My Alizée related musical notation... kind of

Hy all,

Some time ago I have promised that I am going to write about my Alizée-related undertakings... now is the time for such things... or not

Long story short, I am developing my own "musical" notation, which I at first planed to use only as just another tool in the process of musical composition. The main idea was to create a notation that would enable me to transfer ideas (from nature, from everyday life,...) into an abstract notation and then use these abstracted ideas as basis of musical compositions.

Examples:
For example, if I planned to create a melody of a certain group of people, I would take a piece of paper, draw one node for each of them, try to think of as many relations as possible between them and draw these relations. Each relation between X and Y would have been labelled as either a positive number (meaning, person X likes Y), a negative number (meaning person Y does not like X), zero (meaning X is neutral towards Y) or p (meaning X does not know Y, p stands for pause btw). What I would do next is, if there are N people, I would do N walks through the graph, each walk would start and end in a different person, I would collect labels on the way into a vector. With that, I would have obtained N vectors, one for each person. Here comes the tricky part - each vector could be a melody - I would have to find a way of transferring these vectors of labels from the graph into vectors of notes (that is, melodies) and just listen, whether they sound like something that can be used or not... and so on... the purpose of it would be to find some good melodies that would be actually linked to the outside world and not just my imagination.
One could find other examples, for example observing the outline of the mountains and transferring that into vectors of concave or convex points, observing the thickness of successive growth rings on a chopped tree, ...

If you are interested into possible uses, see the 4th section in the PDF of the first version of this notation here: Non-deterministic notation (btw, this first version is shit and flawed from the first letter on).

Why I am not satisfied with the notation I described in the PDF linked above? Because I didn't research it enough. Ideas for this notation can be traced back to ML, when I first heard "something different", while first practical ideas came from ML Lola extended remix, where I found out that one can identify basic ideas behind many songs from Gourmandises and MCE, most notably ML, Lui ou toi, Amelié, ...
My renewed interest into the first album of Nathalie Cardone (which was produced by LB) caused renewed interest into this notation and now I am developing the second version of this notation - it is now renamed into "Abstract discrete wave notation", don't know how long this name will hold.

This time I started much more logically than the last time: I started with the idea that every sequence of numbers can be interpreted as commands which can be fed into a machine and then the output of this machine can be interpreted either as a melody or another stream of commands than one can fed into another machine - that is, melody can actually be thought of as a sequence of commands and vice-versa. With this in mind, I expanded the scope of the first version of my abstract notation from just abstracted ideas from nature into any sequence of integers (and other special commands).
Where am I going with this? I don't know! I just fear that I'll invest a great deal of my time into something that won't produce anything sensible, but at least I'll get my experience and besides, we will be able to say that Alizée got her own musical notation, no matter how bad and unusable it is going to be

This time I have decided to develop my notation in Slovenian and only when it is complete (if it ever will be) to translate it into English... anyway, if you want to see the progress so far, check out these two pdfs (in Slovenian, as said):
Avtomat.pdf (linking my notation to automata theory)

Jeziki.pdf (basing my notation on mathematical languages)

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If you are interested, I can write here in case of any new breakthroughs... so far I have only tackled the mathematical base of the notation, to give it a solid foundation, nothing more...

Thank you for reading this far

[Marka]

I've been thinking about this... at this time, this notation is (musically) going into the direction of being yet another MIDI-ish notation, while I want to focus more on expressive playing. Of course, since it is strictly linear (that is, you can interpret the output of the automata upon which this notation is defined only as a melody), I need to focus on getting the most out of its linearity instead of rushing and trying to create harmonies with it.
I'll try to arrange meetings with people who are more knowledgeable than myself...

I hope that I am not boring anyone with this, I am writing this "blog" to keep myself in check and to report what I do from time to time, even if nobody else cares about what I do. Think of this as a fan creation of a different kind

[Marka]

I must have been dreaming, but I saw another reply in this thread anyway, I strive towards minimizing the knowledge needed to understand what I am doing. Basically, if you are not afraid to see a vector of sets, or a set of sets, you'll be ok and high-school math (or secondary-school math) complemented with Wikipedia will suffice.

[Marka]

I've almost finished the description of the notation (unfortunately it is written in Slovenian at this stage).

Link: ADVN.pdf

It has been renamed into "Abstract discrete wave notation" When I'll be ready, I'll translate it into English. Btw, in this version I removed the reference to Laurent Boutonnat, but I'll re-add it later, together with the reference to Alizée.

[lapinschous]

Originally Posted by Matevz91

Each relation between X and Y would have been labelled as either a positive number (meaning, person X likes Y), a negative number (meaning person Y does not like X), zero (meaning X is neutral towards Y) or p (meaning X does not know Y, p stands for pause btw). What I would do next is, if there are N people, I would do N walks through the graph, each walk would start and end in a different person, I would collect labels on the way into a vector. With that, I would have obtained N vectors, one for each person. Here comes the tricky part - each vector could be a melody - I would have to find a way of transferring these vectors of labels from the graph into vectors of notes (that is, melodies) and just listen, whether they sound like something that can be used or not... and so on...

[Marka]

Originally Posted by lapinschous

Haha Well, Scruffy did his best to get me this: Alizée autograph, I'll use it perhaps to show you this notation in practice, when I'll have time and motivation of course

Anyway, give a mathematician n dimensions, and he will see n+1 dimensions. Just today I've been thinking, how to create another tool for musical composition using formal grammar (that is, to create a kind of a computer language, but for melodies). Seems like my MCE and Gourmandises-based expeditions are still not over

[Marka]

Whenever there is the most to do, I tend to be the most active in my own hobbies Today I should have been studying as crazy, but instead I used 2+ hours to watch En Concert. And I don't regret it!

When I was watching, I was at the same time thinking, what to do next in my venture through mathematics, music, beauty, ... I think that I will finish my notation here (that is, not add any new content into it). It already serves its purpose - it provides a good base for other ideas I (will) have, and therefore any new additions would just make it bloated. Any further additions will therefore be made ad hoc.

The last step regarding this notation I need to take is to translate it into English... huh, I'm not looking towards it

Btw, when I was watching En Concert, I was seriously considering whether Alizée is the most beautiful being I have ever seen. And I think that I am starting to understand, why I really like the way she sings in the En Concert, even if many other people say that she is awful. It isn't just about her voice, it has something to do with this very notation I am writing here and with convexity/concavity...

"Beauty can be described using convexity and concavity."