What I know about music is limited. It mostly consists of songs I’ve heard, beat drops i noticed were off tone or changes that did not make sense sometimes. I notice when the music is well composed but gets boring missing the change, or when i listen to music meaning for it to fade into the noise around me. It is really interesting looking at music from an information theory standpoint. Especially that I know about color theory. I know how complicated color mixing can get, I know the science behind it even when I don’t understand it, I know that you need to see art and understand it, even if you don’t know the science, to be able to create your own. I could not help but compare the two. One is music, the other is color.
Laurie Spiegel talks about music like my art teacher talked about color. The colors that fade, relaxing in the background like the low tones that blend with the noise. The change in music like contrasting colors in a painting bringing the boring but beautiful to an alive and attractive. The idea that one could change the tone not consciously knowing what they are doing, but subconsciously they are using memory, and information they gather from listening to compose a new piece. For me, its the same as drawing a new abstract piece without knowing why the blue looks good on a yellow background.
Drawing from randomness. whether a painting or a music composition, they may all seem random at times. as Spiegel said, “I consider randomness a relativistic phenomenon” something that seems random could make sense in ways we don’t understand. that is where information theory comes in. That is where we can say that the random composition we just made sounds good, and math can prove it. However I still wonder, if knowing too much about the theory of how something works, would that hold us back or move us further.