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Abstract. In this paper we study some geometric will be omitted in this abstract.
properties of musical rhythms. In particular, we de- Theorem 1 The complement of a Euclidean rhythm
fine two rhythm operations: the complement and the is Euclidean.
shadow of a rhythm, and show some of their prop-
erties. In the last section, we give a brief survey of It is shown in [5] that maximally even rhythms are
the problem of reconstructing rhythms given infor- Euclidean. Therefore, the complement of a maxi-
mation about their time intervals. mally even rhythm is maximally even.
Theorem 2 The complement of an Erdős-deep
1 Introduction. A musical rhythm can be repre- rhythm with n pulses and k onsets is Erdős-deep if
sented as a binary string, where each 1-bit represents and only if ⌈n/2⌉ − 1 ≤ k ≤ ⌊n/2⌋ + 1.
an onset of the rhythm and each 0-bit represents a si- Theorem 3 The complement of a Euclidean rhythm
lence [15]. Another representation of rhythms is that with n pulses and k onsets is Erdős-deep if k and n
of cyclic polygons. A cyclic polygon is a polygon are relatively prime and k ≥ ⌈n/2⌉ − 1.
inscribed in a circle. Let C be a circle with n points
placed at equal distances around its circumference.
A subset k ≤ n of these points is the set of onsets 3 Shadow Rhythms. Several ethnomusicologists
of a rhythm with n pulses. If we draw a straight have argued that African drumming, handclapping,
line between each pair of onset points consecutive and mallet performance is best understood as a mo-
around the cirle in some direction, the result will be tor activity. For example a hand (arm) is raised and
a polygon inscribed in C. We say that a rhythm with then dropped to strike the instrument. According to
n pulses and k onsets is maximally even if the sum Jay Rahn [13], one possible mechanism for the tacit
of pairwise Euclidean distances between onsets on motor mediation of attack points of notes (onsets) is
the circle is maximized. A Euclidean rhythm with n the peaking of the gesture at the temporal midpoint
pulses and k onsets is a maximally even rhythm that between two sounds. He calls the sequence of mid-
can be generated by the EU CLIDEAN algorithm points of the onsets of a rhythm the shadow of the
described in [5]. A rhythm is Erdős-deep if every rhythm. A new rhythm created from this shadow will
geodesic distance that appears between pairs of on- be called here a shadow rhythm. For example the
sets has a unique number of occurrences. Cuban tresillo rhythm given by [× · · × · · × · ] has
the shadow [ · · · × · · · · · × · · · · × · ], which
yields the shadow rhythm [× · · · · · × · · · · ×
2 Complementary Rhythms. Given a set A of n · · · · ] (Figure 1).
elements, and a subset of A, say A∗ , the comple- A fundamental concept that has
ment of A∗ is the set consisting of elements of A received a great deal of attention
not in A∗ . The study of the complementary sets of in music theory is that of maxi-
sets of intervals in the context of pitch (scales and mally even sets [3]. The shadow
chords) has received a lot of attention in music the- operation performed on a rhythm
ory [7, 2, 11]. Rhythm, on the other hand, has been increases the evenness of the new
explored little from its complementarity aspects. A rhythm. Therefore it is worth- Figure 1: The
notable exception is the work of Jay Rahn [13]. Con- while understanding the proper- Cuban tresillo and
sider the Cuban cinquillo rhythm given by [× · ×× · ties of the shadow operation. One its shadow.
×× · ]. Its complementary rhythm is [ · × · · × · · question that comes to mind is: what happens when
×], which is a rotation of the famous Cuban tresillo we continue to perform this operation on a rhythm?
rhythm given by [× · · × · · × · ]. Complementary Does it eventually become a regular rhythm? It turns
sets have many applications such as the composition out that this is a geometric problem that has been in-
of rhythmic complementary canons [16]. Here we vestigated in the mathematics literature.
study some new geometric properties of the comple- The study of properties of sequences of polygons
mentation operation on cyclic rhythms. In what fol- generated by performing iterative processes on an
lows, we present three theorems, the proofs of which initial polygon P 0 has received much attention, and
∗ the shadow operation is just one of many operations
School of Computer Science, McGill University, {perouz,
godfried}@cs.mcgill.ca that has been investigated. Perhaps the most studied
†
Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and sequence is the one sometimes referred to as Kasner
Technology, The Schulich School of Music, McGill University polygons [14]. Given a polygon P 0 , the Kasner de-
scendant P 1 of P 0 is obtained by placing the vertices inherent problem in uniquely reconstructing a rhyth-
of P 1 at the midpoints of the edges of P 0 . More on mic pattern from its multiset of distances.
0 0
Kasner polygons can be found in [4, 1]. 11
1
1 11 1 1
2
Coming back to the shadow operation, let 10
6
2 10
3
2
3
P 0 , P 1 , P 2 , . . . be a sequence of cyclic polygons 9 5 4 3 9
5 6 3