Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Musical Sound: A Mathematical Approach To Timbre, Timothy Weiss (Class Of 2016)

Writing Across the Curriculum

What is the mathematical reasoning behind the ear’s ability to distinguish two completely different musical sounds? In answering this question, one must call to mind a fundamental term with regards to music: timbre.

The Fourth Movement Of György Ligeti's Piano Concerto: Investigating The Musical-Mathematical Connection, Cynthia L. Wong

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This interdisciplinary study explores musical-mathematical analogies in the fourth movement of Ligeti’s Piano Concerto. Its aim is to connect musical analysis with the piece’s mathematical inspiration. For this purpose, the dissertation is divided into two sections. Part I (Chapters 1-2) provides musical and mathematical context, including an explanation of ideas related to Ligeti’s mathematical inspiration. Part II (Chapters 3-5) delves into an analysis of the rhythm, form, melody / motive, and harmony. Appendix A is a reduced score of the entire movement, labeled according to my analysis.

A Study Of Chemistry: For Wind Ensemble, Morgan Duff

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Many musicians have a limited understanding of chemistry, while many chemists aren't familiar with details of music theory or composition. Through the composition of a four-part musical work based entirely on several broad areas of chemistry, certain relationships have been shown between music and chemistry. Because of the overlap between certain scientific concepts and many aspects of music theory, it is possible for members of both fields to use what they already know in order to gain a deeper understanding of the other, very different, subject. Because everyone has learning strengths in differing areas, I believe the use of disciplinary …

Drawing Numbers And Listening To Patterns, Loren Zo Haynes

Honors College Theses

The triangular numbers is a series of number that add the natural numbers. Parabolic shapes emerge when this series is placed on a lattice, or imposed with a limited number of columns that causes the sequence to continue on the next row when it has reached the kth column. We examine these patterns and construct proofs that explain their behavior. We build off of this to see what happens to the patterns when there is not a limited number of columns, and we formulate the graphs as musical patterns on a staff, using each column as a line or space …

Musical Behaviours: Algorithmic Composition Via Plug-Ins, Bruno Degazio

Publications and Scholarship

The author’s recent software research addresses a deficiency in commercial musical composition software: the limited ability to apply algorithmic processes to the practice of musical composition. The remedy takes the form of a software plug-in design called “musical behaviours” — compositional algorithms of limited scope that can be applied cumulatively and in real time to MIDI performance data. The software runs on the author’s software composition platform, The Transformation Engine.

Algorithmic Music Composition And Accompaniment Using Neural Networks, Daniel Wilton Risdon

Senior Projects Spring 2016

The goal of this project was to use neural networks as a tool for live music performance. Specifically, the intention was to adapt a preexisting neural network code library to work in Max, a visual programming language commonly used to create instruments and effects for electronic music and audio processing. This was done using ConvNetJS, a JavaScript library created by Andrej Karpathy.

Several neural network models were trained using a range of different training data, including music from various genres. The resulting neural network-based instruments were used to play brief pieces of music, which they used as input to create …