"What makes Tango music Tango music?" Since there is a reasonable combination on Tango-L of musician types, computer science AI types, Tango DJ types and others who know Tango music in some depth, and of course dancers most of whom "recognize Tango music when they hear it," I thought I'd pose this question to the group.
More specifically, if one had to write an algorithm to identify Tango music, how might one go about it? You don't actually have to come up with or even propose an algorithm, since that's probably more along the lines of a Ph.D. thesis than a Tango-L posting :-), but what would be some essential objective characteristics that such an algorithm would look for? Looking up the melody in a database of all accepted Tangos would no doubt be the simplest way (leaving aside the issue of inclusion or not of some fringe Tangos), but that's cheating and doesn't get to the real question. We can even simplify the problem to exclude very "jazzy" Piazzolla-style Tangos, and to exclude electronic "techo-Tango." But I've heard some very Tango-esque Hungarian Tangos and Russian Tangos (not necessarily great for dancing), and presumably the algorithm would detect the Tangoness in these. So let's say the algorithm puts out a score of 0-100 on how Tango-like the music is. The idea is that at the very least "obvious" Tangos should get a high score and "obvious" non-Tangos a low score. It can't be based solely on superficial characteristics like the presence of a bandoneon (even though that could nudge the score up), since it would be too easy to fool the algorithm. Nor can it be based on things like the presence of the "chan-chan" at the end of a Tango (since most people will recognize even unfamiliar Tangos as such a few seconds into the song and don't have to wait for the end). Any takers or thoughts? Shahrukh _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list Tango-L@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l