Re: music by numbers

["jimfowler" <jimfowler@prodigy.net>]

"Everything in music goes by numbers"

playing the devil's advocate, but who is to say which came first?  for
example: perhaps everything in numbers goes by music.  why are numbers
considered the basis?

"The Tone Clock is nothing more than a visual aid in sharpening the
awareness of meaningful harmonical structures, and as such it shows worlds
of possibilities beyond the obligatory major and minor."

if you remove the ears, you remove precisely what it is that makes it 
music.
i can't think of the last time that music was "visual" and thus i
(personally) not only need but see NO purpose in visual representations of
anything musical.

"I am not a composer, but I can imagine a composer's fascination in
discovering a geometrical pattern underlying practically all Western music,
containing more experimental links still to be tested!"

yeah, the same kind of fascination that might accompany the discovery that
dreams are merely synaptic farts.  interesting, but not moving.

when you use the word "experiment", it makes it sound like you're talking
about science and not music.  music is neither science nor sport.

"OK, you like a sound or you don't, no matter if
 you are familiar with acoustical theory, but if you want  to control your
sound production or create new sounds, it helps to know how sound is
generated, and which are the physical patterns governing sound production."

the physical patterns are of virtually no signifcance.  once again, music 
is
not science (although it can be distilled into such).  do you really think
that the beach boys were thinking numbers when they recorded pet sounds?
how about kevin sheilds when he was blowing creation's budget on 
"loveless"?
perhaps it does help to know how sound is generated, etc. but i state that
it doesn't hurt to not know.

ah, beer.  makes the conversation much...more...zzzzzzzzzzz

-jim