![]() And the ballerina Margot Fonteyn describes the disorder of patterns we can barely grasp: “Life forms illogical patterns. Andrew Bird says “my head is full of shifting patterns and polyrhythmic stuff”, out of which he aims to use “acoustic instruments to create this tapestry of interlocking, lulling parts”. That can be both terrifically exciting and very dangerous, because when you look at your words later, you wonder, 'Did I really mean that, or am I just making verbal patterns?’”. Check out how Neil Hannon in the Divine Comedy uses what is basically a sequential list to build up an emotional picture of confused melancholy:īut what does the artist look for in patterns, and what is their method? The playwright Peter Shaffer admits, rather candidly, that it can be a haphazard process: “I discover what I mean as I write. While Lehrer is brilliant craftsmen with rhythmic lists, songwriters use such list and patterned lyrical forms to tell a story. Now let’s get back to some musical examples. He’s got a bit more to say here: “What makes a Beethoven symphony spectacular, what makes a Brahms rhapsody spectacular, is that the patterns are wondrous.” The link continues: “All mathematics is is a language that is well tuned, finely honed, to describe patterns be it patterns in a star, which has five points that are regularly arranged, be it patterns in numbers like 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 that follow very regular progression.” And as the number theorist GH Hardy puts it: “A mathematician, like a painter or a poet, is a maker of patterns.” Let’s not forget, also, that mathematics and music are closely aligned, from counting in to shaping theme and structure. From an early age we are taught to recite numbers in times tables, and while painful to learn, especially for bunch of screaming primary school kids, they somehow end up pleasing to our ears in later life, so they are bound to come out in lyrics too. You can find numerical content all over the lyrical canon. This example doesn’t just contain a list, but down to molecular level, is also rich in numbers. “Oops, I did it again,” says Britney Spears. “History repeats the same conceits …” says Elvis Costello, grinning and pulling out his guitar with a flourish on our mini stage. It’s what keeps us sane,” remarks Michael Palin with a laconic smile. Perhaps, in some form, we are all looking for the single equation. “Intelligence is the ability to take in information from the world and to find patterns in that information that allow you to organise your perceptions and understand the external world,” says the theoretical physicist and string theorist Brian Greene. ![]() “To understand is to perceive patterns,” says the writer Isaiah Berlin. ![]() To explain more, this theme brings all kinds of clever people together for a swift pint in the Song Bar. But let's look into this definition more clearly. So what is a pattern? A repeated decorative design certainly, but it's also a regular and intelligible form or sequence discernible in the way in which something is done. One, two, one, two? Let’s go beyond this, let’s see what we can discover behind the wallpaper. And the very fabric of music contains all kinds of patterns - chord shapes, riffs and repeated melodies, but this week we’re looking in particular for how this is shown in lyrics - for example in songs with lists with an element of repetition or expansion, and in songs where numbers come in sequences. Patterns are in everything we do – in our habits and behaviour, our history, how we express ourselves, in our language, in our genes. Molecular structure to the intricate whorl of shell shapes, spiralling birds’ nests to twisting tree structures, uniform buildings to weather-worn mountains, from our own eyes to the shape of nebulae far beyond our skies, the universe is entirely made of repeated patterns. ![]()
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