The Conversation – How a little mathematics can help create some beautiful music

Description

Since the time of Pythagoras around 500 BCE, music and mathematics have had an intimate and mutually supportive relationship.

Mathematics has been used to tune musical scales, to design musical instruments, to understand musical form and to generate novel music. But what can mathematics say about one of the most common features of contemporary music – rhythmic loops?

Repeated rhythmic loops are an essential component of most electronic dance music and hip-hop, and also play an important role in rock, jazz, Latin and non-Western music.

Now, two mathematical models of rhythmic loops – made in a free software application called XronoMorph – can be used to generate exciting new musical structures that would otherwise be hard to compose or perform.