Re: fractal loops (was: keeping loops interesting)

["Krispen Hartung" <khartung@cableone.net>]

Okay, I understand the sequence of actions here, but I still don't see how 
this makes the music fractal.. How is the whole piece depicted in a 
similar 
way within itself?  Where is this recursive similarity?  I should be able 
to 
examine the whole piece as a pattern and see this pattern repeated in a 
"similar" fashion inside itself.  Remember, the extreme or ideal example 
her 
is that of a holographic plate, where you can break it in half and see the 
original images preserved, and so on, etc.  I don't think playing rootless 
chords counts, as that would make every single jazz piano part I've heard 
fractal (as they tend to drop their roots and fifths).  So I'm still not 
clear on what makes a piece of fractal music "fractal" in the way that the 
innovators of fractal images defined it.

I'm trying to think to myself of an example here.  I suppose if a piece of 
music has four movements, and each of those four movements has four 
components, that is sort of a similar pattern repeating in the parts of a 
whole...but that seems like a stretch just to call the piece "fractal", as 
this would be based purely on a simple similarity between quantity of 
movements and components within those movements. And we're not even taking 
actual musical notes here.  Now, in your example below, Rainer, if you had 
looped a melody with only C, Ab, D, and G, and then you looped chords over 
that melody, using only those four notes, but interpreting them 
differently 
based on what is the "implied" tonic, then that in a way is seeing a 
similar 
pattern inside a larger holistic pattern...but, I still think this is a 
stretch....a BIG stretch, because the pattern is merely the recurrence of 
notes used in the whole melody, inside the chords.  When the piece is 
done, 
there is no real pattern of a whole repeated in its parts, because the 
whole 
song becomes the "whole".  Then if we look inside that whole, what is 
repeated in a similar fashion? So, I don't think this is a good example 
either. The four movement / four component within each movement stands to 
be 
a better, albeit weak example.

Call me a skeptic or a pain in the ass (whichever you prefer), or call me 
dense because I am overlooking the obvious here, but aside from the 
trendiness of calling a piece of music fractal because it is based on 
mathematical manipulation of notes, can someone provide another example 
that 
illustrates the concept of recursive similarity?

Kris


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 19, 2006 10:38 AM
Subject: fractal loops (was: keeping loops interesting)


>> But I am still at loss how this applies to music. Are folks
>> saying that you create a piece of music where the pattern as
>> a whole can be found repeated in a similar way inside that
>> overall pattern?  I need a more concrete example of this.
>
> Ok, try this as an example (and you can play along using Mobius if you
> like...):
>
> first start off with a very simple melodic segment. Like C Ab D G in 
> quarter
> notes legato. You now have a one-bar loop.
> Now copy that loop to another track and set that to Rate -24. This loop 
> now
> plays with 1/4 of the tempo. Now you got your fractal counterpoint. Of
> course, those Baroque counterpoint guys will smack you because you move 
>in
> fifth parallels at the end of bar four...but if you do something like it
> without the ugly parallels, this is something J.S.Bach has done before
> numerous times.
>
> Now for something even more interesting. Transpose your first loop one
> octave down, so it becomes a bass line. Mute your second loop (the four 
> bar
> length one) and record a third loop. Here you play chords, each one one 
> bar
> in length:
>
> 1: G-Bb-Eb (Eb chord)
> 2: F-C-D (Dm7)
> 3: F-Ab-C (Fm)
> 4: F-B-D (B0)
>
> Now you have this repeating one-bar melody over a four-bar chord
> progression. Add a HipHop-Jazz drum groove at a tempo of 98bpm and play 
> some
> soft lead parts, and you're in lounge-style territory. What is fractal 
> here?
> If you examine these chords closely, they all form trunctated chords
> (missing the root), except for the second, which can be seen as a chord
> missing its third.
>
> If you now complete the missing notes in your mind, the chords become:
>
> 1: Cm7 (the C missing)
> 2: Fm6 (the Ab missing)
> 3: Dm7b5 (the D missing)
> 4: G7 (the G missing)
>
> And the missing notes in sequence form...your intial loop! Fractal all 
>the
> way. Btw, hiding some theme in missing notes of a chord progression is a
> trick invented by Beethoven in his op. 110 piano sonata (or was it op111 
> ?).
>
> Rainer
>
>