The Great Rhythm Tree
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- Опубліковано 15 лип 2023
- In honor of my late teacher Clarence Barlow, I offer this deep dive into his theory of rhythmic indispensability, a way of measuring the relative importance of different beats in the measure.
Recording of "Barlicity: • Marc Evanstein: Barlic...
A mysterious making-of video: • Making of "Barlicity"
Some of Clarence's music to start exploring:
- "Relationships for Melody Instuments, version 6" (a concept piece with many different versions. Definitely uses indispensability in there): • Clarence Barlow - Rela...
- "...until... Version 7 for guitar" (another concept piece with many different versions, this onea meditative transformation based on his ideas about tuning): • Clarence Barlow - ...u...
- "Piano Concerto no. 2" (maybe my favorite piece that Clarence wrote. You have to listen to the whole thing; he wrote it over the course of 40 years or so -- the first part when he was in his teens, then gradually the piece gets wilder and wilder as his compositional world got broader and broader. Maybe his most personal, autobiographical work.): • Piano Concerto No.2 (1...
- "Estudio Siete" (I wish I could find the video that goes with this; it's written to go with Oskar Fischinger’s Study No. 6): • Clarence Barlow - Estu...
- "Septima de Facto" (an unhinged version of Prince's Sexy MF in 7/8 -- it's orchestrated in such a way that you actually hear some of the words...if you try really hard): • Septima de facto (2005)
- "Çoǧlu Otobüs İşletmesi" (an epic piano piece that only Clarence ever knew how to pronounce): • Clarence Barlow - Çoǧl...
Support me on Patreon and learn how I made the background music: / marcevanstein
Check out my SCAMP libraries: scamp.marcevanstein.com/
Take my course on Kadenze.com: www.kadenze.com/courses/compu...
Private Lessons: teaching.marcevanstein.com
Devastating news about Clarence... He was an incredible composer and an incredible person, this is a huge loss.
This video needs so many more views. This concept clarified SO many things to me.
Thank you! And tell your friends ;-)
Funny... I experimented with mixed number systems in a very different context in the past (25+ years ago by now... how time flies). I think I'll have to read Mr. Barlow's book :)
It's a fascinating read, if occasionally a little more dense than necessary. It's available here: clarlow.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/On-MusiquanticsA4.pdf
I didn't know of him or his work until today, and I'm grateful to have been introduced by you. This was beautiful and inspiring work, and a lovely tribute.
This is so interesting, thank you. I didn't know Clarence but I'm sorry to hear we lost him, he sounds like an amazing person. I came here after watching your video about Fibonacci sequences. Subscribed!
Nice explanation!
RIP CB 😢
great video with some new (to me) concepts and a touching tribute to your teacher
Just stumbled over this via your tic-tac-toe video - this is such a compelling way to build a rhythmic hierarchy! Definitely going to play with the concept when I compose.
It's like some kind of mixed-base (2,3)-adic numbering system, but also has a sense of being akin to the Fourier basis in mapping short timescales to large separations. I wonder if there is a way to define a general "metric" (not a real metric) that gives the distance in importance between notes given their sequence interpreted as a p-adic integer?
Sad to hear about Clarence's passing. His brilliant mathematical musical constructions (both his software and his music) have been an inspiration to me since I first heard his music in 1980s.
Beautiful tribute, thanks for sharing these engaging and enjoyable ideas
I just found your channel and I am soooo glad I did, all of the topics you cover in your videos are exactly the topics I am interested in: programming (in Python ofc), math and music. I am so glad to see someone is interested in that too because no one in my school was ever able to explain some things to me and everyone was confused why would I even be interested in it. Now I am on music academy studying music theory and I would like to make my thesis about music and science and your videos will totally be helpful for that. Thank youuu!!!
this is SO cool
Also continued fractions. I bet some of the partial evaluations out there pick out "indispensabilities". Just a wild guess though... If you can find a continued fraction that represents your scheme, then you can extend it to infinity and find the "least" important moment in a measure.
I implemented Clarence's indispensability formula from On Musiquantics in my composing software, The Transformation Engine. I use it constantly because it has such a perfectly natural feeling of varying the intensity of the rhythmic figuration of the music. Again, brilliant.
I'd like to add that Clarence was also very witty and funny person. He always seemed to have a pun or joke ready to lighten things up.
Absolutely!
@5:03 It's interesting that removing the first "least important" notes completely changes the feel of the beat(perhaps because the x3 start coming through).
It would have been useful to hear how a different removal order sounds. Also how they are affected by accents.
If I were Mr Barlow, I would've called the "indespensibility" of a beat its "significance".
W Clarence 🙌🏾👇🏾
Accept my condolences
Great idea and explanation. I checked out some of your videos on music using scamp and I'll like to know if scamp can be used on Android
Thank you so much.
At 3:46 - yes man! Give it to me! It's not math until you have formulas! I guess you have implemented this very formula in your SCAMP library? I must check it out! Thank you for this great content!
1:03 Actually, I think that Beat 2 is stronger. Wait, I changed my mind, I don't know which. I just think that it's a bit arbitrary to assign it to Beat 4 just because it leads into Beat 1. It's like saying that the major seventh is almost as stable as the perfect fifth because it's the leading tone. (Notice how I say "stable" and not "consonant", because I believe that the major seventh is unstable, yet consonant, because of the major seventh chord. The major seventh should also be considered consonant because of its existence in the major scale, whose other six intervals are consonant, like the octave/unison, the perfect fourth and fifth, and the major third.)
I think it might be related to Thomae's function en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomae%27s_function Not exactly but it has similar features. It's about the smallest denominators needed to express a "beat". 2/8 reduces to 1/4... but 7/8 requires the 8 in the denominator. Lowest possible denominator describes how nested the beat is... 13/16 is deeper nested than 3/4... etc...
Funny, as a drummer, beats 1 I agree is the strongest, but the next one fot me would be beat 2. I always saw 3 and 4 as kind of repeats of 1 and 2. Out of 3 and 4, I'd consider 4 to be the next strongest, for the same reason that it leads to 1 and is generally accented.
Interesting perspective!
barlicity just seems ripe and begging for some sort of 3d animated video, that embraces all of it's sounds and tonalities.
Percussive fugue