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List processing

OpenMusic
#1

Hi,
I have a slightly obscure question regarding the available set of list operations in Lisp/OM. This set seems to be very comprehensive and my question concerns the decision-making process behind the inclusion of these methods in OM.

.reverse, for example, has a clear correlation with serial procedures (retrograde) and there would seem to be a direct correlation between musical procedures and things like +, -, *, / etc.

Other procedures are certainly very useful in musical applications but don’t seem to be abstracted from actual musical use.

So my question is - where do they come from? Are they “translated” from other (music) programming languages, taken from mathematics, or are they simply the result of OM developers defining every possible way an list of numbers can be manipulated?

I hope this makes sense!

Thanks.
Peter

#2

Dear Peter,

The question is more complicated as it seems. There is no “translation” from/to programming languages/mathematics and music. However the musical concepts and mostly serial are indeed universal concepts that we find in mathematics, and prog. languages also. For instance, reverse is a lisp primitive and not at all a translation of retrograde. It happens that this primitive shares the same “routine” as retrograde in music. So is transposition, modulo, etc… And what about the inverse situation, where music gets its concepts from mathematics and physics (acoustics) such as filters, interpolation, scaling etc.

Best
K

#3

Many thanks for that.
Are there sources of information in the documentation, perhaps in the OM books or wider OM sources that deal with these concepts?

#4

Dear Peter,

Since these are very general and wide concepts, ie. very abstract, and could be therefore applied to any environment, i don’t no such articles or books that deal specifically with these issues. If yo can narrow your request of information, like if you want specific information about the implementation of OM and musical concepts, i recommend these pages (that will be soon updated):

or more general:

One resource in particular:
https://www.mcg.uva.nl/index.html?abstracts/dh-97-g.html&target

Best
K

#5

Thank you very much.