Monday, January 18, 2010

Not-so-casual Observation

Voice-against-voice counterpoint is very much like tying knots, specifically like tying ties.  Like a bit of two-voice modal counterpoint, which can only begin with unison, octaves, or fifths, a tie knot can only begin with the two ends outside-out or inside-out, that is to say, in the sartorial equivalent of perfect consonance.   Thomas Fink's Encyclopedia of Tie Knots is a very cool and quite useful site, and Fink's work on designing tie knots by random walks comes uncannily close to using random walks to generate counterpoint.  

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