ptynan

Folks,

Check this out. It's a new way to practice scales (and it's fun).

http://www.rollplaydice.com/

PT

Alex Yates

Wow! How cool is that? Thanks for sharing Paul! Tools like this are great for teaching as well as self-help.

Vulgano Brother

I once asked a computer science majoring student of mine to come up with a program to print all the possible permutations of the twelve tone scale (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12; 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,12,11...etc.). He came back a day later with a ream of computer paper (which represented only a tiny bit of the possible output) and described a tongue-lashing from his professor. An excellent way to learn about the meaning of "12!." The dice sound like a much more portable way of generating even some more randomness to our playing!

trpt2345

It is well knwn what the possible scale permutations there are in tempered tuning. It's a factorial 12, as Nicholas Slonimsky pointed out years ago. 479,001,600 to be exact. The other scary thing is that just using eighth notes and eigth rests, there are 40,320 possibilities of rhythm IN ONE MEASURE OF 4/4. So, as Stravinsky said, "I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust." It's true. You can't even begin to exhaust the possibilities of C Major, much less anything else that has been thought of in the past 1000 years. What does this mean? I'd have to say, draw your own conclusions, but music is infinite. However many things you can do there is always one more, which is one definition of infinite I've heard.

Michael McLaughlin

"Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do."
Mark Twain