Temporal Organisation of Prime and Co-Primes, Analagous to the Clave Son

Abstract

The study intends to create musical rhythms, performed on six-string guitar designed within metres of primes and co-prime multiples that are analogous to the clave son with impetus towards inheriting qualities of this ubiquitous, familiar, ancient rhythm. Essences of clave son are established through researching historical and cultural musical referents and prior work in the field of computational sciences. Temporal constraints are made to ensure measuring contour is uniform. The rhythmic essences and functions are expressed numerically and analysed computationally to establish constraints under which the prime and co-prime multiple analogs are created. These constraints hope to invoke musical familiarity within unfamiliar musical metrics for myself as the performer. A personal methodology of mapping clave son is developed and the resultant rhythm analogs are referred to as son stellations. Firstly, I develop similarity rules that apply to an apparent congruence of four even beats. In a separate method, I apply Fibonacci and Lucas number sequences to map golden ratio proportion of clave son. Some discoveries of personal significance become central themes including shadow rhythm and contour and I develop my own practitioner responses to these theories and arrive at variants of my own design.