The patterns of music

A friend-of-the-blog from across the world has sent us a link which has us enthralled... the beauty of musical notation.

The link was to an entry about Tibetan music which uses lines and contours to relay information about how to perform chants and instrumental pieces. You can read much more about this on the link here, and see more on the Google Arts and Culture site.

The pieces are extraordinary, aren't they? The fascinating shapes of the lines would translate, but probably not easily, into woven fabrics! However, the interweb being that hole into which one can fall for a happy few hours, this came up on a search for "Tibet", "music" and "woven fabrics". Although nothing to do with musical notation, the idea for using cassette tapes to create textiles (not exactly a new idea, even in 2013,  but an interesting one) came thttps://www.schoyencollection.com/music-notation/graphic-notation/tibetan-yang-yig-ms-5280-1o the artist, Alyce Santoro, after seeing Tibetan prayer flags waving in the breeze. These flags often have mantras printed onto them which the wind "plays", sending good messages out into the world. Isn't that a lovely idea? Alyce, on seeing the flags, was reminded of her family boating experiences when they would attach cassette tape to the sails of the craft to indicate the wind direction. 

Thank you to our correspondent across the globe. We appreciate these interesting things you send in. 

Image: the Schoyen Collection.