A Musical Score for Disease

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• sigh...here we go again istvanpeterbracz on 07/19/2008 at 2:45 PM

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  This is all quite wonderful, and I think that this technology will do great things, but I have a "fundamental" (pun intended) problem with the interpretation of what sound is considered harmonious, and inharmonious. In the healthy example, we have notes represented from the harmonic series, yet what is odd is that the interval of a fourth is used (as the last high note in each phrase)- which was considered very dissonant in early music and avoided. Also odd, is that the Perfect fourth doesn't really naturally occur until a rather vast distance in the natural harmonic series (at least four octaves apart). If one hears it with any less distance, the ear tends to flip the root note to the upper of the two in the fourth. Your "healthy" musical example has it less than four octaves apart- so you might want to adjust that, if you really want "consonance" to be represented here. In the second example (which represented the distorted cancer nodes) "inharmonious" sounds were primarily a fully diminished seventh chord, which consists of symmetrical minor thirds stacked on top of each other .These notes do occur naturally in the harmonic series (although with a different spacing), but it seems to smack of the old (and now tired) way of thinking: "Arnold Schönberg's music can cause cancer because of the dissonances" (this was actually claimed early on). Yet we are in the 21st Century, and a lot of music is now, according to your definition, inharmonious. I think it would be a better choice to use various forms of noise/distortion/modulation to better illustrate the cancer cell's "distortion" of health.  According to your definitions a great deal of music written after 1800 is inharmonious, and should be looked at in the same way you unintentionally present it: as a bad thing. I'm sorry, but that is just wrong, and sad to me (as a composer of many kinds of music)- but its an attitude that can be easily fixed. Rate this comment: (Reply)

  • Re: sigh...here we go again akwhitacre on 07/19/2008 at 4:31 PM

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    I was thinking the same thing, but it seems at this stage, the proof of concept is pretty great at least. To phrase your question another way, what would it mean to you as a patient if your oncologist is, say, Indian? Sure, you'd avoid the battle between Mozart and Schoenberg but you'd be smack in the middle of a much stranger battle between ideas of western harmony and eastern harmony. If this technology takes hold, it would necessitate the dicy process of translating music that's appealing, or not appealing, to ears raised on different kinds of music. Rate this comment: (Reply)

• 	Question gabrielg01 on 07/20/2008 at 12:22 PM
  Posts: 294 Avg Rating:	So, which disease sounds like rap music? :)) Rate this comment: (Reply)

• Detecting the change ebonfyre on 07/21/2008 at 11:17 AM

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  Whether it sound good or bad is certainly subjective and therefore a problem, but what really kills this concept in my mind is - who is going to want to listen to this constantly waiting for a change?  Just listening to the demo track I became bored very quickly.  And if changes were subtle enough over a long period of time, would our brain recognize the change or simply adapt to the new tune believing it to be the same? Rate this comment: (Reply)