Note : This post is NOT meant to be politically correct.
It is meant to convey the Experience of Rhythm. Period.
What's the difference between "counting sheep" vs. 'counting blondes" at a bikini contest?!!
Well...
Doing counting the former Should put you to sleep and counting the latter will keep you awake!!
YEAH!! You've got where this is headed...
An Amazing Video that "Puts the Blonde back into the Bomb-Shell" of Math - "Math Behind The Beats!!"
Wait!! ....
Where DID you think we were headed, hmm... ;-)
TED Page : http://on.ted.com/h0Ijd
Initially however he lost me at "the dollars and quarters" part as I was concentrating on the rush of rhythm gushing from the drums - all the different styles he showed off.
Like being at a "blonde bombshell beach bikini" party (how's that for alliteration).
You can't make up your mind where to Look ahem I meant Listen.
Slowly he goes from across the range of Rhythm - Jazz, Pop, Rap, Latin etc.
Soon you start seeing how these different rhythms are so different.
So what's common across all the different Rhythms?!! And what's different?!!
Different yet similar at the ROOT.
And what is that Root? RHYTHM!!
The Missing Piece of the Puzzle:
1) Buzz-words and terminology:
Most experts use very specific domain-related terms which also have very generic common usage.
Like what do you mean when you say "Beat" is it absolute like12 beats per minute.
I don't think so 'coz you could play the same piece at fast, medium or slow tempo.
So beat seems to be relative to the tempo i.e. sing 12 notes in a tempo for example.
2) It's a good thing it's on Video
The playing is superb but it distracts from the underlying principles.
It's also the reason why you start seeing the video in the first place.
But as you realize that you're out of depth esp. with buzz-words of that domain you start to lose hope of catching up with the bullet-train.
Fortunately since it's a video you can go over it again and again.
The TED Ed audience didn't have that opportunity to go over the whole thing then and there.
How many took the time and effort to Replay and Decode what went over their heads?!!
3) Stories, Morals and Equations:
People understand stories and extract their own Moral of the Story as per their world-view and imagination.
Math is the dry, powdered, dessicated mushroom. To turn it into a delicious soup you need to put back the Juicyness and Chunkiness of THE STORY. The characters that make it come alive. The relations, the tensions, the climax to get people interested. Moral of the story is the take-away but the story is what makes it memorable and your own.
Arithmetic though simple is an Abstract conceptual extract from a Concrete, applied Art.
Normally in academics this extraction of a skeleton from a living breathing body is done for you by people skilled at such symbolic manipulation. If a student goes through the process of inventing his own formula from a given situation(s) he'll really appreciate it. Since he can forward and reverse-engineer and hack his own formula/equation. He can name it the way he's comfortable using his own notation.
This also allows him to Hack his own formula to adapt it to new situations and constraints - more general or specific cases. Richard Feynman followed exactly the same process to create his own notation and own theorems. Though this took more time he did it on HIS terms in a visual oriented 3 dimensional way. This made ALL the difference as he could hack his own notation and develop it as he wanted
4) The audience should have had drums too
Fortunately I was NOT in the audience AND I did Have a drum I could play on. Experiencing the feel of the drum thrumming is UNBEATABLE. Without it the video becomes just a show-piece for the drummmer and a dumbing-down feeling for the audience. In fact this TED Ed Video "Music as a Language" says exactly the same thing - The Baby Jams with Proficient Speakers i.e. it's Parents.
Clayton should have allowed people to play along with him to get them to PLAY AROUND.
Get the FEEL of the instrument. MAKE MISTAKES. JAM with him.
So what IS rhythm?Any Kid who has danced or played hopscotch knows this with their entire body!!
So music is a way to play hopscotch well past childhood?!! :-D
Hopscotch = Hop, Skip, Jump, Pause
Hop, Hop, Hop, Skip, Twirl and Jump. (3 Hops, Followed by Skip and Twirl and Jump i.e. a Sequence)
Hop, Skip, Hop, Skip, Twirl, Twirl and Jump.
You can add a Pause for effect as well.
So Dance it seems is In fact an extension of Hopscotch.
Dance = (Hopscotch) + Rhythm + (Arms out, Point the Toes + Expressions + ...)
These basic units can be used in so MANY different Combinations to create a Rhythm.
How exactly you construct the sequence in what proportions determines the Quality of the Dish!!
Beat/Rhythm is how you take a time-slice and use different combinations to make tasty dishes.
Like in a recipe you need to measure out different ingredients in different proportions to get different textures, flavours, tastes and sub-tastes.
Counting and Proportion leads us to Rhythm.
a) Making a 1 Kg strawberry cake requires at most as much flour, the strawberries can be more or less.
THIS is the basic counting part - Teen Taal, Chau-Taal, Ek-Taal.
b) How much Strawberry/Flour and what's the texture of the strawberry
Putting chunky pieces of strawberries vs. putting a strawberry jam vs. strawberry cream changes the texture.
It's still a strawberry based cake or pie but it FEELS different.
With these 2 basic tools you can take simple steps and create all kinds of interesting and fun games, drums and dance!!
In fact as the drummer showcases you can come up with whole new styles just by changing the count or the proportion.
I had to take small segments of what he was saying and try to connect WORDS and NUMBERS to FEEL
I could sense the beauty of the rhythm (the blonde) but still had to word-associate "36-26-36" with a "particularly delicious shape"!! ;-)
Fortunately I'd just bought a drum for my son so just thought to try it out.
Got it off the show-case and started tapping out some random beats like I usually do with little success beyond a small sequence when things go horribly out of rhythm - kinda like tripping while trying out a dance routine.
First I just played what I liked. Couldn't see the connection though between FEEL and MEASURE.
Saw the video 4-5 times and kept at it off-and-on for nearly an hour.
Tried to work out the connections from what little I'd learnt in Music class.
Too much info needed to focus on small segment at a time. So started to count along with the drummer.
As I counted off the beats verbally at first and then mentally the abstract and the concrete merged into one. Suddenly it clicked.
Still working on it and enjoying the understanding of the range of possibilities opening up!!
Confession - I didn't get this the first time I saw the video!! In fact I had to see it at least 4-5 times just to stop the blondes (i.e. the foot-tapping rhythm) from totally switching off my head and to start seeing and feeling the underlying patterns. Much like writing this blog I had to revisit the experience and find words and numbers to try and first qualify and slowly quantify a FEELING.
That's why I've used the analogy of the Blonde/Recipe/Hopscotch/Dance/Sheep to first Qualify and later Quantify the Experience!!
A bit like the 10 Blind Men trying to FEEL and then struggle to DESCRIBE different parts of the Blonde....er Sheep!!! ;-)
===========
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/a-rhythm-etic-the-math-behind-the-beats-clayton-cameron#review
Q) In your own words, explain how music is mathematical.
Rhythm is about how you "dance" to the music.
To tap out a 10 step dance you could split it into 4 groups like so:
1-2, cha-cha-cha (2+3 Steps),
1-2, cha-cha-cha (2+3 steps)
----
With drums you're setting the rhythm for the dancer(s).
1-2, 1-2-3
1-2, 1-2-3
Normally if this is played in a mechanical way it would sound like a metronome.
----
The reason why it sounds so good when Clayton plays it is, I think because he's embellishing it by putting stress on different beats called up-beat, on-beat, off-beat, down-beat : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_%28music%29
----
Given a fixed amount of time you need to figure out ways of spending the money.
For example 3 dollars (or 12 quarters) is what you can spend within a given time say beats.
You can spend the 3 dollars in many ways like so:
a) In Quarters every 4 beats till you run out of quarters
b) In Triplets every 3 beats till you run out of triplets
c) In Duplets every 2 beats till you run out
d) In Singlets every beat till you run out.
Or you could mix it up by spending 12 beats like so:
Singlet,Duplet, Duplet, SInglet (1+2, 2+1 = 6)
Duplet, Duplet, Singlet, Singlet (2+2, 1+1 = 6)
----
Q) Do you think math will help us become better musicians (and vice versa)?
A)
Counting and proportion seems to be the arithmetic tools for maintaining Rhythm and manipulating it.
I'm sure people learned to drum LONG before they could count. This is because most people have an innate sense of rhythm (developed as a baby listening to heart-beats of mother and natural and biological rhythms). Otherwise there would be very few people who could instinctively appreciate the Rhythm of ALL that music floating around.
What Counting etc help you do is __Maintain__ a particular rhythm and mix-up rhythms in symmetric and "off-beat" ways to bring novelty and expectation and surprise to your drumming. So it IS an essential TOOL for MUSICIANs and not necessarily for their audience.
Most folk beats would be simple and repetitive whereas classical music might use more complicated rhythms/patterns to build up expectation to a climax resulting in applause as the audience "gets it".
In fact the more you know math the more you might be unsurprised and predict what's coming.
It is meant to convey the Experience of Rhythm. Period.
What's the difference between "counting sheep" vs. 'counting blondes" at a bikini contest?!!
Well...
Doing counting the former Should put you to sleep and counting the latter will keep you awake!!
Amazing Video "A-Rhythm-etic - Math Behind The Beats!!"
YEAH!! You've got where this is headed...
An Amazing Video that "Puts the Blonde back into the Bomb-Shell" of Math - "Math Behind The Beats!!"
Wait!! ....
Where DID you think we were headed, hmm... ;-)
TED Page : http://on.ted.com/h0Ijd
Initially however he lost me at "the dollars and quarters" part as I was concentrating on the rush of rhythm gushing from the drums - all the different styles he showed off.
Like being at a "blonde bombshell beach bikini" party (how's that for alliteration).
You can't make up your mind where to Look ahem I meant Listen.
Slowly he goes from across the range of Rhythm - Jazz, Pop, Rap, Latin etc.
Soon you start seeing how these different rhythms are so different.
So what's common across all the different Rhythms?!! And what's different?!!
Different yet similar at the ROOT.
And what is that Root? RHYTHM!!
The Missing Piece of the Puzzle:
1) Buzz-words and terminology:
Most experts use very specific domain-related terms which also have very generic common usage.
Like what do you mean when you say "Beat" is it absolute like12 beats per minute.
I don't think so 'coz you could play the same piece at fast, medium or slow tempo.
So beat seems to be relative to the tempo i.e. sing 12 notes in a tempo for example.
2) It's a good thing it's on Video
The playing is superb but it distracts from the underlying principles.
It's also the reason why you start seeing the video in the first place.
But as you realize that you're out of depth esp. with buzz-words of that domain you start to lose hope of catching up with the bullet-train.
Fortunately since it's a video you can go over it again and again.
The TED Ed audience didn't have that opportunity to go over the whole thing then and there.
How many took the time and effort to Replay and Decode what went over their heads?!!
3) Stories, Morals and Equations:
People understand stories and extract their own Moral of the Story as per their world-view and imagination.
Math is the dry, powdered, dessicated mushroom. To turn it into a delicious soup you need to put back the Juicyness and Chunkiness of THE STORY. The characters that make it come alive. The relations, the tensions, the climax to get people interested. Moral of the story is the take-away but the story is what makes it memorable and your own.
Arithmetic though simple is an Abstract conceptual extract from a Concrete, applied Art.
Normally in academics this extraction of a skeleton from a living breathing body is done for you by people skilled at such symbolic manipulation. If a student goes through the process of inventing his own formula from a given situation(s) he'll really appreciate it. Since he can forward and reverse-engineer and hack his own formula/equation. He can name it the way he's comfortable using his own notation.
This also allows him to Hack his own formula to adapt it to new situations and constraints - more general or specific cases. Richard Feynman followed exactly the same process to create his own notation and own theorems. Though this took more time he did it on HIS terms in a visual oriented 3 dimensional way. This made ALL the difference as he could hack his own notation and develop it as he wanted
4) The audience should have had drums too
Fortunately I was NOT in the audience AND I did Have a drum I could play on. Experiencing the feel of the drum thrumming is UNBEATABLE. Without it the video becomes just a show-piece for the drummmer and a dumbing-down feeling for the audience. In fact this TED Ed Video "Music as a Language" says exactly the same thing - The Baby Jams with Proficient Speakers i.e. it's Parents.
Clayton should have allowed people to play along with him to get them to PLAY AROUND.
Get the FEEL of the instrument. MAKE MISTAKES. JAM with him.
So what IS rhythm?Any Kid who has danced or played hopscotch knows this with their entire body!!
So music is a way to play hopscotch well past childhood?!! :-D
Hopscotch = Hop, Skip, Jump, Pause
Hop, Hop, Hop, Skip, Twirl and Jump. (3 Hops, Followed by Skip and Twirl and Jump i.e. a Sequence)
Hop, Skip, Hop, Skip, Twirl, Twirl and Jump.
You can add a Pause for effect as well.
So Dance it seems is In fact an extension of Hopscotch.
Dance = (Hopscotch) + Rhythm + (Arms out, Point the Toes + Expressions + ...)
These basic units can be used in so MANY different Combinations to create a Rhythm.
How exactly you construct the sequence in what proportions determines the Quality of the Dish!!
Beat/Rhythm is how you take a time-slice and use different combinations to make tasty dishes.
Like in a recipe you need to measure out different ingredients in different proportions to get different textures, flavours, tastes and sub-tastes.
Counting and Proportion leads us to Rhythm.
a) Making a 1 Kg strawberry cake requires at most as much flour, the strawberries can be more or less.
THIS is the basic counting part - Teen Taal, Chau-Taal, Ek-Taal.
b) How much Strawberry/Flour and what's the texture of the strawberry
Putting chunky pieces of strawberries vs. putting a strawberry jam vs. strawberry cream changes the texture.
It's still a strawberry based cake or pie but it FEELS different.
With these 2 basic tools you can take simple steps and create all kinds of interesting and fun games, drums and dance!!
In fact as the drummer showcases you can come up with whole new styles just by changing the count or the proportion.
I had to take small segments of what he was saying and try to connect WORDS and NUMBERS to FEEL
I could sense the beauty of the rhythm (the blonde) but still had to word-associate "36-26-36" with a "particularly delicious shape"!! ;-)
Fortunately I'd just bought a drum for my son so just thought to try it out.
Got it off the show-case and started tapping out some random beats like I usually do with little success beyond a small sequence when things go horribly out of rhythm - kinda like tripping while trying out a dance routine.
First I just played what I liked. Couldn't see the connection though between FEEL and MEASURE.
Saw the video 4-5 times and kept at it off-and-on for nearly an hour.
Tried to work out the connections from what little I'd learnt in Music class.
Too much info needed to focus on small segment at a time. So started to count along with the drummer.
As I counted off the beats verbally at first and then mentally the abstract and the concrete merged into one. Suddenly it clicked.
Still working on it and enjoying the understanding of the range of possibilities opening up!!
Confession - I didn't get this the first time I saw the video!! In fact I had to see it at least 4-5 times just to stop the blondes (i.e. the foot-tapping rhythm) from totally switching off my head and to start seeing and feeling the underlying patterns. Much like writing this blog I had to revisit the experience and find words and numbers to try and first qualify and slowly quantify a FEELING.
That's why I've used the analogy of the Blonde/Recipe/Hopscotch/Dance/Sheep to first Qualify and later Quantify the Experience!!
A bit like the 10 Blind Men trying to FEEL and then struggle to DESCRIBE different parts of the Blonde....er Sheep!!! ;-)
===========
http://ed.ted.com/lessons/a-rhythm-etic-the-math-behind-the-beats-clayton-cameron#review
Q) In your own words, explain how music is mathematical.
Rhythm is about how you "dance" to the music.
To tap out a 10 step dance you could split it into 4 groups like so:
1-2, cha-cha-cha (2+3 Steps),
1-2, cha-cha-cha (2+3 steps)
----
With drums you're setting the rhythm for the dancer(s).
1-2, 1-2-3
1-2, 1-2-3
Normally if this is played in a mechanical way it would sound like a metronome.
----
The reason why it sounds so good when Clayton plays it is, I think because he's embellishing it by putting stress on different beats called up-beat, on-beat, off-beat, down-beat : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beat_%28music%29
----
Given a fixed amount of time you need to figure out ways of spending the money.
For example 3 dollars (or 12 quarters) is what you can spend within a given time say beats.
You can spend the 3 dollars in many ways like so:
a) In Quarters every 4 beats till you run out of quarters
b) In Triplets every 3 beats till you run out of triplets
c) In Duplets every 2 beats till you run out
d) In Singlets every beat till you run out.
Or you could mix it up by spending 12 beats like so:
Singlet,Duplet, Duplet, SInglet (1+2, 2+1 = 6)
Duplet, Duplet, Singlet, Singlet (2+2, 1+1 = 6)
----
Q) Do you think math will help us become better musicians (and vice versa)?
A)
Counting and proportion seems to be the arithmetic tools for maintaining Rhythm and manipulating it.
I'm sure people learned to drum LONG before they could count. This is because most people have an innate sense of rhythm (developed as a baby listening to heart-beats of mother and natural and biological rhythms). Otherwise there would be very few people who could instinctively appreciate the Rhythm of ALL that music floating around.
What Counting etc help you do is __Maintain__ a particular rhythm and mix-up rhythms in symmetric and "off-beat" ways to bring novelty and expectation and surprise to your drumming. So it IS an essential TOOL for MUSICIANs and not necessarily for their audience.
Most folk beats would be simple and repetitive whereas classical music might use more complicated rhythms/patterns to build up expectation to a climax resulting in applause as the audience "gets it".
In fact the more you know math the more you might be unsurprised and predict what's coming.
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