[cordellwren]

I was remarking on your comment that timing variation is noise, as you're relegating far too much into that category due to your narrow view on what counts as musical intent. Rhythmic variations can be highly irregular and even seemingly random, yet follow an underlying logic and be stylistically essential to the performance, which means they would merit notation in some form.

And I'm sorry, but regarding samba, you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I assume you're referring only to the surdo's backbeat, but the essence of the samba rhythm is the sixteenth-note groove played by the pandeiro, and that sound is pretty much as far from "extremely regular" as you can get while still maintaining a consistent pulse. I found the style relevant to bring up, as it's a commonly given basic example of a groove featuring microrhythmic variation.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Rhythmic variations can be highly irregular and even seemingly random, yet follow an underlying logic and be stylistically essential to the performance, which means they would merit notation in some form.

and yet ... in almost all the musical forms where this happens, it isn't notated.

I've played samba (surdo and tamborim parts, mostly). I have many friends who play Brasilian music in general. I think we have a problem with definitions, because the pandeiro part precisely fits my definition of "extremely regular timing". When playing samba, unlike various jazz influenced forms, you do not play ahead or behind the groove. The variation still uses a 16th note grid, albeit with lots of freedom of which parts of the grid to play or not play.

[cordellwren]

I see. I took "extremely regular" to mean conforming to an equidistant grid structure, while you seem to have been talking about the consistency in repetition that makes it a groove.

Regardless, the context of this discussion was determining whether MIDI data can hold "extra information" that the score does not, and I can't agree with most of your statements about that.

> technically, that would be a case of the MIDI data having noise in it, not extra information.

> and yet ... in almost all the musical forms where this happens, it isn't notated.

There's a term for this type of thinking, and it's called "notational centricity."

> "musicological methods tend to foreground those musical parameters which can be easily notated" such as pitch relationships or the relationship between words and music. On the other hand, historical musicology tends to "neglect or have difficulty with parameters which are not easily notated", such as tone colour or non-Western rhythms.

So any given parameter not being notated with ease or in detail doesn't prove anything about its role as an intentional, stylistic element of the music. That is, not being notated doesn't make a parameter any more likely to be "noise," because what does get notated is not a "core representation" of the musical text. In fact, the distinction between the two mostly comes down to historical coincidence or other non-musical factors.

MIDI or other more granulous performance capture standards have plenty of "extra information" to offer that is not noise, and I'd even say it's mostly the case that you'll see a robust SNR there.