Music 253
Old front page for Music 253: http://www.ccarh.org/courses/253
What is Musical Information?
Musical information (also called musical informatics) is a body of information used to specify the content of a musical work. There is no single method of representing musical content. Many digital systems of musical information have evolved since the 1950s, when the earliest efforts to generate music by computer were made. In the present day several branches of musical informatics exist. These support applications concerned mainly with sound, mainly with graphical notation, or mainly with analysis.
Musical representation generally refers to a broader body of knowledge with a longer history, spanning both digital and non-digital methods of describing the nature and content of musical material. The syllables do-re-mi (identifying the first three notes of an ascending scale) can be said to represent the beginning of a scale. Unlike graphical notation, which indicates exact pitch, this representation scheme is moveable. It pertains to the first three notes of any ascending scale, irrespective of its pitch.
The Pitch Component
Two kinds of information--pitch and duration--are pre-eminent, for without pitch there is no sound, but without duration pitch has no substance. Trained musicians develop a very refined sense of pitch. Systems for representing pitch span a wide range of levels of specificity. Simple discrimination between ascending and descending pitch movements meet the needs of many young children, while elaborate systems of microtonality exist in some cultures.
There are many graduated continua for describing pitch--diatonic scales, chromatic scales, enharmonic scales, and so forth. Absolute measurements can be used to describe pitch in terms of frequency, but other nomenclature may be necessary to relate a given pitch to a particular musical context.
The Duration Component
Duration has contrasting features: how long a single note lasts is entirely relative to the rhythmic context in which it exists.