Comments for Rudi Seitz

Comment on Microtonal Notation and Playback In Finale by Anton

Anton — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:25:24 +0000

I’m very interested to find out about the result of your experiment. I found another solution to playback microtonal music and that’s through a certain app.

Comment on Necklace Counting (draft) by ejaxon

ejaxon — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 14:16:16 +0000

I think the question that most intrigues me is the last, which aligns with where you started. So a first question toward exploring that: can we say anything about the musical properties of the new “colors” introduced in step 4. A color represents either a clump of tones or a skipped interval – what is the musical property of a skip of 5 or a clump of 3?

Comment on Note Neighborhoods by rudiseitz

rudiseitz — Wed, 29 May 2013 23:19:40 +0000

Hi Dustin, Thanks so much for your comments. Regarding books on alternate approaches to music theory, there's one that I'm working through right now: Harmonic Experience by W.A. Mathieu. It's a massive and challenging book, and I think I've just scratched the surface of it, but I'd recommend it based on what I understand of it so far. (Note: It requires a willingness to work with guitar, piano, and voice to go through the exercises and experiments). Yes, I'm interested in maqam music as well as Persian dastgah-based music, and have just recently started taking lessons on Persian setar; hoping to blog about that eventually. I have The Dastgah Concept in Persian Music by Fahrat and The Maqam Book by David Muallem. The first is an academically-oriented survey and the second is more of a practical reference book: both are helpful but I haven't gone deep enough into either yet to give a strong recommendation or other comment. As for other recommendations for exploring non-Western music, I think the best approach is hands-on: pick a style you find interesting and see if you can find a teacher to give you some introductory lessons, in person or online. I'm really glad you've found some of my articles thought-provoking, and I'd welcome any further comments you have as well as requests for material or topics to explore/cover here. Best wishes for your musical journey, -Rudi

Comment on Note Neighborhoods by Dustin

Dustin — Mon, 27 May 2013 03:49:56 +0000

Hey man,
I have been reading through a lot of your work on theory and music and its amazing. I love different ways of understanding and conceptualizing music theory besides the traditional western tonal approach and your ideas have sparked many interesting thoughts. Its great how you also incorporate eastern theory, as I am trying to delve into that as well, although its quite overwhelming sometimes. Do you have any books/suggestions that helped you work through all the material that comes with a different culture of music theory? And have ave you looked into/ do you work with maqams and quarter-tonal music?

Thanks for everything
Keep up the awesome work.

Comment on Counting the 19 Trichords by rudiseitz

rudiseitz — Sat, 25 May 2013 13:20:42 +0000

Hi Nilesh,
Thanks so much for the feedback!
Rudi

Comment on Counting the 19 Trichords by Nilesh Trivedi

Nilesh Trivedi — Sat, 25 May 2013 03:18:32 +0000

Nice work. And many thanks for making these diagrams.

Comment on Janya Ragas: 34,776 or 26,864? by rudiseitz

rudiseitz — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:22:09 +0000

Prof. Sriram,

Thank you so much for sharing the link to your work from 1991! Your paper must have been the first time the 26864 figure was published.

Wow — tables too expensive to typeset — how times have changed! Another sign of changing times: you verified your result with a Fortran program that ran for a few minutes on a Macintosh II. For this post, I used a Groovy 2.1.0 script that ran on a MacBook Air in a little under 5 seconds. One thing that didn’t change in all those years: the number 26864

For the convenience of anyone who follows the issuu.com link above, the article “How Many Janya Ragas Are There?” begins on page 144 of the Journal, which is page 149 of the scanned document.

Thanks again,
-Rudi

Comment on Janya Ragas: 34,776 or 26,864? by P. Sriram

P. Sriram — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 17:59:36 +0000

I worked on this issue some years ago and published my result (26864) in the Journal of the Madras Music Academy in 1991. Scanned copy of this issue can be found at http://issuu.com/themusicacademy/docs/1991. I had a nice camera ready manuscript, unfortunately the Academy was still typesetting, so my 26864 shows up as several different numbers. And all my nice tables (referred to in the text of the paper) disappeared; in the words of the Editor, tables were too expensive to typeset.

Comment on Janya Ragas: 34,776 or 26,864? by Vignesh Subramanian

Vignesh Subramanian — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 08:35:07 +0000

Dear Rudi:
Wow, that was indeed me who posted those question on redundancies in Chinmayi’s blog. That was quite a while ago and its a small world !! I had tried in the meanwhile to find the answer to this question on my own with no significant success

Sangeeta Sastra that I mentioned is at least published in 1989 (May be a previous edition existed). Iyer himself was the principal of musical school in Mylapore, Chennai, as early as 1942. So while it is not that old/ authoritative in stating the figure of 34776, it is credible enough. I do have the abridged version of that book provided as an appendix to the “Ganamrudha Varna malika” book by the same author (One of the widely used text books for learning varnams). If you are interested I can scan those pages and post it here.

And yes, Shri. Rajam is an authoritative figure in music theory as well. So the reference you provided on his source should be official enough as well.

Regards
Vicky

Comment on Janya Ragas: 34,776 or 26,864? by Narayana Santhanam

Narayana Santhanam — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 23:51:57 +0000

Rudi, no worries at all. Didn’t mean “patience” in a accusatory tone—it is just the way I talk . I would be glad to write something down with references.

And don’t get me wrong—I enjoyed your writeup. It is very carefully done and well written, and most definitely must remain. Often understanding something is usually equivalent to seeing it in many ways, so the more ways we have at getting this, the better we will do—I was just contributing one more way to do it that I think is exciting .