Look look! Incomprehensible (and thus impressive, oh yes) academic babble! It's been a while since I've gotten pretentious and academic so here goes: I am a graduate student studying music theory. I do a fair bit of musicology too but the incomprehensibility of music theory is much easier to demonstrate visually. Look at the chart above. That was the culmination of a bit of thought. Not much, mind you, but I didn't whip it out in half an hour. Now what does it mean? I have no idea.

Rather, I know what it is supposed to explain. It takes the fundamental principles of a hyper-hexatonic system and applies them to a chromatic 12-tone pitch space with an octatonic instead of a diatonic scalar/harmonic structure. But what does it really mean in the grand scheme of things? I am academically elated, for example, when I note that my application of Rick Cohn (the originator of the hexatonic system)'s principles to an Octatonic world produces, empirically, results that match historical and musical trends. I am amused that the hyper-ocatonic system can be represented graphically by a constellation of octagonal systems that is itself octagonal. I think this makes the entire concept of a hyper-octatonic system much easier to understand than a purely verbal description. But what does it mean? What significance does it have?

I guess I'm still not completely reconciled with the pointlessness (from a pragmatic point of view) of that which I study. I can not help anybody have a better life with this knowledge, I can not cure any diseases with this knowledge, and even being selfish I can be much more successful (materialistically anyway) as my coding and programming alter ego. Contributing to this abstract notion of a world of cultural/academic "knowledge" is still disturbing to me sometimes, maybe because I can't grasp the idea of that sort of contribution as the only contribution which defines me. I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that I am aware of this and will continue to think about it and let it inform my actions.

But enough random brooding. Here's a reward for making it this far. It's not legal, oh no, but it's ever so impressive: