

Music that upsets expectations is what makes your gray matter sing - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/2/uncertainty/composing-your-thoughts

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carapace
An early cybernetic device interacted with musicians as part of a live
ensemble. The machine detected novelty in the sounds it was hearing and would
grow "bored" if the musicians' improvisations did not keep up. People who
played with it interesting experiences. (I can dig up a reference to this if
anyone's interested..)

~~~
biot
A quick search yields this: [http://www.girlwonder.com/2010/09/a-network-of-
constant-inte...](http://www.girlwonder.com/2010/09/a-network-of-constant-
interactions-and-communications.html)

    
    
      "Gordon Pask developed musical cybernetic systems that count as early
       cyborg hybrids. His 1953 Musicolour machine accompanied musical
       performers. As the performer or group played, Musicolour responded with
       lights and movement to the music would change, creating a sort of
       hypnotic effect for those who played with it. But if the performer
       became too repetitive and did not engage the machine enough, Musicolour
       would grow bored and stop responding—the first cybernetic art system to
       do so. [4] Pask also noted that while people trained the machine, it
       trained them back, creating a feedback loop in which performers felt
       like the machine was an extension of their minds and bodies.[5]"
    

[4] Gordon Pask, “A Comment, a Case History and a Plan,” in Cybernetics, Art,
and Ideas, ed. Jasia Reichardt (Greenwich, Conn.,: New York Graphic Society,
1971), 77.

[5] Ibid., 85.

~~~
carapace
For those who asked, yes it was Pask. Cheers biot. I first heard about it in
the book "The Cybernetic Brain: Sketches of Another Future" by Andrew
Pickering, which contains other eye-opening gems.

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mazelife
Good article and actually having audio to illustrate the things the author
talks about is helpful. For people interested in diving into this concept more
deeply, there's a whole theoretical/analytical approach around musical
expectation that was developed back in the 90s by Eugene Narmour: The
Implication-Realization model ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implication-
Realization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implication-Realization)).
Interestingly enough, it looks like the predictive power of the model holds up
pretty well when tested in the real world:
[http://www.erin.utoronto.ca/~w3psygs/SchellenbergCognition.p...](http://www.erin.utoronto.ca/~w3psygs/SchellenbergCognition.pdf)

I've been out of the music theory game for a while, so I don't know if
anyone's doing much with the I-R model anymore, but it's a fascinating
approach to music analysis.

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JoelHobson
Although the 'Nokia Ringtone' was attributed correctly to Tarrega in a
footnote, its title was never mentioned. The piece is called 'Gran Vals'.

~~~
bbcbasic
Just listened to it on youtube - this upsets the expectations by having a
ringtone in the middle of some otherwise lovely music!

~~~
gry
The piece:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQzUx3QW2Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQzUx3QW2Y)

Too right, too right.

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gre
One of my favorite jazz pieces is Happy Madness off a Jobim compilation album.
The whole piece tries to get you to hear a specific note, and then tricks you
with a different one.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIphJGkY3Rw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIphJGkY3Rw)

------
quadrangle
Now _this_ is music theory! There was this heated discussion back here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8472157](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8472157)

Well, that notation-jargon is still not real theory, and this stuff from the
nautil.us link here is. This is the stuff to understand if you want to
understand music.

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Encosia
Reminds me of the bit about Chopin leading listeners on for the satisfying
note/chord in this Benjamin Zander talk:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passio...](http://www.ted.com/talks/benjamin_zander_on_music_and_passion)

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radicalzebra
Cool post! I think as technologists seeking to build tools for music creation,
browsing, etc. there are some high level points to take from Professor
Berger's article. As we deploy machine learning to match listeners and songs,
we're often blindly satisfying expectations, when the entire essence of
musical experience seems wrapped up in upsetting expectations.

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NickKitchen
This is a cool post, it's interesting how our brains react to unexpected
changes in the music. It's almost as though we receive a rush of endorphins
when our brains guess the upcoming melody and are proven right, which makes us
slightly off put when it is different

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b0ner_t0ner
Article crashed my Firefox on mobile, was wondering why...

Then I did a network trace on desktop and see that the header PNG image is 1
megabyte. The whole page with all those SoundCloud iframes are a whopping 9
megabytes. Ugh.

