Douglas Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach is one of my favourite books. Commonly referred to as GEB, this book is a mesmerising meditation on consciousness, mathematics and creativity. The central idea is that of a "strange loop", in which the same message is interpreted on multiple semantic levels.
GEB was the first place I came across the idea of a musical canon. A canon is a beautifully austere form of composition that was popular in the Baroque period. A canon consists of a dux part which sets out the base melody accompanied by a comes part which is some kind of transformation of the dux.
Here is the structure of a canon described using the programming language Clojure. f stands for the transformation selected by the composer.
(defn canon [f notes]
(->> notes
(with (f notes))))
For example, the comes might be formed by delaying the dux by a bar and raising every note by a third. In my talk Functional Composition I show how computer code can be used to explain music theory, focussing on JS Bach's Canone alla Quarta from the Goldberg Variations. Canone alla Quarta is an unusually complex and beautiful canon where the transformation is composed of a delay of three beats (a simple canon), a reflection (a mirror canon) and a pitch transposition down a fourth (an interval canon).
Here is the transformation from Canone alla Quarta written in Clojure. comp is a Clojure function for composing multiple transformations together.
(defn canone-alla-quarta [notes]
(->> notes
(canon
(comp (interval -3) mirror (simple 3)))))
I was working on a talk for last year's Strange Loop programming conference (itself a reference to Hofstadter's work) and I decided that I wanted to create my own canon as a tribute to GEB as a finale. Rather than use an ordinary musical transformation for my comes, I wanted to pick something that spoke to the idea of composing music with computer code. I also wanted to incorporate GEB's theme of interpreting messages on multiple levels.
I took the letters G, E and B, and used the ASCII codes that represent these letters as though they were MIDI pitch codes. This gave me my dux. I then took the same three letters and interpreted them as the musical notes G, E and B. This gave me my comes. I had obtained a canon based not on musical concepts like delay or transposition, but on encoding schemes used in computer programming.
(defn canone-alla-geb [notes]
(->> notes
(canon
#(where :pitch ascii->midi %))))
I elaborated the harmonies provided by this canon into a complete track, composed via computer code. The dux and the comes are joined by various other parts, some using polyrhythms to generate apparent complexity from underlying simplicity.
Eventually, the dux and the comes are accompanied by a third canonic voice, in which the names of Godel, Escher and Bach are read out by a text-to-speech program. So the theme of three notes G, E and B becomes a canon of three voices musical, technical and allusive to the three great creative spirits Godel, Escher and Bach.
Listen to the recording.
Read the code.
Watch the talk.
GEB was the first place I came across the idea of a musical canon. A canon is a beautifully austere form of composition that was popular in the Baroque period. A canon consists of a dux part which sets out the base melody accompanied by a comes part which is some kind of transformation of the dux.
Here is the structure of a canon described using the programming language Clojure. f stands for the transformation selected by the composer.
(defn canon [f notes]
(->> notes
(with (f notes))))
For example, the comes might be formed by delaying the dux by a bar and raising every note by a third. In my talk Functional Composition I show how computer code can be used to explain music theory, focussing on JS Bach's Canone alla Quarta from the Goldberg Variations. Canone alla Quarta is an unusually complex and beautiful canon where the transformation is composed of a delay of three beats (a simple canon), a reflection (a mirror canon) and a pitch transposition down a fourth (an interval canon).
Here is the transformation from Canone alla Quarta written in Clojure. comp is a Clojure function for composing multiple transformations together.
(defn canone-alla-quarta [notes]
(->> notes
(canon
(comp (interval -3) mirror (simple 3)))))
I was working on a talk for last year's Strange Loop programming conference (itself a reference to Hofstadter's work) and I decided that I wanted to create my own canon as a tribute to GEB as a finale. Rather than use an ordinary musical transformation for my comes, I wanted to pick something that spoke to the idea of composing music with computer code. I also wanted to incorporate GEB's theme of interpreting messages on multiple levels.
I took the letters G, E and B, and used the ASCII codes that represent these letters as though they were MIDI pitch codes. This gave me my dux. I then took the same three letters and interpreted them as the musical notes G, E and B. This gave me my comes. I had obtained a canon based not on musical concepts like delay or transposition, but on encoding schemes used in computer programming.
(defn canone-alla-geb [notes]
(->> notes
(canon
#(where :pitch ascii->midi %))))
I elaborated the harmonies provided by this canon into a complete track, composed via computer code. The dux and the comes are joined by various other parts, some using polyrhythms to generate apparent complexity from underlying simplicity.
Eventually, the dux and the comes are accompanied by a third canonic voice, in which the names of Godel, Escher and Bach are read out by a text-to-speech program. So the theme of three notes G, E and B becomes a canon of three voices musical, technical and allusive to the three great creative spirits Godel, Escher and Bach.
Listen to the recording.
Read the code.
Watch the talk.
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