What is music?

DrJustice · Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 1:34 pm Post subject:

Good one there Stanley!
Interesting thread, although I'm a bit late to the party...

My teacher was once satisfied with the answer:
"A structured spectrum of audio frequency energy"

DJ
--

mosc · Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 5:03 pm Post subject:

Kassen · Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 5:38 pm Post subject:

Stanley Pain · Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 11:09 pm Post subject:

whether a truck is more musical passing a music school? yeah, it's a nice quote, but doesn't answer this particular question so well.

i remember learning a piece called Solipse for 'cello and 2 second tape delay when i was about 14. had to build the tape delay myself from reel to reels i found at car boot sales.

the piece was written by Rolf Gehlhaar from the Stockhausen Ensemble and he ended up coming over to listen to me perform it to students at Reading University.

the piece had two staves... one for the pitches and durations (western classical notation) and one for the distance the bow should be from the bridge.

Gehlhaar told me afterwards that he was interested in stimulating overtone harmonics, and that depending on the distance from the bridge you would pick up different harmonics.

i recognised, even at that age, and with MIDI technology still being relatively new (to me... i had access at that age to C-Lab notator on an Atari STe) that he had effectively been programming controllers, and had wanted the 'cello to behave like some kind of resonant filter (i know, i know, you don't need to point out the obvious).

he'd written the piece in the 60s.

Stanley Pain · Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2005 11:11 pm Post subject:

Kassen · Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 6:07 am Post subject:

Stanley Pain · Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 9:55 am Post subject:

chuck · Joined: Apr 26, 2005 Posts: 58 Location: cincinnati, oh

Music is sound that you like.

Sound that we don't like is noise.

The more we can enjoy noise, the more music we have in our lives.

Johan Zwart · Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2005 7:57 am Post subject:

mosc · Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2005 8:50 am Post subject:

dmosc · Joined: Jun 23, 2003 Posts: 298

mosc · Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2005 5:04 pm Post subject:

Not everything that moves us emotionally, and is beautifull and interesting is art. Art is a uniquely human activity, at least up till now. In art there is communication.

Kassen · Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2005 5:42 pm Post subject:

mosc · Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2005 5:55 pm Post subject:

I don't know if Asimov wrote about this, but at some point in the future, machines will have to be accepted by humans as fellow sencient beings. No doubt there will be doubters. I think when the machines create their own art that reaches us emotionally, then they'll have made it.

blue hell · Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2005 6:58 pm Post subject:

Every time this thread jumps up in the what's new list I read it as "what is life" & thenI get this George Harisson song in my head with that title.

Music does funny things to the mind but not always and not for everyone, so music is a very personal thing in the end, your music might be mine, or not.

And indeed a lot of so called music is no music to my ears and my car makes music sometimes & the cat I that I now imagine to hear crying like a baby.

Social context plays a role, at a wedding party music is one thing, in a concert hall or a DJ-torium or at a funeral it's another. So music is a very social thing in the end, some event's music might not be music in another context.

Yesterday's music ...

Jan.

Kassen · Posted: Thu Apr 28, 2005 7:19 pm Post subject:

Yes, Jan, Yesterday´s music made me too remember that what we call "noise" is totally dependant on what we like in music.

I have long suspected that there is a huge "territorium" element to music and subculture. A lot of "us v.s. them" is going on, even at a wedding party where don´t admit it.

Mosc, sure, if the machine wants to comunicate then that´s music. Easier to didgest; we could also look at music as a reflection of our character. In that sense it´s easier to see generated music as meaningfull, I have much less problems with machines having a character that we could relate to then I have with them becoming sentient. I don´t see that happening in my lifetime.

Carsulae · Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2005 3:07 pm Post subject: My music definitions

I think that:
Music is at the same time the freedom of expression and the power of comunicating to other people the own view of the world made of people , sentiment,country,sensations and unknown.

(I hope that it is understanding , my english language is quite terrible!!!!!!!!!)

Wout Blommers · Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 6:10 am Post subject:

I think we might put music on the big list: 'This Is Art', or is there somebody who denies this?

What is art?
Asking that question always reminds me what my teacher drawing & painting on the Royal Academy of Arts, here in The Hague, the late Han Walraven, may he be reminded forever..., once said to us, students:

"Art is redundant!
No man will die because art doesn't exist!
He will if medicine doesn't exist!
No man will starve because art doesn't exist!
He will if agriculture doesn't exist!
We can live without art...
Only to be alive will become very, very boring and dull..."

So art, and music, is pure entertainment; to cheer up our lives.
That looks like another point of view.

Wout

seraph · Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 2:01 pm Post subject:

Wout Blommers · Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 2:49 pm Post subject:

ian-s · Posted: Sun Sep 18, 2005 3:30 pm Post subject:

Sound editing for film is also not music (though it could be), it is organized sound and entertainment though.

Carsulae · Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:08 pm Post subject:

But have you seen the same film without music?
is'nt it more boring and dull?

Kassen · Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 2:38 pm Post subject:

bachus · Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2005 7:33 pm Post subject:

seraph · Posted: Tue Sep 20, 2005 12:05 am Post subject: