Geometry of Musical Rhythm
by Godfried T. Toussaint · first published 2016
29% recommend57% neutral14% critical
The original edition of The Geometry of Musical Rhythm was the first book to provide a systematic and accessible computational geometric analysis of the musical rhythms of the world. It explained how the study of the mathematical properties of musical rhythm generates common mathematical problems that arise in a variety of seemingly disparate fields. The book also introduced the distance approach to phylogenetic analysis and illustrated its application to the study of musical rhythm. The new edition retains all of this, while also adding 100 pages, 93 figures, 225 new references, and six new c
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Recommended: A Geometry of Music by Dmitri Tymoczko - http://dmitri.mycpanel.princeton.edu/geometry-of-music.html The Geometry of Musical Rhythm by Godfried Toussaint - Original paper - http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~godfried/publications/geometry-of-r... (PDF) - Book - Review https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.13.19.2/mto.13.19.2.gotham.php
on “The Mathematics of Music [pdf]” ↗…much of it is beyond my understanding at the beginning (or even at the end). Here are some of my favorites: The Jazz Theory Book (Mark Levine) Huge series of play-along books by Jamey Aebersold The Geometry of Musical Rhythm (Godfried Toussaint) Harmony (Walter Piston) A Geometry of Music - Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice (Dmitri Tymoczko) Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (George…
on “Ask HN: What are you learning in 2019?” ↗…merely discovered this. Because so could, in fact I am well (ok, not so well) on my way to also discover those same ideas, except I'm not at Princeton nor anywhere near it. thanks for the tip on the geometry of musical rhythm book. I was aware of the other one but not this one.
on “Coltrane: A music theory library with a command-line interface” ↗…"The Euclidean Algorithm Generates Traditional Musical Rhythms". http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~godfried/publications/banff-extende... (PDF) Following the trail, I was glad to find he wrote a whole book, The Geometry of Musical Rhythm, where the article forms the basis of a chapter. It's one of my favorite books I keep returning to re-read different parts. I hadn't seen "Exploring Musical Spaces", looking forward to reading it. Dmitri…
on “Music and Geometry: Intervals and Scales” ↗Very cool! This reminds of an experiment[0] I made a while back for an alternative pattern composing interface based on the book 'The Geometry of Musical Rhythm: What Makes a "Good" Rhythm Good?' by Godfried Toussaint. [0] https://michaelmior.github.io/rhythm-wheel/
on “Show HN: The simplest drum pattern composing algorithm I could come up with” ↗…robot which is just an ESP8266 wired to a Vertiq smart motor. https://youtu.be/zeHJXyyhJ70 My model of rhythm in that version was extremely naive, so now I'm now trying to grok Godfried Toussaint's The Geometry of Musical Rhythm with the goal of moving the rhythm generation to the microcontroller. This is to have a toolset for making autonomous musical ensembles. I'm definitely having challenges figuring things out, so if anyone…
on “Engineer has built and programmed a terrifying all-robot band” ↗…Pythagoras to Fractals, 2003, Oxford UP - Loy, Musimatics Volume 1, 2006 MIT Press - Tymoczko, A Geometry of Music, 2011, Oxford UP - Walker, Mathematics and Music, 2013, CRC Press - Toussaint, The Geometry of Musical Rhythm, 2013, CRC Press - Chew, Mathematical and Computational Modeling of Tonality, 2014, Springer - Hook, Exploring Musical Spaces, 2023, Oxford UP From my point of view, all titles can be appreciated by…
on “Music and Geometry: Intervals and Scales” ↗He has a bunch of interesting material and a book called The Geometry of Musical Rhythm. Being a CS prof, though, he has the intensely annoying habit of counting everything from zero. Musicians don't do this, they count from 1 (like everyone else except programmers), and so all his diagrams,…
on “Euclidean Drum Machine” ↗It came about after seeing a few YouTube videos based on the book "The Geometry of Musical Rhythm." So the idea definitely wasn't mine but I'm a hobby drummer and the idea really intrigued me.
on “Explorabl.es” ↗…musical rhythms, Proceedings of BRIDGES: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science - http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~godfried/publications/banff-extende... --- The author published a book titled The Geometry of Musical Rhythm, one of whose chapters is based on the paper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Geometry_of_Musical_Rhythm
on “Euclidean rhythms” ↗…and was somewhat disappointed. Some of the algorithms seems too contrived and specific. (All the code is here: https://abrazol.com/books/rhythm1/software.html) I guess my wish would be a companion to Geometry of Musical Rhythm with lots implementations of code to demonstrate concepts. Euclidean Rhythm implementations seem to be everywhere, but there is SO MUCH MORE to cover. Still, I'm kind of stuck on this idea that there…
on “The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music (2006)” ↗There is also "The Geometry of Musical Rhythm"
on “Music theory for nerds (2016)” ↗