what is music?

[Tash]

sparked by comme_le_vent's post, and we were debating it in music the other day, what do you consider music to be defined as? where are the boundaries as to what actually is music and what is merely a sound? eg. animal sounds such as birdsong and whales- do they classify as 'music'?
i'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this...

[newsgroupeuan]

sparked by comme_le_vent's post, and we were debating it in music the other day, what do you consider music to be defined as? where are the boundaries as to what actually is music and what is merely a sound? eg. animal sounds such as birdsong and whales- do they classify as 'music'?
i'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this...

The conveying of information by sound through other means not used not normally used,  with some entertaining value in it.  May be used in conjunction with speech of some sort.

[faulty_damper]

John Cage.  He asked this question and came up with some interesting "music".


I have an answer.  It's way too long for anyone to want to read on a forum.  And goes way back to before there were things called "life forms".  But in short, music is what created life.  By music, I don't mean how we consider music today.  In fact, you shouldn't even read music as a literal meaning in the way I have used it.  But, music is something we do or create but is not self creating - as in, we don't create music out of the blue; we create it because it created us to allow us to create it.

Music is NOT: anything that drives you nuts - like the irritating sound that is made when someones finger nails scrapes across the blackboard or someone's scream in terror.

Music is: a series of changing vibrations in succession that does not fall under "drives you nuts" or cause your physical structure to fall apart - literally.

This is just the ultra short version of it.  Any question about it and I can elaborate.

[bernhard]

John Cage.  He asked this question and came up with some interesting "music".


I have an answer.  It's way too long for anyone to want to read on a forum.  And goes way back to before there were things called "life forms".  But in short, music is what created life.  By music, I don't mean how we consider music today.  In fact, you shouldn't even read music as a literal meaning in the way I have used it.  But, music is something we do or create but is not self creating - as in, we don't create music out of the blue; we create it because it created us to allow us to create it.

Music is NOT: anything that drives you nuts - like the irritating sound that is made when someones finger nails scrapes across the blackboard or someone's scream in terror.

Music is: a series of changing vibrations in succession that does not fall under "drives you nuts" or cause your physical structure to fall apart - literally.

This is just the ultra short version of it.  Any question about it and I can elaborate.

OMG!

A Pythagorean!

(Nothing wrong with that )

Best wishes
Bernhard.

[Derek]

Why play with the definition of words?

If we make music synonymous with sound, so that in the thesaurus we find the following:

sound -  noise, music

noise - music, sound

music - sound, noise

Now that we've done this, how do we distinguish a specific KIND of sound, namely: "Sound created by the human voice and human devices" and I would go so far as to add: "for the purpose of making performer and listener feel good."

Any deviation from this clear definition it seems to me is mere "sound experimentation."  I would call John Cage a sound technician, and a pretty creative one, but certainly not a composer.

As to pretty sounds of whales and birds; we could justifiably use an adjective form of the word "music" and call these things "musical," but that doesn't mean that those sounds are music itself. This is simply a more mild version of playing with the definition of words.

[faulty_damper]

A Pathagorean?  A squared + B squared = C squared?  HUH?!

I'm gonna have to google it.

[comme_le_vent]

music is defined as -

sequences of intelligable pitch(melody, harmony)relations and time(rhythm) relations.

any sound can be music as long as it adheres to the above rule.

other secondary elements in music are dynamics and accents(which can also be considered and element of rhythm), and timbre. or more basically - volume and tone.

i say these are secondary, because they arent musical at all without the pitch and time relations.
they are merely expressive tools for superior realisation of the aforementioned essentials - pitch and time.

[comme_le_vent]

this reminds me of a REAL pet PEEVEEEE   of mine.

i call it TIMBRAL DISCRIMINATION.

dismissing music because of the instrumentation.

what is rock? loud guitar music?
bollocks, its a musucal style, defined by idiomatic pitch and time relations.

and worst of all, people that think anything that is played by an orchestra is classical music.
and that suddenly if a rock song is played on cellos or piano it is made into 'classical' music.

classical music isnt even a style - its just music with greater musical and artistic substance, and a higher level of seriousness in general.

the reason orchestras and other supposed 'classical' instruments are used in classical music, is because they are the instruments with the greatest degree of subtlety and expression, not just because of their mere 'sound'.

more later if i can be bothered......