| Kenneth and Andrew Hsu attempted to find fractal patterns in music by establishing scaling relations and thinning a composition. |
| These ideas attracted sufficient popular attention to be described in the New York Times. Here it is reported the Hsus have patented a fractal music box, a device that filters music from a CD, producing a reduction, or abstract, of the music. |
| Thinking over the thinning process linked above, Peak and Frame imagined a similar approach they called Cantoring. |
| * Remove the middle third of a composition, then remove the middle thirds of the two remaining thirds, and so on for several levels. |
| * Do some adjustment to aleviate dissonances where notes have been removed. |
| * Does what remains still sound like Bach? |
| Preliminary student experiments have suggested "yes" for Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, but "no" for less complex composers, Stephen Foster, for example. Might robustness under Cantoring be a measure of musical sophistication? |