Music Notation can't capture this 'Quantum Rhythm'

[@cerronecomposer]

Wading into the fray for just a second here! A lot of people are asking the question of "why doesn't he just break it up into two bars (of 5/8 and 3/8). The reason is that there are a lot of other things going in the piece and the conductor needs to keep a steady beat to keep it all together.

[@DBruce]

Thanks chris, that thought as you know was also my initial response, I should have included a mention of it here.

[@dominiquemanchon9914]

Would a 5/4 setting have been possible, like |5/4 ♩♩♩⌣‴ ♪.. ⌣‴ ♪.. |♩♩♩⌣‴ ♪.. ⌣‴ ♪.. |♩♩♩⌣‴ ♪.. ⌣‴ ♪.. |♩♩♩⌣‴ ♪.. ⌣‴ ♪.. | with ‴ for 1/32 ths, or do the other parts altogether ask for keeping 4/4?

[@cerronecomposer]

@@dominiquemanchon9914 it's a good idea but there's a strong 4 pulse below it, so it's gotta be in brackets. a+ textified rhythmic notation tho

[@dominiquemanchon9914]

@@cerronecomposer Thanks!

[@matthewwoolhouse3829]

@@dominiquemanchon9914 How do you do music notation in a youtube comment?

[@scottrushforth]

"Quantum rhythm" sounds like something somebody made up for a time travel movie to pretend they know what they're talking about

[@cosmicrider5898]

Heh if only you knew..

[@conforzo]

"Love is the only thing that can measure the quantum rhythms 😥"

[@jorgepeterbarton]

Something made up by an artist or composer to pretend they know what they are talking about

[@deinauge7894]

well yea, there is really nothing to it... but musicians like exaggerating their maths: everything having other divisors than 2 is irrational, and now something that is hard to read must be quantum ;-) at least his computer uses quantum effects, and the sound waves created by the musicians resemble quantum wave functions ^^

[@duffman18]

"Quantum" is just a buzzword that non-scientists and pseudo-scientists use whenever they wanna claim some ridiculous BS with no evidence. Like when some people go "omg quantum mechanics proves that souls exist! I can't even, omg" It drives actual physicists mad. The term "quantum mechanics" is abused so much by people who have no idea what it actually is, to make whatever they're claiming sound scientific to gullible fools who don't know any better. Because even physicists find it difficult to translate quantum mechanics from its native language Maths, into English. It's very hard to explain using just words. So snake oil salesmen abuse that fact about it to sell whatever homoeopathic healing energy crystals chiropractic BS they're selling. Here's a video of an actual physicist explaining why all this stuff drives him mad, he calls it "quantum woo": kzbin.info/www/bejne/bnWqmKl7a81_d7c

[@4playpa769]

"Moves like a wave, hits like a particle."

[@RalphDratman]

This is closely related to an interest of mine: jazz "notation" which is initially about recordings, vs classical notation. My thought is that jazz could not have come into existence without recording technology, and in fact, the historical knowledge of jazz pretty much dates to the advent of recording. I've been following a group called Sant Andreu Jazz Band -- a youth jazz school band -- in Barcelona. For example, kzbin.info/www/bejne/rnqnm6ZtdqmdqNE and here is a whole playlist: kzbin.info/aero/PLpAcQ-aCanC5QZl2tsju4WHMehwN__2Ft Maybe you would like watching these kids playing great stuff. A friend who is a harpsichordist tells me when she follows a jazz recording while reading the score, the beats are no longer even, that is, the notation is.not really representing the sounds accurately. So that is why I think real. jazz -- improvised jazz -- required recording to be born.

[@fotgjengeren]

So great to hear about the process for making these pieces and something I can definitely relate to, recording parts and figuring out how I should notate it. It's inspiring!

[@carnivaltym]

Fascinating. Loved his textures too.

[@Superphilipp]

14:20 .... Space. The final frontier.

[@cosmicrider5898]

These are the voyages of the starship enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds..

[@davidstuart4489]

I love this interview. I follow this approach up to, but not including, the reduction of a piece to sheet. I routinely encounter musicians - virtuosos - who are purests and reject Cerrone's approach. But I embrace the philosophy that the result is far more imporant than how the result is created. I think Cerrone would agree with that.

[@aarongohe]

Here it’s a perfect example on how to write an awfully complex 5/8 (3+2) meter

[@emrazum]

In terms of breaking technology, my favorite technique lately is synthesizing a normal patch with stuff like key tracked FM or RM, and then pitching it up/down ridiculously (or playing in like C10) to get weird wobbles/shakes/overtones in the sound, lots of fun. Makes it feel like the software is struggling

[@jorgepeterbarton]

Id question the role of notation, then. Aside from some tenutos and maybe a new anti-tenuto mark. Rehearse with performers along to the digitally composed audio, if its meant to sound that way. Why sight read if you can ear read.

[@BrunoWiebelt]

this was tremens interesting: its kind of a swing between the worlds... wondering what Nick Bärtsch would say about it

[@cronkitepercussion]

Just gotta practice it. That's what drummers do.

[@TenorCantusFirmus]

Is it just me, or does this rhythm just sound almost like a normal 5 (3+2)/8? Might me my brain is "symplifying" it to cram it in the "category", but to me it doesn't sound that much unlike a 5/8...

[@sacalius_papalagius]

Definetly helpful, as a composer wanabe who isn't that used at working with DAWs :P

[@fingerhorn4]

Why does anyone care so much about this one tiny little fragment of rhythm lasting one bar? It's JUST ONE BAR, so it's not that important in the context of a piece that comprising thousands of other notes/rhythms. What about texture, harmony, polyphony, tonality, atonality, orchestration, speed, volume, ARCHITECTURE of the whole piece, etc etc? A couple of fragments of this kind of thing might be interesting for a few seconds, but works lasting half an hour or so repeating this stuff over and over again is an indication of lack of creative thought, not a celebration of it.

[@GeorgeTsouris]

Milton Babbitt said something like: "Composers would do everyone a favor if they just stuck with the electronic version..." (I know I butchered the quote,) so the question remains: why give this to musicians, rather than keep it as an electronic piece of music?

[@bootishshoe]

So they can self identify as a Really Serious Composer.

[@GeorgeTsouris]

@@bootishshoe well, I beg your pardon, gentle sir...

[@peteroselador6132]

"Now I don't know how much you follow particle physics but knowing my audience, probably quite a lot"

[@giovanileone834]

Me, a physicist, not expecting to get called out like that

[@AngelicDirt]

Listen... I feel honoured that he even thinks I'm that smart. :B

[@josephkarl2061]

How? How did he know!? He must be some kind of wizard! Send him to the stake 🤣

[@melm4251]

yep 😆

[@jibster5903]

Yeah I know right! I feel attacked!

[@edwardwilson7737]

If it's within Planck length, I'm not interested.

[@Ubu987]

All the good bits are within Planck's length. Join the dark side!

[@karolakkolo123]

@@SeanPeckham-xe2gt in all honesty, planck length technically isn't the smallest possible length. It is the smallest measurable and significant length, but people usually twist it, thinking as if the universe was made out of a hardwired grid of planck lengths where nothing can fit inbetween, which is not true. Release two photons so that they move in parallel by placing them so that one photon is always further from the start line than the other by a non-integer multiple of the planck length. The two photons will only be measurable in increments of the planck length, but nothing stops them from being offset/displaced by less than the planck length itself. Unless there indeed is a hardwired grid that all objects are constrained to, but that doesn't make much intuitive sense, and there aren't any theories which might suggest that... unless we accept that we live in a simulation, in which the grids would be the discrete "voxels" making everything up lmao

[@MadeFromLego]

"This is the stuff my audience want's to hear about." - hit the nail on the head there

[@nathanaelhahn4795]

We probably want to hear it without the apostrophe though

[@user-et3xn2jm1u]

@@nathanaelhahn4795 It is still grammatically acceptable if you treat "audience want's" as a contraction of "audience want is". No need to be a stickler.

[@nathanaelhahn4795]

@@user-et3xn2jm1u Lol

[@jorgepeterbarton]

Composer: quantum rhythms are impossible Scientist: we literally use the decay of caesium due to the weak force as the most accurate clock, or metronome if you will

[@aleksiaakko6830]

I want an atomic cv/midi clock!

[@iantaakalla8180]

When people try to make caesium decay musical I am not being sarcastic. I would like to hear a musical interpretation of caesium decay.

[@fgreco346]

Molto autotunissimo i’m Italian and I find it pretty funny!

[@SpencerTwiddy]

Here goes a non-Patreon Postcard :) Hi David, I’m 20 years old, watch the likes of Adam Neely, Jacob Koller, Jacob Collier, and Signals Music Studio on KZbin (I also watch many non-music channels). I’ve played the piano since elementary school (current skill level ~ ability to play e.g. Jacob Koller’s arr. of Hey Jude) but never taken lessons or performed. I’ve also played trumpet since 6th grade and performed with my high school’s orchestra for the past four years, currently prepping 3 days a week for Annie in late February. If anyone at all cares, or even read this, have a splendid day!

[@AtomizedSound]

Hi. Welcome fellow musician

[@stephenspackman5573]

So coming from a maths background this all seems like so much basic number theory. The difficulties (the conceptual ones, not the performative ones!) seem artificial-sure, when writing Chinese with the Roman alphabet you find yourself spelling 女 as nǚ, with a stack of accents, but that's what you get for using a notation that makes false assumptions. Start with a notation that assumes there are five vowels and pitch is not significant and don't speak like that-you get a slight mess of diacritics. Start with a notation that assumes a bar is subdivided by powers of two and don't play like that-you get a slight mess of diacritics. Time signatures, like key signatures, are similar methods of setting expectations. Suddenly you need a microtonal bar or a bar with offset tuplets and-well, you may now wish you'd started with a more general notation. Anyway, seems like declarations that say “these are the prime factors you need to decompose and align this bar” and notes that instead of laying emphasis on length (like dotted quavers) say which edges of that nonce grid they attract to would help a lot. After all, it's not like “quantum weirdness” in these examples (which IMO has as much to do with space not being the shape you thought it was as things not being in the places you thought they were) because the intention is something repeatable, not something random. It's just sad tadpoles. So-at what point do we admit that our musical language has changed enough that it's time for a spelling reform? Not in the academic/conceptual sense (not that that isn't a lot of fun), but for the, um, musician on the street? Because maybe it's just a consequence of what the KZbin recommendation algorithm is feeding me this week, but these discussions sure seem to come up a lot-and surprisingly often seem to bear on music that I already know and hum. Disclaimer: notation person and amateur linguist, yes; musician, no, merely curious!

[@ixian_technocrat]

There are alternate musical notations in other musical traditions across the world, but western classical tradition seems to pretend they don't exist for some reason.

[@stephenspackman5573]

@@ixian_technocrat So in this context the question is, I guess, whether any of them provide better (or differently structured) rhythmic analyticity, or inspiration for achieving that. Do you know of any that would allow you to sight-read a new rhythm with greater facility than the tadpole staff? (We need better words for cultural spreads, too-I think Senegal out-wests all of Europe ;). ) As a casual passer-by in a time of lockdown I don't have access to musicological or ethnological journals, so I'm stuck at a wikipedia level of research ability-and I'm not easily finding anything. Of course, that is often as much about the bias you allude to as it is about the world.

[@bucketofbarnacles]

Before seeing the notation, it sounded like plain old 5/4 with accent on 1 and 4.

[@Frownlandia]

Having just an hour of rehearsal for a contemporary composer is absolutely brutal. I think of Frank Zappa's frustration that his orchestral works couldn't be performed properly-it wasn't until the late 80's that he had enough interest in his "classical" compositions that he could afford the rehearsal time to have them up to his standard.

[@skoto8219]

David Letterman: “Wow, and you’ve got the London Symphony Orchestra playing on this record. That’s quite something. How do you get such a prestigious orchestra to play your work?” Zappa: “You pay them.”

[@brianspenst1374]

The Yellow Shark album is one of my favorites in my collection.

[@eyvindjr]

Those are the conditions. Most professional conductors and orchestra musicans do not want to spend more time than absolutely necessary on "that contemporary piece sneaking into their program", which is only part of the program and usually won't be what the audience will remember when going home. Orchestras and conductors who do this kind of repertoire a lot can still get very accurate results, though!

[@ccrider5398]

"There are no secrets among true artists." I had a chance to hear Quincy Jones at a clinic urge us all to go up and talk to the musicians after the performance to see what/why/how they played something. He said something like, "If they won't talk to you they're not worth listening to." I also had an opportunity to hear Edward Teller after giving a forum at my university come up to the dorm to have a bull session and he said "The greatest advantage in US science was the free and open sharing of ideas. You learn by teaching." (As long as you were mixing music and physics)...

[@tomvesely4008]

I love the Patreon Postcards concept!

[@sion-dafyddlocke9913]

That working out a fragment in notation software then saying “this is not good;”. I felt that to my core.

[@russmcarthur]

Why have you got a car suspension spring next to your ukulele?

[@Opuskrokus]

It's not a car suspension spring, it's a percussion instrument.

[@bruno_semi]

@@Opuskrokus It's not a gun, it's a percussion instrument.

[@stefanalexanderlungu1503]

For bass

[@markl4730]

@@bruno_semi its not a cannon, its a percussion instrument.

[@stephenspackman5573]

Doesn't everyone?

[@circeus]

I appreciate the implication that New Complexity composers and their performers are basically in a BDSM relationship XD

[@JoshuaWillis89]

It’s accurate though 😂

[@BlameItOnGreg]

What if you had the straight quintuple and just wrote “lag” underneath the last two notes.

[@AdamWoodAMW]

Conflating quantum waveform collapse with the problem of notation was... disappointing. Especially when you ran right by the use of QUANTIZATION in composition. There is so much more interesting stuff to look at here but the I have to say the title set me up for something I was really hoping to find and then did not. (Especially as I am trying to figure out how to capture the notion of quantum wave form collapse in music RIGHT NOW. And haven't figure it out.)

[@fakefolkblues]

Exactly. The title is completely misleading.

[@bootishshoe]

Oh please. Frank Zappa's band would have no problem with this. Quantum uncertainty is a pretentious analogy. The notes have durations that can be measured. Just write them down. If the musicians have problems with the math, suck it up! The rhythm can be specified, measured and performed.

[@wiseSYW]

this just shows the limitation of classical western notation. just teach performers to read piano rolls instead.

[@SethIsDavid]

Awesome video David Bruce! Engaging, entertaining and informative. This particular topic is something I remember discussing frequently during my graduate work. It brings me back to when I was neck deep in the music of Conlon Nancarrow: player pianos, DAWs before DAWs existed. Also, thank you for including my reimagining of Chopin! My childhood piano teacher will be proud.

[@Ermude10]

Hey, I loved your postcard!

[@SethIsDavid]

@@Ermude10 Ayy thanks!

[@marloc2019]

Quantum mechanics is so complex (no pun intended) its solutions are obtained via approximation and done by computers. It seems counter intuitive to me to make a composition via computer and struggle to get humans to perform it when it'd be easier to have an actual computer performance. It's somehow naïve and overly complex like having eigenvectors obtained via supercomputer and have them checked by theoretic physics using pencil and papers. But it's probably me.

[@matteogauthier7750]

To me this only shows that musicians have trouble with fractions.

[@TrentJacobs]

At the same time, the difference in time between the written original and the final version has one note played literally only milliseconds different. Ain't nobody going to hear that when human interpretation and general inaccuracies are in play, not to mention an acoustically live room.

[@fredschneider7475]

I was thinking it should be notated all as a 5:4 polyrhythm. You would have: qtr qtr qtr tied with a 32 note qtr double-dotted 8th note So, you could see the last two hits are slightly "late". A note on the score could say the 4 hit corresponds to the "and" of 3. I'm a drummer though. I'm not much for too many tied notes. Hehe.

[@eszldevois1549]

can't you put, above the note, "bit late" ?

[@cosmicrider5898]

Back in my day we played 4/4 with rocks and sticks.. Nowadays they play quantum rythm on the theremin.

[@sion-dafyddlocke9913]

Who’s using real theremins. There are plug-ins for that.

[@JohnnyAssay]

I'm reminded of Don Byrd's preface to his page on "Extremes of Conventional Music Notation": "[C]onventional Western music notation is far more complex and subtle than most people think. In particular, it does not have well-defined borders; it just fades away indefinitely in all directions. "

[@odolany]

Thank you Christopher Cerrone for the line "What I want to do with my music is to communicate". Nice sentiment, and even nicer formulation (instead of "music is all about communication" and similar statements). Thank you!

[@wiesorix]

That's a very interesting way of composing. It reminds me of videos music by "silly" composers like Adam Neely (most recently the infinite bass solo one), where he generates sounds in a weird way and tries to make music out of it. It's surprising to see a "serious" composer using similar techniques!

[@stephenspackman5573]

Mathematics is universal. You can't not do that.

[@Ubu987]

The introduction of notated music in order to coordinate ensemble playing was simultaneously a wellspring for the Western tradition of music, and a barrier to the older style of producing music with an organic, nuanced feel, rhythmically and in terms of intonation. The introduction of recording, especially of folk music, and music from other cultures, began to reverse this process, but computerized audio production has provided a tool for the acceleration of this reversal, and the possible recovery of the older style. The problem with nuance is to capture and understand it in order to preserve and transmit it to newer generations. Maybe in the future, the score will become just a general mnemonic device, and the players will have to immerse themselves in a recording in order to grasp a piece.

[@yukievans9506]

Lol the classical player inside me groaned after trying to make that rhythm out.

[@nuagor]

16:46 This. There's a bridging that occurs for performance art, where you are pulling the performers into your vision, but being pulled by them into an interpretation of your vision that is pleasing/possible for them to do well.

[@josemiguelmaciasvocar2690]

Christopher is one of my favourite composers. Great to see a video on his music.

[@janvandyck9375]

Fascinating video; thanks so much! Very cool rhythm too. I was wondering if the first two notes could be notated as dotted quavers, and the third as two tied quavers? At 120 bpm, the difference in timing would be 25 ms, if I calculated correctly. I've tried it, and I find it very hard to hear the difference between the quintuplets in the eventual notation and dotted quavers, and I certainly wouldn't be able to reproduce the difference in performance. But of course, this may be due entirely due to my limitations as a musician.

[@mr.beethovenmahlerligeti6700]

A new david bruce video, yes!!!!!!!!!

[@dusantodorovic3715]

In the good old days we used to call this "feel." You would not notate rhythms like this. Feel should add to the flavor of music, otherwise it is just a pointless academic exercise.

[@whycantiremainanonymous8091]

Isn't it just an 11/16 then?

[@doncorleone7940]

Sounds like Dream Theater to me

[@Baton793]

Those synths at the end sounded really amazing!

[@NataliaBazj]

I don't get it. Times written are 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.625, 0.825. But when I _hear_ it first time, I was sure that it is a simplest stupidest quintuplet: 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8. I would like rewrite this in 5/4 and would not powder my brain. If you have five notes just write five notes! Does any mere mortal human being can hear the shift in 1/40 note?? But this difference can be completely blurred by articulation: the attack of note (depending on dynamic accent) has such duration.

[@figrollin]

Hard disagree, pal. I think you can totally hear that difference. You can also see the difference in the wave form that David cleverly shows when we first hear the rhythm. It's subtle but it leaves you (in my opinion) unsettled, on edge, anticipating, unsure. I'd argue even if you can't hear that consciously (and I'm not sure I'd have registered it if I simply heard it as opposed to seeing it) that those feelings are still communicated unconsciously.

[@NataliaBazj]

This probably means 'something important' in the context of 4/4, or rather 8/8, when we keep count the eights, and feel the exact moment when the note @5/8 (0.625) should come. But this context must exist (before the snippet or in parallel part). It's hard to just image it in five-beat measure out of context.

[@luviaengrafito]

I say you should write it in 5/4 or 10/8 and it becomes "almost" easy

[@TorilAzzalini-Machecler]

So it's in 4/4... Why don't we pretend it's actually a bar of 5 by putting the whole bar inside a quintuplet? The place in time of the 3+ in a bar of 4/4 translates to the second 32nd note of the 4th beat in a bar of 5/quintuplet, which is where the sample begins again. In the original sample (before it was truncated and manipulated) each note was (in the context of the big bar-lengthed quintuplet) 1 quarter note long. Therefore the last 2 notes are just quarter notes, but starting on the 2nd 32nd note of the 4th beat! Therefore, we can either write the rhythm out as (4=quarter note, 8=8th note etc. Notes within a parenthesis are tied together, full stops are dots as in dotted and double dotted): Option 1: 4 4 (4 32) 4 8.. all within a quintuplet OR if you want to keep the visual separation of each beat: Option 1: 4 4 (4 32) (8.. 32) 8.. all within a quintuplet

[@renyhp]

That's exactly what I thought! This also conveys much more clearly the idea that he explained in words.

[@sion-dafyddlocke9913]

I think it’s more style than anything. I don’t use double dots because they’re unfamiliar and easy to miss for performers. I also try to stay away from tying together any notes more than 2 divisions away (4 32) for sight reading.

[@TorilAzzalini-Machecler]

@@sion-dafyddlocke9913 That's fair enough, but also what I found out using this notation is how actually shows in a visual way that, at Crotchet=120, it may as well be written as 5 quintuplets (what Cerrone chose in the end)

[@sion-dafyddlocke9913]

@@TorilAzzalini-Machecler Sorry, just to clarify, those are things that personally, I avoid, not things that are bad form. The options you gave are more precise, but I would be willing to sacrifice precision for sight readability and hope the musician gets the “feel” for it. Honestly, I also start with DAWs and then move to notation and sometimes I’m happy to get to 90% precision and fix the other 10% when I have performers to tell me what they prefer.

[@AtomizedSound]

Ahh music technology and synthesis combined with classical music notation and schools of thought pushing the envelope of music into the future with new techniques and thoughts. It’s an amazing time to be a musician or lover of music and wondering what might come tomorrow.

[@giocosovelasco]

bruh i notated it as 1 full measure of quarter notes for 3/4 with the first note accented and 1 bar of 2/4 with the first note accented. am i missing something or do compsers just want to get really technical? thanks

[@FelipeTellez]

It looks like some of these rhythms are best suited for sequencers, not humans (fight me!!!).....this is not a bad thing, especially as outboard analogue sequencers (and analogue synths) are experiencing a renaissance (as well as fully digital tools). I can see how to map these rhythms into a Euclidean Circles module (which itself is a great performance and composing companion) or any other sequencer......also, not super into the Quantum Mechanics comparison. Still, love your content man, keep up the good work!

[@zackking2001]

so composers finally figured out what a demo is? in all honestly this is actually really cool though

[@alejandro52612]

I can just imagine PBS Space Time with a video titled The Rhythm that Broke Quantum Physics.

[@jeffgray7494]

Since the intent is to communicate a feel of simultaneously overlapping but slightly offset quarter-note quintuplets, why not use exactly that in the notation in the following very clean way using two voices: Upstemmed voice: A 5:4 bracketed group of three quarter notes and two quarter rests Downstemmed voice: A 5:4 bracketed group of two quarter notes and three quarter rests. This voice is preceded in measure 1 by a half rest and an eighth rest to place the first struck note on the "three-and," and each of the 5:4 brackets crosses over bar lines. This puts the attack of every note precisely on the "fortieth-note" grid where the composer intended. The implied "release" of each note isn't quite the same as the intent (there will be some underlap/overlap where the voices cross over) but since this figure seems geared to a more percussive instrument, where the notion of sustain and release doesn't really exist (piano aside), that seems to me to be a more forgivable shortcoming than a notation that uses a sixteenth note symbol outside of a quintuplet bracket. Aside from that, the premise of the video reminded me of a fascination I had in high school (in the mid 80's) with books like The Tao of Physics and The Dancing Wu-Li Masters, that tried to draw parallels between spirituality and quantum physics. I think I'll just say that I've grown up since then...

[@ContraditionEnsemble]

I haven't run the math, but couldn't be much easier of thinking it 10/8 (3+2+3+2) ?

[@ANSIcode]

Interesting video but the "quantum" analogy is really lacking. Clickbait at best, if you ask me. Then again, I was expecting someone to be actually claiming that the rhythms thy write are in some way "quantum". So it could have been wose, I guess.

[@tdubveedub]

It seems to me that as the level of complexity increases, the intentions (whatevertheyare) of the composer would suffer to the point of collapse, leaving the listener as confused as the performers were left confounded. I don't believe any listener would perceive the .333... difference, and we make noise/music for the listener, not the DAW (those workstations, and Sibelius are both soooo demanding!).

[@Bashkii]

Thank you! Interesting video in itself though quite useless in practical terms. I think we all need to listen to E. Varèse's music. Always weird,super modern, visceral, fresh sounding and yet always using regular/normal meter signatures and rhythms of daily usage that performers love. In my view quantum mechanics have nothing to do with notating rhythms and expressing emotions thru sounds. (cheers from Barcelona!)

[@polenc7167]

The first buildings were made of mud brick and were just one story. Later they added straw to the mud and got perhaps a two story building. Then stone and brick and got perhaps seven or eight stories. Later we got steel and glass buildings--up to over a hundred stories. But one thing they all had was a solid and enduring foundation. This idea that progress in music allows you to abandon the solid foundation (discovered over hundreds of years) leads to collapsed structures. Observe this: this zeitgeist of musical progress exists only in countries that are under US military occupation.

[@columbus8myhw]

The solution is to invent your own rhythm notation

[@jorgepeterbarton]

THIS. or even SEND THE DAMN ELECTRONIC TRACK TO PRACTICE TO. "Hey i notated best i could but there are some variations in rhythm, i suggest trying to replicate the rhythmic feel of my audio export."

[@PeterHAdams]

"Gee wis" is not sufficient as a compositional/structural tool to hold together a composition. In short, BFD.

[@victotronics]

It sounds like a quintuplet with the last note truncated a little. Personally, I would invent an "inverse fermata". Normal fermata: stretch this note a little. Inverse fermata: shrink this note a little.

[@gustavoberocan]

I wonder how a flamenco or samba percussionist would assimilate this rythm with their own oral expression.

[@annaclarafenyo8185]

This is just because music notation is awful. You should use parentheses to divide time, and marks to indicate how to split notes across the divisions. It works much better.

[@abitofyourbrain]

Oh and I will point this out it's nothing to do with quintuplets we were at the time looking into the mathematics required to make an ultrasonic puff of air that resultantly has turned into a gun which is unfortunate but that's neither here nor there the mathematics required was something that I was having trouble putting into words and auditorily I could explain it and get the math down in a way that was more easily calculated by other people so this was the result if you'd like to look at the math you'll see that it matches the gun perfectly and while it is a lovely once again piece it has nothing to do with quintuplets it is just a resultant accidental moment drive from the mathematical translation needed for a sonic wave of air

[@abitofyourbrain]

Okay I'm going to throw in my two cents here and I wouldn't normally do this sort of thing these days honestly I give this order thing up many years ago but that's not a machine that's me on a piano with the Reverb turned on the Reverb is mathematical and hearing a note is just something that people should be able to do if they're going to bother playing a piano I'm happy to replicate then sentence for you I still have the same exact piano that I wrote everything on and it makes a bunch of weird noises that I'm sure people would be delighted to hear or astonished or whatever the hell it is that people are these days but while I think that he is a lovely man and what he's done with this noise is fantastic he definitely did not calculate anything to do with it at all

[@daslepistes]

I really don't get what's so interesting about this spesific rhythm. These kind of odd, complex and hard-to-notate rhythms existed in contemporary classical music for like, 50 years maybe? And it's not that big of a deal. Working with digital audio workstations and with concrete sounds is far more common among both contemporary composers and popular musicians. I've seen much more complex rhtyhms notated skillfully in very complex pieces, written for chamber settings or orchestras. There are many solutions for these kind of problems.

[@leftyguitarist8989]

I'd notate it as 10/8 or a bar of 7/8 followed by a bar of 3/8.

[@thescoobymike]

"Knowing my audience, probably quite a lot" 🤣

[@NickBatinaComposer]

Yooo, David!! Check out PBS SpaceTime! I think you’d really dig it, and the frontman has equally impressive eyebrows!

[@EnginAtik]

There many ways to say the same sentence and some of them might convey opposite meanings. When that sentence is written down it collapses to the same written form. Reading is pattern recognition; patterns that we come across more often are easier to recognize. We are trying to maximize reading speed while keeping the notation fidelity high enough so that reproduced sound will satisfy the musician, the composer and the audience. This is a “design optimization” problem where we optimize the notation and the “cost function” involves the question of “why do we like music” and hard to pin down.

[@EnginAtik]

Who knows maybe "design optimization" in the title will entice more people to click in the future.

[@Simon-ts9fu]

The final notation hides the (then approximately) equal length of notes 1, 2 and 4. I also think the first notation was by far the easiest to read. The way I heard the rhythm was as a quintuplet where the third beat is emphasised by being delayed and the first beat emphasised by being early. I don’t think one can hear that the third note falls 5/8 of the way in the cycle. He also doesn’t seem to sing it as he notated it. His fourth note seems to short. He simply seems to intend a delay after the third note and then catch up with two slightly quicker notes back to the one.

[@MaxiGoethling]

It's kinda funny how you talk about composing directly in a DAW as if it was something new or weird, when most working composers have to work like that nowadays (mostly in media). 😋 Great video, as always!

[@FlameRat_YehLon]

I see piano roll as the baked result, while the score an implication. Kinda have a feeling that if one starts composing in DAW they might at one point have to switch to a score writer if the concept become too complicated to understand when presented in piano roll form.

[@bobaldo2339]

Is this the the "Copenhagen interpretation" of rhythm?

[@DerekPower]

I normally use the DAW as the basis of my compositions (Cubase in my case). A couple of years ago, I added Dorico so I could work with notation if/when needed, which I hadn’t thought about since school. I am still exploring this combination whenever I can. Also this integration of music and quantum mechanics ... Vangelis’s Invisible Connections was his attempt to illustrate that subatomic world through music, mostly (room) space and simple sounds. The title track is the clearest representation of this concept whilst “Atom Blaster” is fission and “Thermo Vision” is “seeing” beyond the visual spectrum.

[@markhesketh9467]

Quantum means lumpy, quanta is a lump. Me a physicist

[@Pravdaband]

Felt a bit like a swing rhythm more than a complex thing. Humans will never hit the grid, so why try to notate “exact” that will be never read correctly, but can only be felt? Hence jazz, be bop, rock. God forbid you put a Chopin waltz played by Horowitz on the grid. See what I’m saying?

[@pieroschlochauer2186]

There's certainly truth in that sentiment, especially when classical musicians try to write jazz or anything that vaguely swings. However, anything can be theoretically read, "feeling it" isn't necessarily better than actually playing what's written in some cases (and vice versa!). Its also worth keeping in mind that various "unreadable" or " unperformable" rhythms from centuries ago are now common practise in the repertoire. So, when it's a new idea that isn't "organically" developed as a culture but from the compositional process, it's an interesting dilemma on notation.

[@hh-dr4db]

Quantum. I do not think it means what you think it means.

[@alkanista]

A good peek into working methods that I actually found inspiring, in the sense of "I think I might be able to do something like that". Also, loved the excursion into Ferneyhoughland, because I recently watched part of a Samuel Andreyev analysis of a Ferneyhough piece and am still trying to decide whether I really want to try to hear what is going on there or not. It was good to get another point of view on his stuff.

[@AakashaVani369]

Common rythm in indian music. 5/x "Khanda chapu"

[@AngelicDirt]

Breaking things on purpose. That's what I'M talking about. :P

[@ArjunBahuguna]

Please do a video on Les Espaces Acoustiques

[@danielmirandacastro7161]

As a physicist I found this cute hehehe Btw I have a question: lately I've been moving away from sibelius (into ableton) as a composing tool, because it's midi default sounds are just way too unreal and it kinda blocks me when I have trouble envisioning how some transitions or textures should sound. Do you use any specific custom sounds for sibelius playback? I tried to customize it a coupled of times but it looked too messy. Cheers from Brazil, love your videos

[@penguinexpress12]

Note performer 3

[@cornerliston]

Good to see. Wouldn't a “true” quantum based rhythm be more as if step 1 is also step 3, and 4 and 5 and 2 at the same time? Or is that too simple for a music theoretician?

[@cornerliston]

@@SeanPeckham-xe2gt Try notating that : )

[@liamthelitlord5738]

"Great Vid, David" -Me, a person with glasses

[@adamrjhughes]

What about notes that actually existed in a quantum state where only when you play the piece does a note get chosen. Thus creating two universes one where one note was played and one where the other was. Obviously not actually quantum but its a cool idea someone could try. Include enough of these and every play-through the piece would be different (probably) because variations increase exponentially with n options to effectively infinite. You could play with how much this changes the actual piece by changing if it sets the root note or an incidental on a top melody.

[@jorgepeterbarton]

Dice roll pieces?

[@adamrjhughes]

@@jorgepeterbarton hmmm maybe there really are no original ideas anymore :(

[@adamrjhughes]

@@jorgepeterbarton I just watched 12tone's video and I did actually mean something slightly different. Rather than arrange different bars it would be notes. The notation would read both notes (in the same way superposition is both states) until it is played out loud whne the musician would choose one (this would be measurement in the quantum analogy).

[@bootishshoe]

Xenakis did a tonne of this. Pitches, durations,form and even timbre generated probabilistically

[@adamrjhughes]

@@bootishshoe reading the guardian article on Xenakis, he seems like a cool dude. It doesn't seem like he is doing probabilistic sheet music though.

[@lebro4401]

Quantum rhythm game be like

[@jean_mollycutpurse_winchester]

First there was music...and then there was this. Baby music.

[@tdubveedub]

"First there was Music, then there was Music Theory.": Robert Henninger

[@mal2ksc]

I made the transition to composing directly into the DAW when I stopped caring if it would actually get played, and started regarding the rendering as the finished piece. On the occasions where it has been necessary, I have reverse-engineered the parts in the DAW and entered them into notation software. Pulling the MIDI information in turns out to be much like bad OCR -- I spend so much time chasing mistakes that it doesn't actually help.

[@tdubveedub]

Thanks; that was helpful to me.

[@JoshuaWillis89]

4/5 of a beat v. 9/10 of a beat v. 7/10 of a beat. For anyone curious about the division of the measure by note: 1/5 + 1/5 + 9/40 + 1/5 + 7/40 Somehow that actually does add up to 1.

[@JoshuaWillis89]

You could technically notate it like this: 1---9- ---7-- ---6-- --4---

[@JoshuaWillis89]

Or this: 1---5 ---4 - ---&-- --&---

[@jeshdcruz]

There are actually loads of raw natural rhythms that can't really be notated..

[@Simon-ts9fu]

This example is essentially just a phrased quintuplet. And you’re right that this phenomenon is ubiquitous in performed music, very strange in standard notation but very consistently performed and conceived.

[@jorgepeterbarton]

Yes, but as standard rhythms are performed these variations can arise naturally. Rubato?