Dmitri Tymoczko | Visualizing Musical Structure

Talk kindly contributed by Dmitri Tymoczko in SEMF's 2022 Spacious Spatiality
semf.org.es/sp...
TALK ABSTRACT
My talk will focus on the connection between geometry and music, beginning with the circle of fifths, continuing with Leonard Euler’s “Tonnetz”, and ending with the current state of the art. I will show how computers and technology allow us to visualize the infinite-dimensional space describing the voice-leading relationships among all possible chords, opening the door to new ways of conceiving musical structure.
TALK MATERIALS
· Mad Musical Science: www.madmusical...
DMITRI TYMOCZKO
Department of Music, Princeton University: music.princeto...
Princeton University profile: music.princeto...
Personal website: dmitri.mycpane...
Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.o...
SEMF NETWORKS
Website: semf.org.es
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MUSIC
/ baroquenoise

[@donbelisario8811]

I'm shivering right now, what an amazing talk I really appreciate the effort of all the people involve along this years to unvell the mechanism of music. Making music accesible to everybody is nothing trivial but a necessity of the soul and mind. I guess It's happening just what Rodchenko and many others predicted when they mentioned that we as humans needed to strive for a richer and meaningful development of arts based on science and separate them from the shallow ornamentation.

[@SEMF]

Thank you very much for the kind comment! Scientifically-informed arts are very much a focus for us at SEMF.

[@TheMemesofDestruction]

Thank you so much Professor Tymoczco and y’all at SEMF! Happy Thanksgiving Everybody! ☮️ ❤️

[@SEMF]

Thank you @TheMemesofDestruction! We really enjoyed Dmitri Tymoczko's talk!

[@invictus327]

Absolutely fascinating. Thank you.

[@SEMF]

Thanks for the comment! We really enjoyed Dmitri's talk too.

[@JuliusSmith]

Very enjoyable, thanks! Minor note: David Heinichen's circle was called a "musicalischer circul", or "musical circle", and is not a circle of fifths unless you skip neighbors.

[@SEMF]

Thanks for the clarification! You can join the live discussions on our community here:
semf.org.es/participate/join.html

[@luizmenezes9971]

So, you used the Dirac's Belt Trick in music?!?
That's insane, man.

[@SEMF]

Covering spaces are everywhere ;)

[@topdawg3359]

Amazing ty

[@pietruyssinck]

at 23:10 I don't understand why the adjacent tiles are upside down.

[@pliniobarraza]

This is very cool. I myself like to compose using visual constructs that help me build structure. In college I used to write this way without even using a piano, and often the results were pleasantly surprising. Anyway, great stuff in here, thank you for this. Unbelievable this has only 13 likes. Will spread the word and share with all my musician friends.

[@SEMF]

Thank you so much for the kind words and helping to spread the word. If you are interested in what we do at SEMF, I suggest subscribing to our mailing list and Discord server: semf.org.es/participate/join.html

[@nartoomeon9378]

43:21 (dont read it, its probably wrong) I think, is more right, if musically inert sequence on a right side is "inert", becose it didn`t cover a whole set, whole chromatic scale. And homotopic equivalence has nothing to do with it. It seems that the speaker misused the term... A closed path does not give exhaustive information about its homotopy class. This is about topology. If the tonnetz is continuous and is a torus, so only small loops are closed, and the ones that go around its small and large circles are not.

[@louisaruth]

i wish i could understand your comment better, particularly the if clause at the end.

[@nartoomeon9378]

​​@@louisaruth now, I did'nt understood my comment... maybe I mean the trivial paths, not closed, becose all of them closed!
At the time 41:35 Dmitri start to say about closed paths in classical tonnetz. After one example we can hear its tonal uncertainty. Next, professor say its path is homotopy trivial. But in the Cohn's tonnetz its, probably, a small circle. Small circles are not contractible loops, in other words - isn't trivial. Maybe, Dmitri propose a topological space model of musical structure where each "tonal inert" loop sequence of chords(or notes?) is trivial. And this is a definition or one of them.

[@louisaruth]

@@nartoomeon9378 very kind of you to reply. gives me a lot to think about

[@coreylapinas1000]

Aaah, so its like that! I understand everything now! (Doesn't get it at all)

[@SEMF]

What might help, however, is interacting directly with our community 😉
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