

Rhythm for beginners - alanfalcon
http://www.whitakerblackall.com/blog/music-theory-for-beginners-ii

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alanfalcon
Some great discussion about part 1 here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326502>

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dustingetz
this blew my mind! dude mashes (piano) keyboard, plays it back, sounds as you
would expect -- awful. then dude uses software to snap all notes to the
nearest sisteenth and adds a boring base line. sounds awesome!

search for heading "An Experiment"

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dfrankow
You picked out the best part of the article: the clips are fun. I also liked
the quantized version of random notes on a keyboard.

However, as a musician, this sort of article makes me uncomfortable. He says:
"In this post, we will be discussing rhythm basics and all things related."
Not exactly. He discusses rhythm basics from a certain cultural background,
roughly western European mainstream music of the present day.

His discussion focuses one particular notation (whole notes, etc.), one
particular tool (a sequencer), and most of all one particular musical language
(mostly 4/4 with a backbeat, and typical mainstream instruments, electronic
keyboard and drum kit: kick, snare, hi-hat).

Music is not limited to that which can be quantized.

His discussion of swing is primitive. He probably doesn't play jazz, though I
can't say for sure.

I don't mind that he approaches from a certain place. It just makes me
uncomfortable that he omits his background to the point where a beginner might
mistakenly think the post is somehow universal.

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armandososa
So your point is that his "Rythm _for beginners_ " article is not advanced
enough?

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jarin
You can also apply the same ideas to design. Oftentimes you can make a crappy
design look decent by just aligning things to a grid or to each other. _The
Non-Designer's Design Book_ by Robin Williams is a good intro to the whole
idea.

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BrainScraps
I've always loved the math of rhythm. I also always loved the logic of the
different rythmic notations - whole notes, quarter notes, 16th notes.... So
orderly.

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pumpmylemma
Part I really caught my attention when it was posted a week or so ago. I've
never really learned about music but it seems like a lot of programmers really
like composing music. (Actually, L. Peter Deutsch famously left programming in
favor of composing.)

I can't speak of it's quality yet, but the original post lead me to stumble
upon: <http://www.musimathics.com/>

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amplifiedrhythm
I think it's because programming and music theory are actually very similar.
Both involve manipulating a set of rules creatively to make something that is
satisfactory to yourself, while following conventions set by professionals
that came way before you. It's really very similar.

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tsuipen
Western music theory and programming are similar in that both are systematic
concepts and can use numbers or "functions" to express them. The thing is,
that description fits many things (even painting, drawing, photography, etc.),
so it makes the relationship between programming and music less unique and
less noteworthy.

