Using imaginary/complex numbers in time signatures.

In other words, a music theory sub is not the place for creativity.

Snark aside, a fundamental aspect of creativity (and one that is seemingly often ignored) is the idea of mapping something from one domain onto the domain of your choice (in this case music).

Sometimes the mapping is obvious. Sometimes not so obvious but because the ideas being mapped are sufficiently abstracted no one cares/notices. In this case, OP attempted to map a mathematical concept onto music, one that doesn't have any obvious mapping.

I'm not convinced OP's method fulfills my aesthetic requirements but that's largely because my mind wandered somewhere around the time he reached his conclusion about rotating the real time line up a certain amount. Perhaps another viewing would make it clear or even if OP wrote it out.

But that's not the point, once you start using terms like "pseudomathematical" and "arbitrarily" and "making stuff up" as points of criticism then your entire argument fails as you are no longer addressing OP's creative mappings but instead are looking for something that maps isomorphically. As an example, what you appear to be doing is the same thing the critic who complains about Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra not mapping perfectly onto the source material. We know enough to not make that mistake when approaching those domains but it seems like whenever someone tries to map a mathematical concept that doesn't have an obvious mapping onto music that people lose the ability to think abstractly and must instead take things literally and look for things to map perfectly.

/r/musictheory Thread Parent