Just for fun, remind me of your opinion about the musicality of a single note?

[m1469]

Just remind me, ever so slightly, about why you think a single note can or can't be musical.  I have a theory, but I'd like to bring out the can of whoop-a** when I feel like it.  Thanks in advance.


PS - Hi  

[brogers70]

The question of the musicality of a single note is a profound and complex question about which many of you will know that I have spent many years of my life pondering. What, really, is musicality, in a world in which sound waves reverberate differently in different geometric spaces from the perfect amphitheater in Epidaurus to the perfect Fibonacci spiral of the cochlea. Sound and harmonic oscillations, those mystical solutions of linear first order differential equations are endlessly fascinating, but perplexing. If the solution is unique, and describes a single note, is it indeed musical, or do the equations have to take into account the ensemble of possible solutions including all the overtones and their weightings? But that is only an analytic, mathematical investigation; we need to ask in a deeper more spiritual sense whether a single note contains the deep essence of music, in all its potential relationships to other notes yet unplayed. Does its duration, simply by extending in time, imply all other durations and rhythms, so that the single note contains within itself all of rhythm and harmony as the invisible germ in a mustard seed in the Upanishads contains all of Being. Or rather, is the single note too reductive and elemental to convey the emergent properties which really, at root are music. Oh, this is too deep a question for me, and I must decide whether to take upon myself the mundane responsibilities of feeding and clothing myself, or simply pause and ponder further, while my hair grows longer and longer....

[birba]

 

[thorn]

Which came first, the single note or the music?  

[cometear]

Which came first, the single note or the music?  

?

[ted]

A single note does absolutely nothing for me. If it did I could stop playing the piano and just listen to my tinnitus. I do enjoy some minimalist sounds, but not quite that minimal.

[Bob]

Could be musical. Could be pretty dull and lifeless.

I would think it's possible to hear anything musically or without any expression.


If someone wanted to dissect it more, we'd have to define "musical."  Probably "music" too then.  Maybe a note could be expressionless but still be musical.


There's not much to go on with one note.  But there are options with...
Attach
Body
Release
Tuning
Tone
Timing... Putting it into something larger. It is "one note" here, but that could be part of something larger with rhythm, meter, etc.  So timing of that one note might affect musicality.
Vibrato or lack of vibrato

Visuals too I guess.
Syllable or whatever sound/pho-something it is if it's sung.

Pitch, high/med/low
timbre, although that could go with tone somewhat
Overtones, what's there, what's emphasized

[birba]

This thread is one of the dumbest.

[thorn]

This thread is one of the dumbest.

I can't tell if people are being serious or not D:

[goldentone]

I'd say a single note is musical only in belonging to the whole.  Itself alone cannot uphold its existence.

*Hands can back*

[Bob]

I was being serious.  I had a teacher ask me that once.  Something like that.

[nystul]

I don't think a singer, violinist, flautist, etc. would have any doubts regarding the musicality of a single note.  On a well maintained piano one can take for granted that the strings will be struck squarely, at the right location along the length of the strings to create a nice resonance, and the hammer will be free to bounce back.  There is relatively little control over a single note but also relatively few ways to screw it up.  Without some musical context, I'm not sure you could tell a single note from a concert pianist apart from one of a complete newbie.  But on most instruments there would be a notable difference in qualities that are almost completely independent of context.

[m1469]

Well, I am thinking, too, of Horowitz apparently saying he did not think a single note could be musical because music was made in relation to other notes (something to that affect).

So, perhaps making music in relation between notes would (of course) include the same note played twice in a row?  And, if you could make musical decisions about the same note played twice in a row, then ...

[onwan]

One of the best pianist I know once told me that Mendelssohn could play a single note 200 different ways. She also said, that she tried once to play a single note 200 different ways too, but she figured out only 50 different ways.

Also, I pracrice how to play a single note on my lessons.

[kevin69]

If you go to a showroom and play the same key on multiple pianos, most of them sound different, and i usually have a preference between them after only hearing one note. Whether this difference is 'musical' or not would depend on your definition of 'musicality', but some single note sounds are more pleasing to me than others.

If you expand this to the same single note played on different instruments, then the same single note played on a decent piano is more musical than played on a stylophone.