EAnalysis and dualities within EA

[Ben Ramsay]

Hi all, 

I've been thinking a little bit about dualities within electronic music this week and I was wondering if anyone else would find my ideas useful with regards some additional tools/features in EAnalysis. 

My thoughts have been provoked by trying to define two distinct sound worlds within IDM and beginning to describe whether a piece predominantly features one or the other of these 'worlds'. I then thought that it would be great if we could represent these kinds of duality in EAnalysis in some way. For example, in Spectromorphology Smalley talks about works being predominantly gesture-carried or texture-carried. It might also be useful to be able to analyse and define a work (or section of a work) as organic or synthetic, dense or sparse, loud or quiet and so on. 

Obviously there is nothing stopping us from listening to a work and describing a it in any way we feel fit, but being able to annotate this and then calculate the predominant feature might be really useful (if a little anal?!). 

I was wondering if a new view of some kind might be a good idea which can output an average (percentage) or a colour or something similar. I have produced a mock up of what I'm talking about here - http://benramsay.co.uk/Dualities.jpg

The user/analyser in this example would have listened to the piece and check the boxes to suggest which of the dualities they hear. The final cell is a representation of the percentage of red and blue mix. This view is a useful visual aid when looking at the overall piece, but perhaps also there could be a % value associated as well which would give a definitive numerical representation of whether a work contains more of less of the duality being analysed. 

Sorry this mail is a bit long, but I wondered what, if anything, the rest of the community think of this idea? If nothing else it might spark a conversation. 

Best

Ben 

[Leigh Landy]

I think this is a great idea, Ben. As you probably know, I’ve discussed understanding music parametrically for a long time (and there are always points along these dimensions, not only the end points (if they, indeed, exist). Even in Simon Emmerson’s language grid, pieces can drift from moment to moment. Whether % are going to work is uncertain, but you have to start somewhere.

Leigh


--
Prof. Leigh Landy
Director - Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre
Clephan Building
De Montfort University
Leicester LE1 9BH United Kingdom
TEL +44/0-116 2577956, +44/0-1244 571930
lla...@dmu.ac.uk, leigh...@gmail.com
http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/, http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/~llandy
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"Organised Sound" o...@dmu.ac.uk
http://www.journals.cambridge.org/OSO
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EARS http://www.ears.dmu.ac.uk
EMS Network http://www.ems-network.org

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From: Ben Ramsay <nineste...@gmail.com>
Reply-To: <orema_...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:26:01 +0100
To: <orema_...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: EAnalysis and dualities within EA

[Andrew Hill]

Hi Ben,

I like this idea, but like Leigh, I wonder if it can be a truly binary distinction. 

If I understand correctly, your intention is to quantify the characteristics of a work. Would it be an idea to be able to plot these into the programme so it draws you a graph? Bret uses some similar ideas in his graphic analyses (but these are interpretation marks and so not intended to be absolute quantities). Perhaps you might find his paper on the subject useful? (I'm not sure if his analysis is on orema because it's for an AV piece but there is certainly a paper).

A

Sent from my iPhone

[Ben Ramsay]

Hi both, 

I definitely agree, trying to quantify music so stringently as to give it a mark out of 100 is problematic but if we are going to define a work as, let's say, primarily synthetic in nature, it would be good to see the evidence to support this claim in any analysis.

Perhaps the % value might be pushing it a bit far, but I quite like the idea of being able to see, quite vividly, these dualities (or anything else you want to represent) working in this kind of macro view, even though my mock up wasn't especially elaborate! :)

Ben

[Simon Emmerson]

I think this is a good idea on principle but without the flip from red to blue - I suggest a 'grayscale' equivalent where you could slide continuously from one 'extreme' to the other. I think its part of a general question to Pierre about the design by the user of his/her own tools. A simple 'binary paintbrush' is my suggestion based on yours:

100% BLUE
|
| (Time flow as usual from past (L) to future (R)
|
100% RED

as you sweep the brush to correlate with what you hear (in real time or not?) it does the colour coding %% for you.
Red/blue may not be the best binary!

Simon


Simon Emmerson
Professor of Music, Technology and Innovation
Faculty of Art, Design and Humanities

De Montfort University
Leicester LE1 9BH

Tel. 0116-207-8238
email: S.Emm...@dmu.ac.uk
http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/

-----Original Message-----
From: orema_...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Ben Ramsay
Sent: Wed 9/12/2012 17:26
To: orema_...@googlegroups.com
Subject: EAnalysis and dualities within EA

[Simon Emmerson]

My apologies to Andrew for posting without absorbing his! strangely similar responses - must be significant!
s/

Simon Emmerson
Professor of Music, Technology and Innovation
Faculty of Art, Design and Humanities

De Montfort University
Leicester LE1 9BH

Tel. 0116-207-8238
email: S.Emm...@dmu.ac.uk
http://www.mti.dmu.ac.uk/



-----Original Message-----

[Ben Ramsay]

A grey scale binary paintbrush is a much better idea. It would be ideal if this was in real time as well as as offline in case finer editing needs to be done, as is the case in photoshop-esq apps.

Ben

> <winmail.dat>

[Andrew Hill]

No colour? Why if you want to. Encode multiple variables in this way? (or make the analysis look pretty).

A

Sent from my iPhone

[Ben Ramsay]

Pretty is always good! :)

My take on Simon's comment was that blue is not the opposite to red so perhaps not the best way of representing a duality...

[Pierre Couprie]

I'm following your conversation and add this idea in my todo list.

Best

Pierre

[Andrew Hugill]

Hi all,

Not sure to what exent accessibility issues are important here, but if it's an open choice about colours then they are worth bearing in mind. See
http://safecolours.rigdenage.com/index.html

Andrew

Sent from my iPad