Jazz was always a crowd's type of music. You look at New Orleans, or even go back to the slave traditions, and it wasn't 5 professionals on a heightened stage, and everybody else sat in comfortable chairs, stroking their chin watching.
I was at a concert the other night, and the sax player on stage saw one of his buddies come through the door. This was all during an very good vibes solo, so I was a bit angered when the sax player starts to wave his buddy into a seat right next to the stage. The sax player then started to take pictures of this guy and his girlfriend. But then I realized, jazz has turned into listening to the vibes player solo, and has turned away from having fun with music.
This is in part due to recording. With a recording you can very easily sit in your room and study exactly what the drummer is doing, or what the piano player is doing, and the CD becomes an educational tool for understanding jazz. That is a very necessary part of learning to play jazz, but people have began to take that educational look on all of jazz. It would be very hard to have a party in the middle of the Half Note while Coltrane is playing away, or to not want to study Bird's playing at Minton's playhouse. I respect those venues greatly. But I think jazz also should encourage a revival of the older traditions where everybody (musicians included) can dance and shout and have fun. You don't see that much anymore, at least in the commercial jazz scenes.
I want to see something like this more often. Look at how much fun the crowd is having and how much fun Jimmy is having. Check out the guy at 4:46.
Jazz
July 02, 2008 | |
The Supreme Court
June 26, 2008 | |
I heard something this morning on Bill Bennett's radio show from his guest, who's name I can't remember, and I thought about it a bit more:
A baby can legally be killed (though it's given the witty title of "abortion"). It has done nothing to the outside world. The only problem it has caused is due to it's own conception, which was caused by two other people. So in short that baby dies because two people decided they didn't want they baby they conceived.
A murderer can be legally killed. He has taken an adult (the witty title of "abortion" is no abandon). A rapist cannot be legally killed. The rapist's crime has no sane justification. A man must be mentally unstable to rape a child, in which case he needs to be removed from society. But as Mr. Bennett pointed out, murder is a somewhat defensible crime, in fact the father of a child who was raped may wish to kill the rapist and we could sympathize with that father.
I find it horrible ironic that the Supreme Court does not see this irony. Rape a child, you can't be killed. Kill a man, you can be killed. Be conceived, you can be killed. The most disgusting crime is punished least severely while the other two sympathetic positions are given death.
I do not agree with the death penalty. I think that in the modern era we have the resources to remove a man from society without killing him. The death penalty can be supported as a last means of protecting society, but society is not in dire need of protection with the types of secure prisons we now have. There are all sorts of consequences with life time jailing, most notably cost, but we cannot let money interfier with what is morally correct, namely not taking the role of chosing who dies and who lives into our own hands, away from God's hands.
A New Twist
June 10, 2008 | |
I was fortunate to talk with Eric Gravat today. He really is an intriguingly man. He worked with McCoy Tyner and Weather Report back in the day, and became a prison guard after his wife died, so he could support his children. I guess he stopped playing with McCoy after there was no ticket for him at the airport. Eric later found out that the ticket was under the name Grazat. He has reentered the jazz scene at 60 some years old and is playing with McCoy again along with his own group, Source Code.
The man is a wealth of jazz information. He talked about standing outside a club listening to the Coltrane quartet live. He also said that someone recommended him to Miles Davis, but that he never got to play with Miles. And apparently after a Weather Report gig Miles was standing by the soda machines Eric was visiting and Miles said (Eric can do Miles' voice perfectly) "you sounded great Eric. The rest of the band was shit". I was shaking hearing him talk about Miles Davis and McCoy Tyner so casually, as if they were his buds, which they are.
What I liked best was a little twist on a popular story in jazz. Miles says to Coltrane "why do you play so long" and Coltrane responds "once I get going I just don't know how to stop" and (the new twist) Miles retorts "pull the fucking horn out of your mouth".
Long Live Jazz!
Bernstein at Harvard
June 01, 2008 | |
I loved this video. Bernstein is a genius, but I already knew that anyways.
Socialism
May 29, 2008 | |
I will define socialism to be a system of wealth distribution in which the wealthy willingly or forcibly give money to the poor. In the context of a governmental system we see socialism come about through high taxation of the wealthy, to give to the poor. I do not wish to debate the definition of socialism. I will however point out that "giving" to the poor is an intentionally vague term: giving of programs and giving of money should both be considered. In short, socialism is taking from the rich to give to the poor, without regard for the consent of the rich.
St. Thomas says that humans necessarily possess "things as their own".
"First because every man is more careful to procure what is for himself alone than that which is common to many or to all: since each one would shirk the labor and leave to another that which concerns the community, as happens where there is a great number of servants. Secondly, because human affairs are conducted in more orderly fashion if each man is charged with taking care of some particular thing himself, whereas there would be confusion if everyone had to look after any one thing indeterminately. Thirdly, because a more peaceful state is ensured to man if each one is contented with his own. Hence it is to be observed that quarrels arise more frequently where there is no division of the things possessed."
Further, Basil says about charity, "Why are you rich while another is poor, unless it be that you may have the merit of a good stewardship, and he the reward of patience?" There is no reason to believe that God could not impose socialism. Any musician will know that their livelihood is more or less out of their hands. This is true with every career. The hard working man is not rich solely because he is hard working, but because he has something to work hard on. So then why are some wealthy and others poor? God wishes to allow the wealthy to be charitable, and allow the poor to be patient.
Which is exactly why socialism is wrong, because it deprives the wealthy of the chance to freely exercise charity and the poor the chance to freely exercise patience. Remember that acts which are freely done are more virtuous than acts that are done due to outside pressure.Further more, it deprives the wealthy of the private property that they are rightly possess. Therefor socialism is a form of theft, because the government is taking what is not theres, and what is rightly owned by another.
Socialism can therefore not be defended on moral grounds or on social grounds because as St. Thomas pointed out, civil unrest is immanent when private property is denied.
There are many objections that could arise in the course of this that I omitted for brevities sake, so if you find it unconvincing in any way, please comment and I will respond. I didn't want to bog down the reader with a lengthy article, but the writings of St. Thomas (as always) and others provide convincing refutations of objections that could arise.
I plan on doing a further post on the purpose of government, and the purpose of taxation later. But as for now let it suffice that socialism is not the correct form of either.
Another Quote
May 11, 2008 | |
On a more trivial note, I love this line in The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton). You have to read it in context. Ponyboy says:
I was still thinking about it [Soc girls] while I was doing my homework that night. I had to read Great Expectations for English, and that kid Pip, he reminded me of us - the way he felt marked lousy because he wasn't a gentleman or anything, and the way that girl kept looking down on him. That happened to me once. One time in biology I had to dissect a worm, and the razor wouldn't cut, so I used my switchblade. The minute I flicked it out - I forgot what I was doing or I would never have done it - this girl right beside me kind of gasped, and said "They are right. You are a hood." That didn't make me feel so hot. There were a lot of Socs in that class - I get put in A classes because I'm supposed to be smart - and most of them thought it was pretty funny. I didn't, though. She was a cute girl. She looked real good in yellow.
I can't yet decide whether I like that line because I'm a teenager or a reader.
It reminds me of the line in some Greek epic or play where they describe Athena (I think) as having beautiful ankles.
And it reminds me of the Blink-182 song "All The Small Things"... I'm somewhat sorry to say.
----------
Happy Mother's Day. To bad nobody knows that it is (maybe was) a religious holiday.
---------
I have covered philosophy, teenage angst books and the popular ignorance of religious holidays in one day. Don't expect to much posting until the second week in June.
Frightning
| |
Via Soren Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling):
If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the foundation of all there lay only a wildly seething power which writhing with obscure passions produced everything that is great and everything that is insignificant, if a bottomless void never satiated lay hidden beneath all–what then would life be but despair? If such were the case, if there were no sacred bond which united mankind, if one generation arose after another like the leafage in the forest, if the one generation replaced the other like the song of birds in the forest, if the human race passed through the world as the ship goes through the sea, like the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless activity, if an eternal oblivion were always lurking hungrily for its prey and there was no power strong enough to wrest it from its maw–how empty then and comfortless life would be!
On the first read I wasn't sure what he was saying, and marveled at the density of his prose. On the second read I understood enough to know I had to read it a third time. And on the third read I understood the immensity of what he was saying.
More Still
May 07, 2008 | |
I wised up my code a bit. It now displays only the digit I chose in a list, rather than every digit in a long print code way. And I am using uppercase letters. My lack of sleep was severely limiting my programing thinking...
A cursory study of the second digits (you'll note I forgot to change my a, b back to 0,1) revealed that there is no pattern in the first 10000 digits in base 10. My computer isn't powerful enough (or my script is to clunky) to go any farther and I want to get some sleep to avoid further lapses of thinking.
All of the really successfully blogs are dedicated to one, sometimes obscure, niche thing. This blog has literary commentary on song lyrics, discussion of the state of music today and mathematics using computer programing. It'd be a wonder if anybody read it.
Further Fibonacci Findings
May 06, 2008 | |
I think my last post was poorly organized and my "finding" was really simplistic; I was subtracting Fibonacci numbers to get Fibonacci numbers which isn't profound. But I did explain the video in purely mathematical terms, mainly that the ones digit of the Fibonacci numbers in base 12 repeats in a pattern of 23 numbers. This is my new, better organized finding. I'm sure somebody else has found this before. I initially thought this could be used as a definition for the Fibonacci sequence but what I have researched so far doesn't help much. I've discovered the patterns in the ones digit for the Fibonacci numbers in bases 2-24.
I used the following Python script to do my research:
---
import string
abc = string.digits + string.letters
def base(number, radix):
"""base(number, radix)
inverse function to int(str,radix) and long(str,radix)
"""
if not 2 <= radix <= 36:
raise ValueError, "radix must be in 2..36"
result = []
addon = result.append
if number <>
number = -number
addon('-')
elif number == 0:
addon('0')
_divmod, _abc = divmod, abc
while number:
number, rdigit = _divmod(number, radix)
addon(_abc[rdigit])
result.reverse()
return ''.join(result)
a,b=0,1
print a
for n in range():
print base(b,radix)
a, b = b, a+b
-----
I stripped the ones digit manually. Any help on how to do that using Python would be greatly appreciated.
----
In base 2 the pattern "0,1,1" repeats in the ones digit.
In base 3 the pattern "0, 1, 1, 2, 0, 2, 2, 1" repeats in the ones digit.
Base 4 "0, 1, 1, 2, 1"
Base 5 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 0, 3, 3, 1, 4, 0, 4, 4, 3, 2, 0, 2, 2, 4, 1"
Base 6 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 2, 1, 3, 4, 1, 5, 0, 5, 5, 4, 3, 1, 4, 5, 3, 2, 5, 1"
Base 7 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 1, 6, 0, 6, 6, 5, 4, 2, 6, 1"
Base 8 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 0, 5, 5, 2, 7, 1"
Base 9 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 4, 3, 7, 1, 8, 0, 8, 8, 7, 6, 4, 1, 5, 6, 2, 8, 1"
Base 10 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 3, 1, 4, 5, 9, 4, 3, 7, 0, 7, 7, 4, 1, 5, 6, 1, 7, 8, 5, 3, 8, 1, 9, 0, 9, 9, 8, 7, 5, 2, 7, 9, 6, 5, 1, 6, 7, 3, 0, 3, 3, 6, 9, 5, 4, 9, 3, 2, 5, 7, 2, 9, 1"
Base 11 "0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 2, A, 1"
Base 12 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 1, 9, A, 7, 5, 0, 5, 5, A, 3, 1, 4, 5, 9, 2, B, 1"
Base 13 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 0, 8, 8, 3, B, 1, C, 0, C, C, B, A, 8, 5, 0, 5, 5, A, 2, C, 1"
Base 14 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, D, 7, 6, D, 5, 4, 9, D, 8, 7, 1, 8, 9, 3, C, 1, D, 0, D, D, C, B, 9, 6, 1, 7, 8, 1, 9, A, 5, 1, 6, 7, D, 6, 5, B, 2, D, 1"
Base 15 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, D, 6, 4, A, E, 9, 8, 2, A, C, 7, 4, B, 0, B, B, 7, 3, A, D, 8, 6, E, 5, 4, 9, D, 7, 5, C, 2, E, 1"
Base 16 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, D, 5, 2, 7, 9, 0, 9, 9, 2, B, D, 8, 5, D, 2, F, 1"
Base 17 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, D, 4, 0, 4, 4, 8, C, 3, F, 1, G, 0, G, G, F, E, C, 9, 4, D, 0, D, D, 9, 5, E, 2, G, 1"
Base 18 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, D, 3, G, 1, H, 0, H, H, G, F, D, A, 5, F, 2, H, 1"
Base 19 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, D, 2, F, H, D, B, 5, G, 2, I, 1"
Base 20 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, D, 1, E, F, 9, 4, D, H, A, 7, H, 4, 1, 5, 6, B, H, 8, 5, D, I, B, 9, 0, 9, 9, I, 7, 5, C, H, 9, 6, F, 1, G, H, D, A, 3, D, G, 9, 5, E, J, D, C, 5, H, 2, J, 1
Base 21 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, d, 0, d, d, 5, I, 2, k, 1"
Base 22 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, D 1, C B 1, C B 1, C D 3, G, J, D, A, 1, B, C, 1, D, E, 5, J, 2, 1, 1"
Base 23 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, d, L, B, 9, K, 6, 3, 9, C, L, A, 8, I, 3, L, L, M, 0, M, M, L, K, I, F, A, 2, C, E, 3, H, K, E, B, 2, D, F, 5, K, 2, M, 1"
Base 24 "0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, D, L, A, 7, H, 0, H, H, A, 3, D, G, 5, L, 2, N, 1"
I wish there was a way to distinguish between an O (letter o) and a 0 (zero) on blogger and in Python, a 1 (one) and a l (letter L). I will tweek the program a bit to use upper case letters only and use a symbol instead of O and then check all of my work, because there may be some mistakes.
At some later date I may go to base 64. I stopped at base 24 because I saw the L problem arise, and I'm to tired to change the alter the program and persist. To go to 64 I'll have to use & or something for lower case letter L.
I thought there was a correlation between the base and the quantity of numbers in the pattern, and while there may be, I was wrong in my initial idea that it was (2b-1). While that works for base 12 and base 2 (which were the only I had studied at that point), it fails to work with other bases (not to mention I counted Base 12 wront.. The more I think about it, the numbers seem too random to work.
(2,3)
(3,8)
(4,5)
(5,20)
(6, 24)
(7, 16)
(8, 12)
(9, 24)
(10, 60)
(11, 9)
(12, 24)
(13, 28)
(14, 48)
(15, 40)
(16, 24)
(17, 36)
(18, 24)
(19, 18)
(20, 60)
(21, 16)
(22, 33)
(23, 48)
Also, I find it interesting that all of the patterns end with 1.
Fibonacci sequence and music
May 05, 2008 | |
An interesting video can be found here about the Fibonacci sequence and music. The video shows that if you assign each musical note a number and then apply those numbers to the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence you will get a repeating musical pattern. I will first explain his idea in my own way, and then add another dimension using the terminology I set forth.
In the video he says C=1, C#=2, D=3 ... A=10, A#=11, B=12, C=13. I don't like this. Instead I will use base 12 instead of base 10. So then C = 1, C#=2... A=A, A#=B, B=10, C=11.
The Fibonacci sequence (for those who don't want to read the rather lengthy and intense wikipedia article) was found by Fibonacci, an Italian mathematician. It was used to explain a problem about rabbit reproduction, but is much more important than that. The sequence goes 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13... Each number is created by adding the two before it. So the next number in the sequence is 21. The sequence is hugely related with the golden proportion.
But as I stated, we are using base 12, not base 10, so we need to convert the Fibonacci sequence.
The first 45 numbers in base 10:
1, 1, 2 ,3, 5
8, 13, 21, 34 ,55
89, 144, 233, 377, 610
98, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765
10946, 17711, 28657, 46368, 75025
121393, 196418, 317811, 514229, 832040
1346269, 2178309, 3524578, 5702887, 9227465
14930352, 24157817, 39088169, 63245986, 102334155
165580141, 267914296, 433494437, 701408733, 1134903170
Now we convert them to base 12:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5
8, 11, 19, 2A, 47
75, 100, 175, 275, 42A
6A3, B11, 15B4, 2505, 3AB9
6402, A2BB, 14701, 22A00, 37501
5A301, 95802, 133B03, 209705, 341608
54B111, 890719, 121B82A, 1AB0347, 310BB75
5000300, 8110275, 11110575, 1922082A, 2A3311A3
27551A11, 75882BB4, 101214A05, 176A979B9, 2780B0802
Now we analyze the first digit of each number:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5
8, 1, 9, A, 7
5, 0, 5, 5, A
3, 1, 4, 5, 9
2, B, 1, 0
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8
1, 9, A, 7, 5
0, 5, 5, A, 3
1, 4, 5, 9, 2
Note hear that the pattern repeats. The first section is repeated in the second two. I will therefore drop the second sections.
Them the first digit is converted into notes (B=0):
C, C, C#, D, E
G, C, G#, A, F#
E, B, E, E, A
D, C, D#, E, G#
C#, A#, C#, B
The video stops here. Here is my discovery. If we analyze the intervals between the notes (considering them all ascending intervals) we obtain:
P, m2, m2, M2
m3, P4, m6, M7, M6
m7, P5, P4, P, P4
P4, m7, m3, m2, M3
P4, M6, m3, m7
And if we convert the intervals into number of half step jumps we obtain:
0, 1, 1, 2
3, 5, 8, 1, 9
A, 7, 5, 0, 5
5, A, 3, 1, 4
5, 9, 2, B
This is the same sequence of numbers that we began with when we striped the first digit of the Fibonacci numbers in base 12.