The Geometry of Musical Rhythm - what makes a "Good" Rhythm Good
(Godfried T. Toussaint)


L. Hofmann-Engl

Book Review (2015)

The title of this book would make the reader expect to be presented with a depiction of rhythm within a geometric framework such as an Hilbert Space. However, the book does neither make use of geometry, neither does it deal with musical rhythm and nor do we learn what makes a rhythm a good rhythm. The book looks at the metric distribution within one bar for various genres such as salsa, rumba and apparently Toussaint's favourite, the clave son. And, as we are dealing with cyclic events they are represented via points on a circle. After having decided that the clave son is somewhat God given, Toussaint then establishes a few pseudo scientific arguments as to why this Divine groove is so superior to all others except that no single reference to music psychology is given within this context. Further, Toussaint observes that other cyclic events too can be depicted via a circle such as the calender and crystals. Clearly, cyclic events can be depicted via a circle. Toussaint attempts to make use of elements of information theory, the Minkowski Space and dynamic programming. However, this is done on such an amateurish level that one does not want to know what Wilhelm Fucks in the 70th of the last century would have said had he seen this book back then.



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Chameleon Group of Composers © 2015