You got to see this! I asked this question to a popular LLM: “If you had to describe musical terminology, such as Rhythm, Meter, and Tempo (Grave, Andante, Largo, Allegro, Adagio, Vivace, Moderato and Presto), how would you do it?  What type of LLM symbology would you use to represent these terms?“

I would approach this in two layers: first, a musically correct conceptual definition grounded in standard theory; second, an abstract symbolic layer suitable for an LLM—compact, compositional, and machine-readable—without losing musical nuance.

From a music-theory perspective:

Rhythm is the pattern of durations and accents in time. It answers “when” sounds occur relative to one another. Rhythm is event-level and local: note lengths, rests, syncopation, and accent placement.

Meter is the periodic grouping of beats into repeating cycles. It answers, “how time is organized.” Meter is structural and hierarchical: strong vs. weak beats, bars, and time signatures (e.g., 4/4, 3/8).

Tempo is the rate at which the underlying beat progresses. It answers, “how fast time moves.” Tempo is global and continuous, typically expressed either numerically (BPM) or linguistically (Italian tempo markings).

Tempo markings such as Grave, Largo, Adagio, Andante, Moderato, Allegro, Vivace, and Presto are qualitative tempo classes. They are ordered, overlapping ranges rather than exact values, and they often imply affect as well as speed.

LLM-Oriented Symbology

            1.        Core temporal primitives

I would define three orthogonal symbols:

τ (tau) → tempo scalar (global speed)

μ (mu) → meter structure

ρ (rho) → rhythm pattern

This mirrors how musicians think: speed, grouping, and pattern are distinct dimensions.

            2.        Tempo as an ordered semantic scale

Instead of raw BPM, I would represent tempo terms as normalized intervals on a continuous scale, with optional emotional metadata.

For example:

τ = {

class: Allegro,

range: 120–156,

normalized: 0.68,

affect: [energetic, forward moving]

}

Or more compactly for LLM reasoning:

τ(Allegro) ≈ 0.65–0.75

With an ordinal backbone:

Grave < Largo < Adagio < Andante < Moderato < Allegro < Vivace < Presto

This allows comparison, interpolation, and analogy (“slightly faster than Andante”).

            3.        Meter as hierarchical grouping

Meter is best represented as a tree or tuple rather than a flat symbol.

For example:

μ = ⟨4, [1, 0.5, 0.75, 0.5]⟩

Meaning:

– 4 beats per cycle

– relative beat weights (strong → weak)

For simpler reasoning:

μ = 4/4 → [S, w, m, w]

This lets an LLM reason about accent, phrasing, and expectation without rendering notation.

            4.        Rhythm as event sequences

Rhythm should be symbolic and relative, not absolute.

Example:

ρ = [1, 1/2, 1/2, 1]

Meaning durations relative to the beat.

Or with accent flags:

ρ = [(1, +), (0.5, −), (0.5, −), (1, +)]

This allows pattern matching, variation, and abstraction (“this rhythm is syncopated”).

            5.        Integrated representation

A complete musical “time state” could be represented as:

⟨τ(Andante), μ(3/4), ρ([1, 1, 1])⟩

This reads naturally as:

– a moderate walking tempo

– triple meter

– evenly spaced beats

For an LLM, this is legible, comparable, and extensible.

            6.        Why this symbology works for LLMs

It is:

– Disentangled: tempo ≠ meter ≠ rhythm

– Ordered: tempo terms are comparable

– Compositional: small symbols combine into larger meaning

– Grounded: maps cleanly to music theory

– Abstract: avoids overfitting to Western notation while remaining expressive

In short, I would not try to make an LLM “read music.” I would give it a semantic temporal language that mirrors how musicians conceptualize time, then let notation or audio be downstream renderings of that language.