[HN Gopher] John Coltrane illustrates the mathematics of jazz
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       John Coltrane illustrates the mathematics of jazz
        
       Author : luu
       Score  : 93 points
       Date   : 2026-04-07 05:58 UTC (17 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.americanjazzmusicsociety.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.americanjazzmusicsociety.com)
        
       | taylorbuley wrote:
       | I notice it's a double ring, not a single circle. Two concentric
       | chromatic rings, offset. That's not decoration: the outer ring
       | and inner ring are the same field read at a phase offset (looks
       | like a tritone / minor-third rotation). Fault tolerance!
        
         | contingencies wrote:
         | Proto-supersaw!
         | https://static1.squarespace.com/static/519a384ee4b0079d49c8a...
        
         | SoleilAbsolu wrote:
         | Actually appears to be 2 concentric whole-tone rings, not
         | chromatic.
        
       | rectang wrote:
       | The Coltrane changes are great, but on the scale of other
       | harmonic innovations over the years inside Jazz and other
       | traditions. They aren't analogous to Einstein.
       | 
       | What makes Giant Steps so amazing is the sheer speed at which
       | those changes go past -- if you slow it down, it's not that
       | different from other Jazz tunes. It took took years of practice
       | for Coltrane to acquire the specialized skillset for improvising
       | over Giant Steps.
        
       | cloudfudge wrote:
       | As someone who's really into music theory, I am always annoyed by
       | what I perceive as a patronizing faux exaltation of it supposedly
       | being mathematically based. It's not math; it's cyclical
       | patterns. Yes, it can all be represented mathematically, and it
       | is surprising to some people how something with feeling can map
       | to these interesting cycles of discrete values in unexpectedly
       | regular ways, and there are very interesting mathematical ratios
       | involved, but that doesn't make it math. I don't think we need to
       | pat John Coltrane on the head and talk about how he's _actually_
       | kind of smart because he 's _doing math_.
        
         | Pay08 wrote:
         | Ah, so it's the cooking of chemistry.
        
         | aaplok wrote:
         | Actually I think that maths and jazz have something in common
         | in the general public peception that you have to be smart to
         | "get it".
         | 
         | Nobody will try to perform a deep intellectual analysis of Lady
         | Gaga's or Ed Sheeran's work the way they analyse Coltrane or
         | Miles Davis (or Mozart, or Stravinsky). Those musicians are
         | intellectuals of the sort Einstein is, unlike Lady Gaga or Ed
         | Sheeran (in the collective perception). Jazz is intellectual
         | music.
         | 
         | And when they analyse something, "smart" people use maths.
         | 
         | I am putting scare quotes around "smart" here to insist that
         | this is largely a social perception and expected behaviour.
         | However, maths _can_ sensibly be used to analyse art, just like
         | it 's used elsewhere. This is not patronising, it is more that
         | maths provides a useful language to talk about patterns.
        
       | moogly wrote:
       | Odd to mention Einstein and not Slonimsky, whose work he studied
       | a lot and built upon.
        
       | evanb wrote:
       | I don't remember much about music theory but I know enough about
       | symmetry to know that there's a mistake in the diagram at 9
       | o'clock.
        
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       (page generated 2026-04-07 23:00 UTC)