My brother writes/performs/records music (when he’s not being a mathematician), and he turned me onto Nancarrow. I mean, to listen and enjoy and then never listen to again.
but (if I recall correctly) he did just this, had some recordings where various parts of the music were at different patterns, but occasionally they’d all line up.
I would love to find an example of this music.
Oh, just youtube search Conlon Nancarrow, you won’t be disappointed. :)
Any finite progression — or retrogression — of any expressive set (it need not be mathematical or even sonic) will over time show signs of repetition or even of harmony, constructs not of conscious thought but of the limitations of the set expressed. This is how we recognize a piano even if we have never heard the melody being played on it before; it sounds like a piano, all 88 expressions of it. The same is true for most of human psychology, but it might take longer (or a wider, deeper experience) to run through the set. This is how we recognize a love story, a work anecdote, or, at its extreme, a Richard Pryor set when he’s working blue.