Fractal Music


Common Mistakes

A quick websearch will reveal many putative examples of fractal music. Unhappily, in many of these the notion of fractality is not treated with sufficient understanding of properties necessary to say something is fractal.

Although we could devote an entire lab to such examples (and we make the gloomy prediction that by 2010 we could fill a whole book), here we content ourselves to consider three classes of examples.

Transliteration: any methodical processing of any fractal image produces fractal music.

All Iteration: iterative processes often generate fractals, so any music generated by any iterative process is fractal.

Limited Self-Similarity: the musical equivalent of the Russian dolls error.

The web is filled with great wonders. Starting from the NASA website in about four mouse clicks we got here.

By now the web has grown to over 3 billion sites. Almost any topic you care to study can be found on one, more likely many, websites.

As part of their work, or hobbies, or business, millions of people have posted information, the results of their investigations or imaginations, on the web. This is a source of information unparalleled in human history.

But also it is the wild west, unreviewed, presenting any amount of nonsense. Be very careful about what you believe.

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