converting sequences to music - help needed

[Donald Willard]

Iannis Xenakis and Milton Babbitt, q.v., have this all worked out their way
anyhow, as have other composers.  Xenakis has at least one whole book out on
his system using mathematics and computers and Pythagorean ideas, and at
least one of his pieces has been examined to see if it accords with his own
principles.  This analysis I found by looking up the Philllips Pavilion at
the Brussel's World Fair of 1958, which was designed by Xenakis in hyperbolic
paraboloids.  His compositions include
those determined by this and other curves, for instance CONCRETE P-H.
The P-H is French for hyperbolic paraboloid.

Leroy Quet wrote:

> Neil Sloane wrote:
>
> >Does any seqfan know about synthesizing music?
> >
> >I would like to convert certain sequences to music,
> >to hear what they sound like.
> >
> >Thanks!  Neil
>
> I bet there are quite a few sequences which sound somewhat musically
> interesting when converted to musical notes.
>
> A few items:
>
> 1)
>
> It might be advantageous, in many cases, to take the integers (mod 12)
> before converting  them to notes.
>
> But the main purpose of item (1) is to point out that we can use other
> scales than the 12-tone.
>
> As I recall reading, the most "natural" numbers of notes/octive form the
> denominators of the convergents to log_2(3):
>
> http://www.research.att.com/projects/OEIS?Anum=A005664
>
> ...5, 12, 41, 53,...
>
> 2)
>
> An experiment:
> Maybe someone can program their computer to randomly download sequences
> from the EIS, convert the integers to notes (perhaps first taking them
> mod12, or mod-whatever), then have their computer perform these
> "compositions" for them.
>
> The human subject in this experiment could rate each melody, without
> knowing what the sequences' numbers/names are.
>
> If any of the melodies sound particularly interesting, the person could
> then post the sequence number or name to seq.fan.
> (We would probably want the computer to play the same number of measures
> {probably a power of 2} for each sequence, no matter how many integers
> are in the EIS sequence, just to be fair to each sequence.)
>
> 3)
>
> I wonder how, if we are trying to automate the music-creating process
> completely (such as with the experiment above), the notes' lengths should
> be assigned. The easiest thing to do is  just have each note be a
> quarter-note. But we could have another sequence's integers represent the
> note's lengths in each measure, each integer being taken (in a simple
> song-creating program) mod 6 in a 4-beat measure (4 1/4 notes, 2 1/4 note
> + 1/2 note {3 ways to do this}, 2 1/2 notes,1 whole note).
>
> thanks,
> Leroy Quet