Music

New Twitter accounts for DSP and music theory

Posted on by John

I’ve started two new Twitter accounts this week: @DSP_fact and @MusicTheoryTip.

DSP_fact is for DSP, digital signal processing: filters, Fourier analysis, convolution, sampling, wavelets, etc.

MusicTheoryTip is for basic music theory with a little bias toward jazz. It’ll tweet about harmony, scales, tuning, notation, etc.

Here’s a full list of my 15 daily tip twitter accounts.

If you’re interested in one of these accounts but don’t use Twitter, you can subscribe to a Twitter account via RSS just as you’d subscribe to a blog.

If you’re using Google Reader to subscribe to RSS feeds, you’ll need to switch to something else by July 1. Here are 18 alternatives.

Mars, magic squares, and music

Posted on by John

About a year ago I wrote about Jupiter’s magic square. Then yesterday I was listening to the New Sounds podcast that mentioned a magic square associated with Mars. I hadn’t heard of this, so I looked into it and found there were magic squares associated with each of solar system bodies known to antiquity (i.e. Sun, Mercury, Venus, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn).

Here is the magic square of Mars:

The podcast featured Secret Pulse by Zack Browning. From the liner notes:

Magic squares provide structure to the music. Structure provides direction to the composer. Direction provides restrictions for the focused inspiration and interpretation of musical materials. The effect of this process? Freedom to compose.

The compositions on this CD use the 5×5 Magic Square of Mars (Secret Pulse), the 9×9 Magic Square of the Moon (Moon Thrust), and the ancient Chinese 3×3 Lo Shu Square found in the Flying Star System of Feng Shui (Hakka Fusion, String Quartet, Flying Tones, and Moon Thrust) as compositional models.  The musical structure created from these magic squares is dramatically articulated by the collision of different musical worlds …

I don’t know how the composer used these magic squares, but you can listen to the title track (Secret Pulse) on the podcast.

More chess-related math posts

All day long I’d bidi-bidi-bum

Posted on by John

This evening I watched my daughter in Fiddler on the Roof. I thought I knew the play pretty well, but I learned something tonight.

Before the play started, someone told me that the phrase “bidi-bidi-bum” in “If I Were a Rich Man” is a Yiddish term for prayer. I thought “All day long I’d bidi-bidi-bum” was a way of saying “All day long I’d piddle around.” That completely changes the meaning of that part of the song.

When I got home I did a quick search to see whether what I’d heard was correct. According to Wikipedia,

A repeated phrase throughout the song, “all day long I’d bidi-bidi-bum,” is often misunderstood to refer to Tevye’s desire not to have to work. However, the phrase “bidi-bidi-bum” is a reference to the practice of Jewish prayer, in particular davening.

Unfortunately, Wikipedia adds a footnote saying “citation needed,” so I still have some doubt whether this explanation is correct. I searched a little more, but haven’t found anything more authoritative.

Now I wonder whether there’s any significance to other parts of the song that I thought were just a form of Klezmer scat singing, e.g. “yubba dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum.” I assumed those were nonsense syllables, but is there some significance to them?

Update: At Jason Fruit’s suggestion in the comments, I asked about this on judaism.stackexchange.com. Isaac Moses replied that the answer is somewhere in between. The specific syllables are not meaningful, but they are intended to be reminiscent of the kind of improvisation a cantor might do in singing a prayer.

John Coltrane versus Kenny G

Posted on by John

My previous post began with a story about a performance by John Coltrane. Douglas Groothuis left a comment saying that he used the same story in his book Truth Decay. Before telling the Coltrane story, Groothuis compares the philosophies of Kenny G and John Coltrane.

Kenny G’s philosophy is as shallow as his music.

I just play for myself, the way I want to play, and it comes out sounding like me.

Coltrane’s philosophy, like his music, is more ambitious.

Overall, I think the main thing a musician would like to do is give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows and senses in the universe. That’s what music is to me — it’s just another way of saying this is a big, wonderful universe we live in, that’s been given to us, and here’s an example of just how magnificent and encompassing it is. That’s what I would like to do. I think that’s one of the greatest things you can do in life, and we all try to do it in some way. The musician’s is through his music.

As Groothuis comments, Kenny G only spoke of expressing himself, while Coltrane “expressed a yearning to represent objective realities musically.”

Nunc dimittis

Posted on by John

In his book The Call, Os Guinness tells the following story of John Coltrane.

After one utterly extraordinary rendition of “A Love Supreme,” Coltrane stepped off the stage, put down his saxophone, and said simply “Nunc dimittis.” … Coltrane felt he could never play the piece more perfectly. If his whole life had been lived for that passionate thirty-two minute jazz prayer, it would have been worth it. He was ready to go.

Nunc dimittis is Latin for “Now dismiss.” These are the opening words of the Vulgate translation of the Song of Simeon, Luke 2:29–32. Simeon says he is ready to die because he has seen what he was waiting for, the promised Messiah.

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

Coltrane’s story brings several things to mind. First, it is awe-inspiring to imagine an accomplishment so fulfilling that you would say “That was it. I’m ready to die.”

Next, it’s interesting to ponder Coltrane’s eclectic spirituality. I knew Christianity was part of his spiritual gumbo, but I was surprised to hear that he made a spontaneous reference to Latin liturgy.

Coltrane was canonized by the African Orthodox Church in 1982. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Finally, I was interested in the name Nunc dimittis itself. I hadn’t heard it before. (I’ve only been part of non-liturgical churches.) I thought the name might only be familiar to Catholics, being a Latin term. But an Episcopalian friend informed me that the Anglican mass preserves many Latin titles even though the liturgy itself is in English. I suppose Coltrane encountered this Anglican name via the Episcopalian influence on the African Methodist Episcopalian Zion Church.

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Accelerated learning

Posted on by John

Derek Sivers tells how a mentor was able to teach him a semester’s worth of music theory in three hours. His mentor also prepared him to place out of four more classes in four sessions. He gives the details in his blog post There’s no speed limit. It’s an inspiring story.

However, Sivers didn’t go through his entire education this way. He finished his degree in 2.5 years, but at the rate he started he could have finished in under a semester. Obviously he wasn’t able to blow through everything as fast as music theory.

Some classes compress better than others. Theoretical classes condense better than others. A highly motivated student could learn a semester of music theory or physics in a short amount of time. But it would take longer to learn a semester of French or biology no matter how motivated you are because these courses can’t be summarized by a small number of general principles. And while Sivers learned basic music theory in three hours, he says it took him 15 years to learn how to sing.

Did Sivers’ mentor expose him to everything students taking music theory classes are exposed to? Probably not. But apparently Sivers did learn the most important material, both in the opinion of his mentor and in the opinion of the people who created the placement exams. His mentor not only taught him a lot of ideas in a short amount of time, he also told him when it was time to move on to something else.

It’s hard to say when you’ve learned something. Any subject can be explored in infinite detail. But there comes a point when you’ve learned a subject well enough. Maybe you’ve learned it to your personal satisfaction or you’ve learned it well enough for an exam. Maybe you’ve reached diminishing return on your efforts or you’ve learned as much as you need to for now.

One way to greatly speed up learning is to realize when you’ve learned enough. A mentor can say something like “You don’t know everything, but you’ve learned about as much as you’re going to until you get more experience.”

Occasionally I’ll go from feeling I don’t understand something to feeling I do understand it in a moment, and not because I’ve learned anything new. I just realize that maybe I do understand it after all. It’s a feeling like eating a meal quickly and stopping before you feel full. A few minutes later you feel full, not because you’ve eaten any more, but only because your body realizes you’re full.

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