Longitudinal Vibrations and Probability Spaces...

No.. This is neither a physics nor mathematics related post... Its about sound and music :D

Disclaimer: This post contains ideas from my limited understanding of sound and music. I'm sure these ideas will evolve with time as I progress on my journey. Please forgive any factual errors and other gross misconceptions if any and do notify me of the same... Thanks :D

Its been few years since my last post and a LOT has happened since then. Those of you who have met me in the recent past know that I'm shifting my track altogether into the field of Indian Classical Music; and I thought it would be a good idea to rejoin the blogging world with a post about my understanding of the same. One of my professors makes a very interesting statement, "Music is nothing but sound designed". All the design principles we use for architecture, technology design, ambiance designing etc all apply here. In fact, sound design is one of the most primary design endeavors of the human mind.

Sound is basically longitudinal vibrations. On the face of it, all you need to describe any sound is frequency and amplitude. But the kind of information transmitted through sound is truly mind-boggling. A simple sentence spoken contains so much information that is being sent through just these vibrations. All the different sounds of the words, modulations generated by the speaker, the speaker's voice itself which varies greatly person to person and even time to time! The same note played on an acoustic guitar sounds very different from that played on a piano or a trombone. Its vary fascinating, how all this information is encoded in the form of longitudinal vibrations and transmitted through air. We still cannot exactly replicate the natural sounds of any instrument or the human voice electronically. Even in the best and most expensive synthesizers in top studios, there is always a slight deterioration in quality when compared to the original acoustic instrument/ voice.

Sound Design in very inherent in all of us. We all do voice modulations, play around with tones based on emotions being experienced/ conveyed, modulate volume etc... You can hear a person and say if he/she is happy, sad, angry, worried etc.. even if you do not know the person in any way, or even if you are unaware of the context. Atleast to a certain extent. This means there is some sound design ideology inherent in all of us. Music is just building up on this technology.

Music is basically patterning of sounds around a reference point, called the 'Shadaj' or 'Sa' in Indian music or the 'Tonic' or 'Key' in Western music. These patterns are then used for some purpose, typically to convey an emotion or message (either using the help of lyrics or without). We all know the 7 basic notes Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni.. Some of us know the 5 other notes that come in between. These 12 notes together comprise what is known as the chromatic scale.
The most interesting thing is that every genre of music in this entire world, be it Carnatic or Reggae, Jazz or Pop, Dhrupad or Blues; they all use the same 12 notes! The approach to patterning these 12 notes about the origin varies from genre to genre. The grouping of notes, harmonies, melodic concepts and approaches all are very different. But the basic ingredients are just these 12 notes.

Then comes the idea of time. Music has a past, present and future! A note sounds different each time depending on what was played before it. And many times, by hearing a note, you can predict what will follow after it. Its like a probability space... At various points of time, each of these 12 notes will have a certain probability distribution. Western Classical music typically discretizes notes and creates beauty through exploring harmonies. Indian music does not explore harmonies. It instead focuses on creating beautiful smooth melodic curves, and you will rarely hear discrete notes sung by an Indian. The probability curve will depend on the message being conveyed and in Indian Classical music, on the raag chosen. Changing this distribution even slightly creates a whole new feeling! There are many pairs of raags which differ by just one note, but sound completely different! One could be a very serious melancholic feeling while the other could be a peppy romantic feeling...

The world of music is truly endless, and one could lose himself/ herself completely in it for few lifetimes. Not unlike any other research endeavor, it has a lot of intellectual (and even spiritual!) challenges to offer and many dimensions to be explored and discovered. I am very excited to be starting this journey into the world of music and will share my experiences and learnings better once I dive into it...