Post rock means different things in America and UK

u.s. post-rock = "we listened to slint"

but i think there's just a laziness on the part of a lot of u.s. listeners who take that slint-ancestry as an excuse to not properly differentiate between post-rock and math-rock; if you make clear that let's say the sea and cake and don caballero cannot fall under the same genre tag, most anyone will agree that the sea and cake represents the actual "post-rock" axis better. better yet insert labradford (epitomizing the thing that brits mean by post-rock that americans don't quite as much) and this would likely still hold.

also the brits remember Too Pure much better.

Aren't Tortoise the 'brand definers' - post-Slint/post-proggy time sigs, non-rock (eg jazz, minimalism, techno) 'influences', albs as studio creations rather than 'real time' recordings, non-rock instruments (eg marimba) etc. etc.

When I say "post-rock," m'self, what I mean is "surely death would be infinitely preferable to this."

Xenakis to thread!

Who he? I'll sort him out. I've got a well of both mathematical and musical knowledge in my house. Who wants some?

haha i once put curl and divergence into an nme review and former engineering student dele f*dele laughed = result

math rock: my officemate just shouted "kahler! einstein!" while making heavy metal riffing noises; this is clearly the defn of the term.

Musical ability can improve your test scores, apparently.

Math rock aside (which I thought mainly meant rock made by guys with phds), I thought the relationship between music and math was, like, a cliche. Pythagoras, the harmony of the spheres, blah blah blah.

So you'd think, but many have tried to convince me that maths textbooks often play a part in music-making. Often in publications I've heard the stereotypical post-rock band being described as having their "noses constantly in maths textbooks." Its merely an attempt to try and inflate the intelligence of this music, and it is, quite frankly, bullshit.

there is sedimented mathematics in all music: you can kid yrself it is of zero consequence if you like, like yr can ignore all the rest of music as a language

there's a huge great book by Helmholtz, Hermann von, On the sensations of tone as a physiological basis for the theory of music, which does a good bit of the math for 19th-century music, followed up by Schillinger, Schenker and a bunch of composer- theorists in the 50s (of whom, maths-wise, only Xenakis *really* knew what he was talking about).

"Anyone who's ever played a guitar, keyboard, percussion, programmed, used a sampler, sequencer, produced a track, engineered a track, written a song, figured out how to play somebody else's song, etc. Whether its geometry or physics, it's all integral (heh!) and anybody who doesn't get that is not going to get any better at whatever they're doing"

Even Briney songs employ some of these elements. Is Britney math-rock?

I would dearly love to read said text but am having far too much fun sitting here chewing cotton wool and sticking pins in my eyes.

britney is math-pop obv

shhhh..[less aboot me + tha bishop SARAH]

[1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4] versus [1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 (+2) 1 2 3 4 5 6 6]

Word problem: a drummer is playing a 7-on-4 rhythm while the bass repeats a four-note pattern in waltz time. If the guitar player is playing six ascending power chords on the backbeat, at what frequency will the first of those chord coincide with both the second note of the bass pattern and the third four-beat on the drums?

Just what I was gonna say.

Damn right I don't.

"You were just proved wrong. That (v. funny) example is one of the MANY ways music and math relate. Tho I realize you're just trying to get on people's nerves."

Me? No, never!

"Shouldn't you be asking why rocks aren't used in 'rock music'?"

Maybe maths and music are intrinsically related, but I don't think bands that are labelled "math-rock" are any more math-related than any piece of music. And I certainly don't think that the kind of music they make is influenced or inspired by the study of maths (as many have suggested). I think that lots of math-rock bands don't have any greater intelligence (outside the musical sphere) than, say, Travis. I think the press try to infuse it with a greater intelligence than it merits. Simple folk like myself used to think listening to music was for joy and excitement, but clearly some prefer to plot each song they hear out on graph paper. Tell you what, I'm off now to listen to the superbly dumb and unmathematical Queens of the Stone Age, you enjoy reading Hermann Von Helmholtz's book. Let me know when you're finished.

I mean, (2+2) is math just as much as (4x^2+2xy-3y^3=22) is math, but I imagine it's self-evident why the latter makes us think "math!"

One is more complex, but neither would require extensive mathematical knowledge. In fact, it calls to mind the kind of maths I did in school when I was 13. As I've already said, I wasn't questioning the musical complexity of the genre, just saying that to compare the makers of this music to mathematicians is to inflate their importance and intelligence. Any piece of music, if dissected mathmatically, would not amount to much more than a basic equation. I also doubt that a lot of people who make mathematical claims for this music would be able to elaborate on it as you just have.

I think nabisco has got it pretty good. And the fact that the kinds of things he's (she's?) talking about aren't all that much more complex, in one sense, than say other rock music, or IDM, or whatever, doesn't mean that the genre label doesn't still point to a meaningful distinction that could be applied to some music. Or that other music that is not math rock or whatever is NOT complex, including in ways that could be described mathematically. So what?

Huh? Sorry, but you're gonna have to make that one a bit clearer. What I'm saying is: to say that a band excels at making complex music is perfectly valid. To say that this band is imbued with mathematical knowledge because of this is not, as their music could not be translated into a mathematical equation of any great complexity. Im not saying that making complex music is invalid, or that being mathematically gifted is more valid, just that one does not imply the other. I'm sure there are many great mathematicians who could not make a rich, complex, rhythmic musical piece.

poss related to being googled re fisting ethan etc

Absolutely, couldn't agree more. Please note that I think that the quality of the music stands or falls on whether listening to it is enjoyable or not.

However, my criticisms were not of the quality of the more complex song, merely that mathematical claims are made for this music that do not bear up to analysis. Especially when these claims are made by people with no knowledge of maths (not referring to anyone on this thread here so don't take offence.) Also, you talk of a "magic way of talking about a song mathematically" - surely if this music is imbued with a mathematical complexity then no such "magic way" would be needed.

1 1 2 3 5 to thread!

See if you can spot an inherent contradiction in this

I keep expecting your next line of argument to be that "heavy metal" is actually a terrible genre name insofar as the guys in Pantera know precious little about the chemical properties of boron, arsenic, selenium, and tellurium.

i'm actually not unconvinced that they're all mark s truth be told...

yves, hunta-d = who they?