Tim Bray weaves together a personal story about loss, African drumming, and mathematics. Inspired by Tracy, a drummer who lived with stage four cancer, Bray learned the Afro-Cuban standard bell pattern and then applied combinatorics to enumerate all possible bell patterns. By treating each 3/8 mini-measure as a 3-bit binary number (0–7), he shows there are 4,096 distinct 12/8 bell patterns, each identifiable by a four-digit code prefixed with 'T' — naming them Tracy Numbers in her honor. The piece blends music theory, binary representation, and personal tribute.
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