Heuristics in Music

 

The above chart is based on my Interval Cubes art series which are my own Froebel blocks for music. Friedrich Froebel made a set of blocks back in the eighteenth century, and Frank Lloyd Wright was inspired by them. Music is also a symmetrical block system with 12 equal intervals, subdivided notes values, and so on. 

Music, at least for me, is more of a Systematizing Mechanism (See the interesting book Pattern Seekers), but the emotional components are the "decorations", as architectural decoration is hung on the frame of a building. So I'm not a complete Miesian minimalist. Using the architectural metaphor further, the real grid for my creative style is more "African" in nature and has to do with layers in all the basic building blocks of music: Melody (Counterpoint), Harmony (Chord Changes), and Rhythm (Polyrhythm).

Symbol systems (such as semaphores) share a lot in common music heuristics, such as chord symbols, as abstraction/distillation of harmony, and are a kind of "building block". In the baroque era,  Figured Bass was used as chord symbols are used as a guide or "grid" on which the architecture of music occurs.

More permutations, including guitar "tunings" (totems).