Music theory 2

In my last entry I wrote about creating interesting patterns that sounds difficult to predict. For example the pattern x:

1,2,1,3,1,4,1,2,1,3,1,4,1,2..

A pattern alone might not make a song interesting enough, to make it more interesting we can create multiple patterns and add them on top of each other, if we have pattern y:

4,5,4,5,6,4,5,4,5,6,4,5...

and play it while playing pattern x:

--4,5,4,5,6,4,5,4,5,6,4,5
1,2,1,3,1,4,1,2,1,3,1,4,1,2

You might have been able to tell that pattern y started a while after x, and ended before x ended. If we add another pattern z to this pyramid of sounds:

----6,7,7,6,7,7,6,7,7,6
--4,5,4,5,6,4,5,4,5,6,4,5
1,2,1,3,1,4,1,2,1,3,1,4,1,2

Now this is a song alright. Let's add two peaks to this shape with the t pattern:

--------8,3-----8,3
----6,7,7,6,7,7,6,7,7,6
--4,5,4,5,6,4,5,4,5,6,4,5
1,2,1,3,1,4,1,2,1,3,1,4,1,2

What is cool is that we can create patterns of patterns. If we abstract the numbers with the character representing the patterns, that is:

x = 1,2,1,3,1,4,1,2,1,3,1,4,1,2
y = 4,5,4,5,6,4,5,4,5,6,4,5
z = 6,7,7,6,7,7,6,7,7,6
t = 8,3

We can write the song as:

----t---t
--z-------z
-y---------y
x-----------x