Bill Pirkle writes:

>(How can sounds occuring in time have a shape, which is a visual
>concept.)

This is called a mapping.  I suspect most of this analogy is due to the
notational representation of music, where a melodic line clearly has a
visually sensible shape.  The mapping is from time to horizontal position,
and pitch to vertical position.  We represent "nonvisual" data in such
forms all the time, and this mapping into a two dimensional visual space
is a powerful tool for understanding relationships.

>Everyone matched rhythm to brush strokes, which I did as well.  That is an
>obscure relation requiring a keen understaning of both painting and music

Had I played this game, I would have differed.  As a drummer, my "domain
of discourse" is mostly about rhythm, secondarily about timbre, and
occasionally about pitch.  For me, rhythm is about structure in time.  Yes,
brush strokes carry spatial frequency information, but they are rhythmic
only in the sense that they are repetitive.  Rhythm is not repetition, it
is structure in time, and simple repetition is the most obvious and least
interesting temporal structure.  For me, brush strokes in painting are more
like the timbral nuances that distinguish one player from another.

Analogies tell us as much by where they fail as by where and how they work.
Be wary of assuming that analogies can be perfect, or that they can always
successfully export meaning from one domain to another.

If you want to analogize painting in music, then you have to delineate
the spaces that they work within.  Music works in time, pitch, and timbre.
Painting works in space, color and texture.  Both involve structures and
relationships within and across these dimensions.  I suspect the more
fruitful analogies are with respect to these structures and relationships
rather than the dimensions, and the roles they play in expression.

>Can there be music without rhythm?

No.  Rhythm is inherent in our perception of sound over time.  The rhythm
may be boring or trivial, but it is always there.  Music does not require
rhythm; rhythm is inseperable from music.

len.