 The Fingering Forum
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Author: TorusTubarius
Date: 2003-08-17 23:27
I decided to make this a new thread. I confess, Musical Mind's post got me thinking, so here is a side of ol' Torus you may not be used to.
Really you could write books on what music really is and still not have considered every aspect of its creation, performance, physical principles, or perception by people. For a moment I will step out of my usual role of oboe-related didacticism, and put on my philosophy cap, since that seems to be the trend on here lately.
I would say that first and foremost, <i>music is in the ears of the beholder</i>. Music is very much a concept, and what may be music to one person may not be even noticed by another. For example, is the singing of birds music? It does after all possess a melody, some quite beautiful. What about an idling diesel engine? The sound does move along a regular rhythm, and indeed if you stop to listen to it for music, you may find yourself moving your body in time with the engine's revolutions. Is language music? After all one language may have a rhythm or intonation that is distinct from another, and without these the language would be reduced to a desultory montage of random sounds that we would find incomprehensible.
There are an infinite combination of sounds that can be put together in our minds to become music if you listen for them. And I believe there is one common thread that links all of them together: order. Order is the platform from which our minds are able to take simple vibrations in the air and make them into symphonies. But from this context, we can go even deeper and say that order isn't simply the foundation of music, it is the foundation of life itself.
Life is order from chaos, a complex, self-regulating system operating far from equilibrium, powered by a separate source of energy which fuels an interconnected array of reactions that keep the system and its constituents from returning to their natural, static state. In our case those constituents are biomolecules, and the energy source is the sun. Life is possible because one biochemical reaction affects another, back and forth, over and over again, with variations depending on the environment and the operating state of even more reactions. These cycles go whirring and spinning throughout the organism in a sort of <i>biochemical rhythm</i> that we know as life.
But it doesn't stop there, the interplay between organisms and their environment is far from a random series of events. Rather we know that what affects one species will affect another; the life cycle of one species is always dependent on the life cycles of many others. These cycles themselves set up a kind of rhythm in much the same way a rhythm is found at the molecular level; we call this rhythm <i>ecology</i>.
Moving even further out, it is the order of the motion of the planets around the sun which provide the right conditions for life to exist here on Earth. Each planet revolves with a given frequency, a given <i>rhythm</i> governed by the laws of physics.
As people we are programmed to recognize order, and this allows us to make sense of the world around us. We don't experience the world as a confusing milieu of sounds, shapes, smells, and sensations because our intellects are there to catagorize these data and discern how one thing affects another. We are drawn to order because we know, consciously or not, that that is simply how things get done, and how life is made possible. Order is beautiful.
This I believe is the impetus for music. It is a reflection of the order around us in the mirror of the human soul expressed through the medium of sound. In other words, just as biomolecules are arranged into complex patterns by the radiant energy of the sun, potentially random frequencies of sound are arranged into complex, interrelated patterns by the creativity and perception of the human mind. And perhaps it's even more than simple intellectualization. It may be that find music so appealing because it harkens back to a more intuitive knowledge of living order we all possess as manifestations of life ourselves. Perhaps this elegant process of order from chaos has left a permanent impression on our being, a vague intuition shared by everyone in the room whose real meaning our conscious minds have long forgotten.
Perhaps it is on that level that music really begins to <i>speak</i> to us. How else could music contain so many details about joy, despair, and falling in love without so much as a word uttered? Perhaps it is on this level that music really does transcend the mere physical principles through which it is brought into reality and begins to speak on a level not so confined by the restrictive rules of time and space. Maybe when you pick up your instrument, you really are making waves in something other than the atmosphere. And maybe, just maybe, someone out there will be listening.
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Author: Theboy_2
Date: 2003-08-18 04:44
Wow, thats really deep. So your saying music is a mirror to ourselves? That we express music as a way of communicating that everyone can understand?
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Author: Musical Mind
Date: 2003-08-18 17:19
An excellent philosophical talking, Torus Tubarius. This looks like a college essay. Although English is not my native language, I understand what you are saying. Everything has rhythms. Even when you type, you can sense the random rhythm. After reading this story, the scary thing that reminds me is that I sometimes don't understand what people are saying to me because I unconsciously try to listen to those intonation or rhythms. And after that person stopped talking, I say, "What? I'm sorry, can you say that again?" Actually, this happens very rarely. Maybe it's because English is a second language for me. Or maybe that really happens to me.
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Author: TorusTubarius
Date: 2003-08-19 00:23
MM, well I definitely wouldn't turn that in for a grade. It's just something I composed without much proofreading, a rough draft. Now that I read back over it again there are several things I would change, but I think you get the general idea. Specifically I should clarify that I meant the impetus for music is the intuitive knowledge of the order of life, not our intellect's ability to discern and catagorize. I should have drawn the analogy between biological rhythm and musical rhythm first, then stated the impetus as a function of intuition rather than intellect, then probably just cut out the third to last paragraph altogether, with the exception of the last sentence. Alas, it is what it is.
I think what we're really talking about here is not just music, but art, and why is art appealling? What function does it serve? I maintain what I said above regarding music, that it (art) is a reflection of the order which allows for life to exist which we intuitively understand and are drawn to as products of order ourselves. Art gives life meaning because it provides a working model by which we define and assign value to the human experience. It's a mirror that we use to remind ourselves of who we are and why.
So yeah, Theboy_2, I suppose that is what I am saying, that it is a mirror of not only ourselves, but of everything we know. And because it is an intuitive process, it is a means of communication that everyone can understand by default. It's almost as if it could be phrased both ways: Everyone understands it because they are human, and everyone is human because they understand it. Creepy.
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Author: Musical Mind
Date: 2003-08-19 17:02
Well, it actually is a rough draft, but the information you said there looks like it would be in a college essay. It was some interesting topic to talk about.
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Author: TigerTenor
Date: 2003-08-19 19:10
I think I have to agree with Torus in many respects. Music reflects an order that humans sense in themselves and I think that everyone, instinctively, wants some kind of order in their life. (Yes, even the "live on the edge", spontainious people do order their lives to a certain degree.) Certainly the world is full of random collections of sounds, and it isn't until they are given an order or an order is recognized in them that they become musical.
However, I think that music is also, as with all art, a striving to express something a bit deeper than just words. I'm going to use an example from contemporary music, too. If you have heard the song from Staind called "So Far Away" off their 14 Shades of Gray album, you can see that while they use words to say something, the true meaning of the song is understood because of the music that goes with those words. The melody and rhythm are what elevate simple sounds to a deeper expression of things language cannot say. While I wouldn't say that music is necessarialy spiritual, I would certainly say that it is something ALL human beings connect with, and there is no single culture in the world that does not have music of some form.
I hope I haven't rambled too much or been too confusing. MM, you have touched on a topic that people struggled to explain for years. Music is a common thread that humankind shares and while I'm not sure that I could say it without resorting to a song, I bet every one of us knows why.
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Author: Musical Mind
Date: 2003-08-20 21:16
And I think music can be considered as a language of emotions. When you watch some movies, they always have some music being played. Even some games have some music being played.
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Author: TorusTubarius
Date: 2003-08-20 23:14
Let me reiterate one more time because I feel this is a point of some confusion and I want to be clear. I'm saying music appeals to us because it is a manmade reflection of the self-organizing order operating at a dynamic equilibrium (as opposed to static equilibrium) that we call life. It speaks to us not merely because we intellectually require order to function, but because we ourselves are self-organizing systems that work on the exact same principles, and therefore have an innate affinity for and predilection for producing and communicating through music, which is itself a system ordered from chaos. It is a reflection of what is at the very core of our being.
Personally, I don't believe music itself is supernatural, but it is a manmade reflection (reflected through man himself) of the most fundamental aspect of life, and is to that extent a spiritual experience.
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Author: Torus Tubarius
Date: 2003-08-22 15:50
Moving from the philosophical to the more scientific, here's another interesting thought to consider regarding music:
Ok you know in music you have intervals like 3rds, 4ths etc., and the reason you can hear them as being distinct intervals is because of the way in which those sound waves interact. They form a unique waveform which we recognize as "a 3rd" or "a 4th" etc. Pitches that are really close sound like they clash because their waves are just slightly out of sync, and we hear this as a wavering of the sound as the different waves arrive at your ears at slightly different times.
Light, like sound, comes in waves, only this time waves of electromagnetic radiation, not kinetic energy moving through air. And when we mix colors of various wavelengths we can get another unique color due to the way those colors interact within the spectrum of visible light. In other words, the two wavelengths form their own particular waveform (i.e. green and red make yellow etc.). When we mix two colors that are relatively close in the spectrum, say red and orange, then we get a harsh contrast which most people find unpleasant.
It really gets interesting when you consider that these two phenomena are analogous. What this means then is that when we mix colors we are actually seeing 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, being "played" by any light-reflecting object which are then "heard" with our eyes. Everything you see is essentially one big <i>chord</i> of light. Conversely, when we hear musical harmony, we are in fact "seeing" something analogous to red and green making yellow with your ears. It's the exact same principle, yet it seems like our minds perceive these two phenomena in vastly different ways. The question is, does it really?
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Author: TigerTenor
Date: 2003-08-26 00:50
Wow with the complication. I would say that our minds most certainly percieve the two phenomena of light and sound in vastly different ways and I say this for several reasons.
One, despite the similarities that we may have in the way we interpret them, light and sound are sufficiently difficult that they each require separate sensory SYSTEMS to interpret them.
Two, for all that light behaves as a wave often, it also behaves as a particle in many cases (it cannot travel around corners, it completely bounces off solids like mirrors, etc.) and the particulars of why it does both are still puzzling scientists. Sound is a straight up wave. You can bounce sound off things (Anybody ever hear an echo?... Anybody ever hear an echo?), but it also travels through solid objects. (Don't tell me that no one here has ever stood outside a band hall and listened to the musicians inside throught the wall.)
Three, while your use of language is incredibly creative in your likening of sight to hearing, Torus, that kind of proves the point of the light and sound being different. Our words "sight" and "sound" came about because people percieved two different phenomenon and needed two words to express them. Because our minds percieve these two sensations in different ways, some very smart person made up two words for them. And off the top of my head, I cannot think of a language in the world that does not differentiate between sight and sound.
Four, while there are some creatures whose sense of hearing and smell are the same thing (It's either crikets or grasshoppers, but yeah, they have one organ that senses both sounds and smells called a tympanum. It's really weird, but it's kind of cool., I can't think of any creatures that see and hear with the same organ.
It is interesting to note the similarities between the two, though. Visual sensation that has nothing to do with the sound it creates is often linked with auditory sensation (looking at someone as they talk, watching ballet, watching opera, watching a musical, watching fireworks during a concert, marching band and radio often uses auditory cues to create a picture in a person's head. While the two are quite different in the way they are interpreted in our head, we can use one to make sense of the other (Ever hear a weird sound and go hunting for the cause?).
So, while I would answer Torus' question with a resounding, yes! our mind does recieve sound and sight in vastly different ways, I also think that the similarities and differences between the two are interesting to think about.
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Author: TorusTubarius
Date: 2003-08-26 02:20
Well, I really meant that last question I wrote to be more rhetorical instead of actually trying to assert that sight and sound are the same thing in our minds. You know, to try and leave propel the reader to think more on his own there at the very end. I guess it worked!
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Author: Flauter69
Date: 2003-08-27 00:14
Taurus, I don't know what you're talking about man. Don't you know that sound and light are different things? There was a really smart man one time a long time ago who found that out. He was smart. You're SO wrong.
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The Clarinet Pages
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