sure it would be more
> of an open
> ended question to stimulate research in a field that he is not
> personally
> involved in. No disrespect intended to anyone of course!
>
> Well I've posted rather a lot, better bail out for now, got lots of
> programming to do
> for that matter, sorry if I've said too much, I do tend to get carried
> away and
> type quickly.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Robert
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
>

I think, or hope we all can agree to disagree at times on the
particulars of some term or another.  If we all agreed 100% of the time
and thought identically, there would be need of only one of us!

Phil J.



On Mon, 2008-09-29 at 08:07 +0100, Lawrence Ball wrote:
> Dear Phil,
>
> The term fractal music means what anyone wants it to mean, not what an
> academic wants to make it.
> Nobody has a monopoly on it, nor should they, creative words should
> remain open-ended. Lets debate and not cut up the space that belongs to
> everyone.
>
> I feel Phil it would be good to not buy into external influences,
> particularly belief systems of others,
> that invoke doubt concerning sincere and virtuous endeavours.
> If there is one salient observation I have from observing the community
> of musicians, it is that those who encourage others, who find something
> to say about what they like about the creative work of others are more
> worthwhile than those who feel a need to criticise, put down or
> discourage.
> Those are more likely artists who do have something genuinely and
> substantially solid to say when they are behind the "driving wheel".
>
> Just felt to encourage you not to believe but to intuit and let the mud
> dry before pulling it off.
>
> When did you ever see a statue of a critic?
>
> best wishes
> Lawrence Ball
>
> http://www.lawrenceball.org                      	 PERSONAL WEB SITE
> http://www.myspace.com/lawrenceballmusic               LB MYSPACE MUSIC
> SITE
> http://www.myspace.com/planettreemusic 	 CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FESTIVAL
>
>
> On Sep 29, 2008, at 06:40, Phil Thompson wrote:
>
> > "I hope this helps to clarify things".
> >
> > Which precisely illustrates my point, Harlan.  All over your web-site
> > you assume that such clarification is necessary and if a person is
> > using the term "fractal music" in any way that is different from your
> > own they are guilty of "misconception" or "common errors" and
> > engaging in "the worst kind of nonsense" – and not only on your web-
> > site but you quoted these words in PDF documents to download, print
> > and distribute.  Trashing?  These are techniques used by
> > misinformation propaganda.
> >
> > You do not seem to realise that since the early 1990s the
> > term "fractal music" has not just been used as an adjective and a
> > noun and in fact has been used as the title of a genre which has
> > included both music derived from fractals, and music with fractal
> > characteristics.  And many people in that field including myself
> > fully understood the difference and used the title to apply to all
> > because we regarded the distinction as trivial.
> >
> > Thanks for the lesson about Koch curves.  As if we needed it.  Sheesh.
> >
> > "I am not sure how anyone who did due diligence reached this
> > conclusion."
> >
> > This is rich coming from someone who has allegedly been tasked to
> > perform a "rigorous treatment" of this subject because had you done
> > much research into this field you would know this.  I wonder how many
> > of the sites you criticise on your own you actually bothered to
> > read.  Rigorous screwing-over, more like, of many people who have
> > spent a huge amount of time writing software, making music and
> > promoting these techniques for relatively little reward since the
> > early 1990s or before, long before you or your friends at Yale ever
> > showed much of an interest in it.
> >
> > "OK. My guess is that our collective time is better spent making
> > music regardless of how we individually choose to classify it."
> >
> > That has been precisely my point for well over a decade.  Yet by all
> > accounts you are the one on the personal crusade to define how
> > everybody should classify it.  Hypocrisy.
> >
> > And it doesn't remotely surprise me that Lauri would comment in
> > support of you on this, because he's another person who arrived in
> > the field very late in the day having developed techniques that had
> > been in use by others in this field for over a decade.
> >
> > Regarding Benoit Mandelbrot, I have always paid him nothing but the
> > utmost respect for his work, and I can only assume that his implied
> > support of your sweeping generalisations regarding the activity of
> > others in the field is a result of his misunderstanding of the level
> > of reverence many of us out here have always felt towards him.
> >
> > But you aren't the only person in this field to have support of
> > influential people – people such as Ian Stewart through to Arthur
> > C.Clarke have been supporters of mine from as much as ten years ago.
> > And they fully understood how my music is made and whether it is
> > derived from a fractal, or has fractal characteristics, or in many
> > cases both, have not had any qualms about supporting it as such.  But
> > unlike you I have rarely mentioned such support because I am not in
> > the habit of name-dropping.
> >
> > I have now cancelled my next fractal album and removed all fractal
> > formulae and methods from my next music generation system and will be
> > focusing my efforts on non-fractal generative music.  Because
> > frankly, I no longer wish my work to be associated with you, Yale,
> > etc. in the future, even in error.  I feel your writings on this
> > subject have done many people in this field a huge personal injustice
> > and the genre itself a huge disservice.  As a result I am no longer
> > interested in it, the appeal has been totally ruined for me, you're
> > welcome to it.
> >
> > I will no longer be visiting this forum.  Respect to all those that I
> > have corresponded with over the past ten years, and particular to
> > Phil Jackson for not only our endless shared adventures in
> > composition for over a decade, but also for being a true friend
> > through the worst times, as well as the best.
> >
> > Phil Thompson
> > http://fractalmusician.com
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------
> >
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> >
> >
> >
> >
> http://www.lawrenceball.org                      	 PERSONAL WEB SITE
> http://www.myspace.com/lawrenceballmusic               LB MYSPACE MUSIC
> SITE
> http://www.myspace.com/planettreemusic 	 CONTEMPORARY MUSIC FESTIVAL
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>