I often see people frame music as mathematical manipulation or try to approach music making from a “first principles” approach, where those principles are mathematics and physics. But watching musicians talk about making music, I seldom see any discussion of the underlying math, and instead see discussions of timbres, instruments, and stylistic/historical influences; musicians who make good music seems to believe “first principles” involves historical knowledge and a well-listened ear, and nothing involving math. My question is: Is thinking about music as applied mathematics a good way to create good music? Or is it just the most easily digestible model of music for the crowd on this site?
> Is thinking about music as applied mathematics a good way to create good music?
As an instruction, I think clearly not, the fact that lots of musicians aren't mathematical at all but create great music seems to prove it to me.
But it is interesting to think about musicians who do seem to think about music this way. Bach is definitely a good example where the system of counterpoint is very complex. I'm not sure if she'd describe herself in these terns, but I've always got the impression Laurie Speigel thinks about music a little like that too. Then there's stuff like Coltrane's Giant Steps, where the whole piece is based around a sort of music theory "trick".
So maybe not generally, but there's definitely some awesome music out of that kind of relationship.
Amusing to see how attitudes toward AI change over time. On page 6, part of the original text has a footnote apologizing to readers far in the future for outdated speculations, then mentions that future readers "may even be an artificial intelligence rather than a human, how wonderful!"
But just a bit before that in the foreword written in the present day, bars AI scrapers from reading or referencing the materials under any circumstances!
Anyway, this seems fantastic and I'll definitely be spending some time diving in.
> then mentions that future readers "may even be an artificial intelligence rather than a human, how wonderful!"
My first thought seeing this post was, I need to find more literature like this, fine-tune a model with that + Logic Pro documentation, then give it an MCP to control Logic Pro and see if it can be my music production assistant.
Note: Nick Collins (the author of this book) and Alex McLean created Algorave. The time I spent learning from the Algorave community was crucial to my later work on Glicol (https://glicol.org/).
Btw, I have a feeling that if you want to learn about computer music, you can send the PDF to LLM and ask what the chapter is about and how to represent it using csound or supercollider.
My experience is that with computer music, you have to keep experimenting and listening in order to truly understand and innovate.
This appears to be mercifully shorter and less intimidating than the must-have bible, "Curtis Roads. The Computer Music Tutorial. MIT Press, Cambs, MA, 1996".
It says it was originally published by Wiley in 2009, and the rights reverted to the author in 2025, whereupon the author released it on the net for free.
If someone wanted to start making computer music I'm not sure I'd recommend this or Curtis Roads' book as a starting point.
These aren't resources for getting started. They're more like encyclopedias for learning about DSP and tech once you've established the fundamentals of music and sequencing.
If a beginner wants practical knowledge for making records with electronic instruments I'd give them a DAW, teach them to record and sequence, teach them basic music theory, and then point them to something like Ableton's synthesis tutorials that will teach them about oscillators, envelopes, filters, LFOs, and basic sample manipulation.
I'm so happy to see Nick Collins taking this on. If you haven't seen his book, Handmade Music, it's an excellent book for music projects. This contribution looks exceptional as well.
I was reading up on the author and saw this interesting bit[0]:
> An algorave (from an algorithm and rave) is an event where people dance to music generated from algorithms, often using live coding techniques. Alex McLean of Slub and Nick Collins coined the word "algorave" in 2011, and the first event under such a name was organised in London, England. It has since become a movement, with algoraves taking place around the world.
I love the world of music production. I started with Ableton Live six years or so ago and it's been a wonderful hobby. It has such a vibrant cottage industry of plugins (sampled instruments, synthesizers, effects, etc) thanks to the VST standard.
Loved this book when I was a student! This is for DSP enclined audience with a focus on musical applications. Not very in-depth if you want to develop your own plugins or DAW but still very informative
Juan García Castillejo published 'La telegrafía rápida, el triteclado y la música eléctrica' (High-speed telegraphy, the three-keyboard system, and electric music) in 1944.
Reminds me of starting college and photocopying digitized instrument wave forms (e.g. guitar string pluck) and then feeding them to a 6502 subroutine that output the waveform to the 8-bit companding DAC in my OSI C2-4P computer from a Basic driver that would play different notes through for songs.
Wow, this book has been published in 2025, and it has zero mention of AI generated music. Not saying it's a bad thing - from the table of content it covers a lot of important fundamentals, but ignoring the elephant in the room is... weird.
85 comments
> Is thinking about music as applied mathematics a good way to create good music?
As an instruction, I think clearly not, the fact that lots of musicians aren't mathematical at all but create great music seems to prove it to me.
But it is interesting to think about musicians who do seem to think about music this way. Bach is definitely a good example where the system of counterpoint is very complex. I'm not sure if she'd describe herself in these terns, but I've always got the impression Laurie Speigel thinks about music a little like that too. Then there's stuff like Coltrane's Giant Steps, where the whole piece is based around a sort of music theory "trick".
So maybe not generally, but there's definitely some awesome music out of that kind of relationship.
But just a bit before that in the foreword written in the present day, bars AI scrapers from reading or referencing the materials under any circumstances!
Anyway, this seems fantastic and I'll definitely be spending some time diving in.
> then mentions that future readers "may even be an artificial intelligence rather than a human, how wonderful!"
My first thought seeing this post was, I need to find more literature like this, fine-tune a model with that + Logic Pro documentation, then give it an MCP to control Logic Pro and see if it can be my music production assistant.
Btw, I have a feeling that if you want to learn about computer music, you can send the PDF to LLM and ask what the chapter is about and how to represent it using csound or supercollider.
My experience is that with computer music, you have to keep experimenting and listening in order to truly understand and innovate.
It says it was originally published by Wiley in 2009, and the rights reverted to the author in 2025, whereupon the author released it on the net for free.
These aren't resources for getting started. They're more like encyclopedias for learning about DSP and tech once you've established the fundamentals of music and sequencing.
If a beginner wants practical knowledge for making records with electronic instruments I'd give them a DAW, teach them to record and sequence, teach them basic music theory, and then point them to something like Ableton's synthesis tutorials that will teach them about oscillators, envelopes, filters, LFOs, and basic sample manipulation.
That's 80% of the necessary skills right there.
> An algorave (from an algorithm and rave) is an event where people dance to music generated from algorithms, often using live coding techniques. Alex McLean of Slub and Nick Collins coined the word "algorave" in 2011, and the first event under such a name was organised in London, England. It has since become a movement, with algoraves taking place around the world.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorave
https://composerprogrammer.com/introcompmusic.html
Introduction to Computer Music, by Prof. Jeffrey Hass
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44744578
[1] Mark Newman's new book: The Science of Music (2023):
https://lsa.umich.edu/cscs/news-events/all-news/search-news/...
Math rock, and microtonality.
https://archive.org/details/latelegrafiarapida.eltritecladoy...