[mvanga]

Agreed. The patterns are the most interesting bits. Actually, just the fact that there exist patterns is pretty amazing. It's unfortunately hard to see them through the notation and that made it very unintuitive for me for the longest time.

Unfortunately the momentum that Western music notation has, with a few centuries of tradition behind it, means one has to work within that system.

There was an interesting discussion I came across on Stack Exchange while writing the article: https://music.stackexchange.com/questions/67730/why-have-sha...

[codeulike]

re: the patterns, see discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26860627

and my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26861415

[coldtea]

>Actually, just the fact that there exist patterns is pretty amazing.

How so? If patterns didn't exist, it would just be random choices.

Any non-random music making (and thus theory) requires patterns.