Eternal Musical Properties
I recently started learning the piano so that I could give both singing and playing a chance, and it has inspired me to do a little bit of research mostly because I feel so insincere. Whilst the musical notes itself, my vocal register being at the right pitch and other concrete elements are correctly applied, it is theoretical and lacks any aesthetic properties that I would intuitively attribute as authentic. Then I thought what exactly is authentic music? Would that mean it is not music, though I am replicating a Norah Jones song for instance? If I were to play Chopin’ March Funèbre using a keyboard without the damper pedal, would that mean I am not playing it?
From an ontological perspective, music being an eternal existent and therefore not contained within the confines of space and time is rather intriguing.
I noticed that my selection of music – whilst broad – has often been compelled to artists like Jeff Buckley or Joni Mitchell, mostly because of thehonesty in the lyrics combined with an authenticity in the music that turns the entire experience into lived poetry. Bob Dylan, for instance, I have profound respect for and absolutely love his lyrics, but I don't necessarily enjoy listening. Yet, when I listen to Turandot by Puccini, I have no idea what is being said and particularly Nessun Dorma find myself nevertheless feeling moved and emotional. When I think of Beethoven, I sense something different to Mozart as though who they are is exhibited in the compositions.
Does music have eternal properties? Or is philosophy is the highest music?
From an ontological perspective, music being an eternal existent and therefore not contained within the confines of space and time is rather intriguing.
I noticed that my selection of music – whilst broad – has often been compelled to artists like Jeff Buckley or Joni Mitchell, mostly because of thehonesty in the lyrics combined with an authenticity in the music that turns the entire experience into lived poetry. Bob Dylan, for instance, I have profound respect for and absolutely love his lyrics, but I don't necessarily enjoy listening. Yet, when I listen to Turandot by Puccini, I have no idea what is being said and particularly Nessun Dorma find myself nevertheless feeling moved and emotional. When I think of Beethoven, I sense something different to Mozart as though who they are is exhibited in the compositions.
Does music have eternal properties? Or is philosophy is the highest music?
Comments (106)
Quoting TimeLine
That just seems like nonsense to me, too. Why would it be an "eternal existent"? And there isn't anything outside of space or time.
Quoting TimeLine
How in the world would you know that their lyrics are honest? How do you know that they're not completely different personally than what their lyrics would suggest (and what they've suggested in interviews as well)? How do you know that they're not essentially writing lyrics from the perspective of a "character"? You don't. You might not even know this if you were to work with them. People can present different public and private "faces."
At any rate, I'm a musician/composer/arranger, I've been doing that professionally for decades, and I've worked with a bunch of different people, some of them famous--some very famous, and some of them people who regularly get the "authentic"/"honest" accolade, but where those people aren't at all as their lyrics would suggest, where sometimes that's clear, because sometimes their lyrics relayed stories/personal facts that I know weren't autobiographical.
The arts don't work that way in general anyway. The gist of the arts isn't that we're journalists or writing confessionals or anything like that. That's not to say that no one is ever doing that, but you can never assume that anyone is doing that, because the whole idea of the arts involves expressing/communicating abstractly, indirectly, via metaphors, symbolism, allegories and so on. We're often creating fictions, characters, etc.
What's probably going on instead is that the lyrics of artists like Buckley and Mitchell are resonating with you, you can relate to them; they're "honest" for you so to speak. But it's important to realize that that can differ from listener to listener. And it doesn't actually tell you anything about Buckley or Mitchell.
Anyway, re creating your own music, whether we're simply talking about you interpreting (as we call it) something that someone else wrote, or we're talking about you writing your own stuff, if you just recently started playing, there's surely a lot that you need to work on in terms of craftsmanship. There's a lot to playing music that we don't notate, because we can't notate it. I'm referring to fine-grained nuances of timing, phrasing, dynamics, timbre and so on. It takes a long time to get a good feel for those things and to master them. It takes even longer to get a good feel for those things and to master them in relation to playing with other musicians. That's probably part of what you're reacting to with respect to your own playing not quite connecting with you yet, but you don't know just what's going wrong, because it takes mastery of these aspects of playing to be able to diagnose the problem well.
You have to just keep at it. Practice playing regularly, and if you want to write, you need to practice writing regularly, too. You're going to write tons of stuff that you think is awful when you look at it years down the road. There's no way around that really. You just need to get started and to keep doing it, and realize that if you keep at it, you'll gradually make progress, where that only becomes evident in retrospect.
Say you’re in a movie theater watching a movie: you can be authentically enjoying it or not. If you are, you get lost within the story while it unfolds. If you’re not, you have an itch to check the time; you keep on being critical of the overall color choices made by the people who made it; etc. Same with music, imo.
My own novice experience with music creation is that you, the musician, can either be hypnotized (so to speak) by that which you’ve brought about or you can focus on technicalities concerning this or that. When you, the musician, become hypnotized by your own produced sounds, the music is authentic—and you, the musician, become at once both creator and audience entranced by that which is created. Repeatedly plucking one string in the right timing and intensity can be sufficient; and of course it can also be as complex as hell; it doesn’t much matter. It speaks a truth to you and, therefore, to all others that are like you in a certain set of particulars. Thus the same music will now likewise entrance that portion of an audience who shares the same eye for beauty/the aesthetic. You can sense this same thing occurring in performers on stage: these too can be authentic or not in what they play/sing—either becoming entranced by that which they produce (authentic) or going through a routine for public recognition (unauthentic, like the prototypical wedding singer).
As with different people enjoying different movies, so too with different people enjoying different music. But we all know what it’s like to be stuck in a move theater watching a movie we’re not captivated by—then to politely nod our head when our friends sing its many praises … to be unauthentic in what we like. The notion of authenticity as regards the arts then holds significance to all of us. That stated, I can appreciate many musicians that I sense to be perfectly authentic, as just expressed, whose works don’t resonate with me. But I can’t think of a single musician I like that is unauthentic in what they produce; for the most part, these do not gain public recognition to begin with.
So I’m saying that, while the notion of authenticity may be multilayered and hard to pinpoint, authenticity is by no means nonsensical, nor unimportant.
An aspiring musician who seeks to be authentic many not be as technically savvy in the short-term by comparison to one who pursues technical knowhow, but their technique will grow around an authentic aesthetic—and it is the latter which we most appreciate and enjoy listening to.
Ps. Though not my argument, maybe it’s the authenticity to music that is the very thing which could be argued eternal, outside of space and time, unwavering regardless of the musical phenomena it is clothed in.
One problem with your idea of an authenticity "sense" as you describe it is that in practice, the audience's attributions of authenticity or a lack of it don't at all correlate with what was actually going on with the musicians (or other artists). I know that from the creation side, since it's what I do for a living, I've worked with a ton of different people in a lot of different sorts of situations, and I've of course heard a lot of comments from audiences in relation to stuff that I've worked on/gigs I've done.
Another problem is that your "hypnotized by" and "paying attention to technical details" dichotomy is false. Although people can just go through the motions at times--and plenty of times you get the "authentic" accolade in those situations--it's rarely ever all one or the other re your dichotomy. That's just not what's going on with people who do this stuff for a living (that it's all one or the other). The same thing goes for the old "art/commerce" dichtomy. That stuff is mythology that consumers believe. It's a part of a popular cultural narrative. But it's really bs with respect to what's actually occurring on the creation side.
So the supposed "sense" isn't a sense at all. It's at best, as you describe it, merely a way of saying that you were highly emotionally engaged by something, that something really resonated with you, versus not feeling that way at all and wishing that you were doing anything else instead.
this is non-sense. As Terrapin Station said, there isn't anything outside of time and space.
Quoting TimeLine
There are "authentic performances" of music -- period instruments played by musicians informed of the period practices, performed under similar conditions, and so forth. There are "authentic performances" of medieval music on down to bluegrass and early rock and roll. That's one thing. The music itself being "authentic" is something else.
Was the music of the 1910 Fruitgum Company band authentic? They weren't exactly cutting edge 60s music -- not unpleasant, kind of saccharine. How about Eric Satie's Gymnopédies? I like it - kind of like high-end Muzak. Authentic? Beats me. For that matter, what about Muzak itself?
If a contemporary composer were to compose fugues as closely to the manner of J. S. Bach as he could, would that be "authentic" or contrived?
I like listening to a few pieces of the early Dylan. "Like"? No, a song like "The Times They Are A-Changin'" is indispensable. But aside from the few, not much. A Nobel prize? Well, that's just sun-starved crazy Norsk for you.
Otherwise, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? practice, practice, practice.
I think you are making an "inauthentic" distinction here.
People, whether they be aspiring musicians or scrap iron dealers, are somewhere on the continuum of "authenticity" and we can toss that definition ("authentic person") around till the cows come home (about 12 hours, at the most). But what would an authentic scrap iron dealer be?
One might be "an authentic beggar", "an authentic anarchist", "authentic ruling class" and so on, as long as we know what, exactly a beggar, anarchist, or ruling class is. What, exactly, is a musician? I listen to a lot of music, I think about music, but I don't perform music, and I don't compose it. Am I a musician? Are teenage garage band members musicians--no matter how bad the band is? What about performers who view playing music as a job, and which they might happily give up for something else?
"Authentic" is a word like "absolute" or "true". Absolute music, true music, authentic music. It's a rather vague intensifier. It doesn't tell us much.
Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye dealt a great deal with the concept of fakeness. Fakeness, then, is the antonym to authenticity.
I don’t have a nifty philosophical proof that some people are more fake than others in that which they purport to be. Beggars or ruling class included—and artists could be placed in there somewhere.
Lacking this logical proof, I yet experience that some get the fakeness issue as was, for example, addressed in the Catcher in the Rye, together with that of its opposite notion, authenticity—the two of which form a cline of potential being. A mathematical binomial of all or nothing, to me at least, is a misrepresentation of reality; there would be different contexts and differing degrees between the absolutes of fakeness and authenticity.
I acknowledge that I belong to the set of humans to which Salinger’s aforementioned novel made some sense in its treatment of fakeness/authenticity. It’s not something I believe myself capable of rationally convincing others of, however.
But, for argument’s sake, the fable of the emperor’s new clothes would to me and many others make no sense were it to be devoid of the concepts of fakeness and authenticity of being. Do you then find the fable nonsensical, or, if not, how do you make sense of it as story?
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Edit: BTW, all this isn’t to say that fakeness and authenticity cannot be used as labels and that, as labels, they can’t be misused by spin-mongers for some sort of political gain (including politics with a small “p” as is stated in anthropology). The same applies to many other labels, however. For example, dropping the “evil” term on a community of people—say, for example, liberals, or Buddhists, or some such—can and will be done by some. This does not then miraculously so make it true—nor does it then result in the properties of good and bad/evil being devoid of actual referents.
To the extent that the fakeness/authenticity dichotomy is understood to address something real about human character, the same applies to these as labels. This, though, is a different issue than that of some people being more fake than others in terms of what is. And hey, if its of any consolation, I dully acknowledge my own lack of authenticity in many a way ... though I aspire to not be fake in the way I live.
"Duly" I hope, and not dully.
I agree; whatever the adjectives "authentic" and "fake" mean, they "mean" on a continuum from totally authentic to totally fake.
The thing is, sometimes we "fake" things to look "real". I was at a funeral recently--open casket. The body of the deceased did not look exactly dead. It looked like a carefully decorated dead body. We don't really want to look at a body that has been dead for several days. The casket appeared to be richly upholstered and made, but of course it wasn't. It was "fake" upholstery--not what it looked like. We don't really want to look at an authentic plywood box with some cheap, sloppily stapled polyester lining, or worse, a casket made out of oriented strand board (also known as flakeboard, sterling board and aspenite in British English--I assume you are British, based on your use of "whilst"). Sometimes "fake" is more authentic than "real", paradoxically or ironically.
Existentialists are hot on authenticity, as are others, and it can be hard to nail down what they mean, too. True to yourself? To thine own self be true? Know thyself? The unexamined life isn't worth living? all that. All good, but it is still difficulty to achieve authenticity because faking it at times is ever so much more convenient.
Just to insert some sex into this otherwise overly elevated discussion: Here's a scene from When Harry met Sally. Great scene about authenticity.
X-) ... with a little bit of LOL.
It's an issue of taste: I for one in high school always wanted (not realistically mind you) an international naked for a day day. That way we all get to discover that everybody else is imperfect as well and get over all the "posing" by realizing that we're all posers of one type or another. Not being realistically intent on this, though, I acknowledge I didn't think through this global nakedness day all too well. Still like the motif to Catcher in the Rye, though.
Don't have much else to add. Oh, yes, its "duly" and not "dully". And, though I hear its a nice place, haven't been to the British isles yet.
Yes, there is something very special about the arts and while philosophy can be an art, for the most part philosophy is repetitive just as music can be. It is when you feel the music you are creating is coming from a different place, outside of yourself, that it takes on a totally different feeling and meaning. It happens in all forms of the arts. It comes naturally and spontaneously with relaxed practice. For some it comes quicker than others, but that is of no mind. We practice to discover ourselves in our journey. There is no end.
Wishing you a very happy journey. It is wonderful to experience.
So where do you live that "whilst" is standard usage?
Whilst I appreciate your obdurate tone, the conveyance of aesthetic value and the meaning of the referent “authentic” though clearly ambiguous nevertheless illustrates the term to be context-driven. My question outlined two particular areas with the first related to performance, and unlike a painting where you actually have the original piece that one can claim to be authentic, music being notated and the instruments used all differ along with the musician’ interpretation or choices that the governance of the performance challenge our understanding of what expressive authenticity may actually be. In addition, authenticity encourages an interest in the original performances and historic conventions that enable a moral significance to sustaining the composition, tonality and musical structure as intended by the author at the time of its development.
The second and perhaps the phenomenological aesthetic of my enquiry does not deserve what appears to be your dismissal of the validity of subjectivity vis-à-vis authenticity, on the contrary sensuous experience and intuition – what is clearly your indifference to empirical states of reality – is engrossed with the question of what the conditions are that enable music to provide conscious meaning. If we think of popular music, for instance, is it a socio-political mechanism that exposes the habitual and thus requires a type of musical reductionism to ascertain the authenticity or the intentionality behind it? Richard Wagner and the use of his compositions to kindle fascism, for instance. If it is not clear what that reaction is, the intention of philosophy is to clarify hence the Platonic quote at the end of my post.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Vat? You mean that QM theories are nonsense? Ok, alright, fine, I'll concede that this ain't cosmology but both you and Bitter are wrong as you have misunderstood the reference to "eternal" for which, if you think of Harmony vis-a-vis Platonic forms, you may understand why it transcends beyond the material world.
The Greater Perfect System and the diatonic scale is interesting, but the metaphysics is lacklustre at best. The existence of natural mathematical laws as exemplified by the musical science that governs harmonic relationships that become the navigational tool to higher planes of existence or creation is probably a place I would avoid in preference for the phenomena of music' moral position in consciousness.
I just want to add, if you think about Dream Brother by Buckley, it actually is honest, he is talking to his friend who intended to run away from his wife for a younger woman, something he himself experienced from his father and why it is one of my favourite songs. I don't have a family so it does not personally resonate with me. But I do agree, something like Gotye' Hearts A Mess does resonate personally, in fact, when I first heard it years ago I imagined myself singing the song in a bar to an audience of me (as in, everyone in the bar was me) because I was a mess. I really appreciate your post, it is insightful and I will certainly be practicing regularly, but I just picked out areas I would like to discuss further with you.
I won't look out for you there, then. X-)
Join a band, dude, having a communication on one's own is really hard.
The only point of contention I guess, is whether there really is a noumenon and a phenomenon - or whether both subjectivity and objectivity are equally real aspects. For example an Aristotelian/Spinozist who is a realist would claim that the subjectivity noted only by being it is no different than the motion of the planets - both are equally real, one isn't just phenomenon and the other noumenon.
Jesus Christ what a load of balderdash.
:-} I actually found TimeLine's post quite decent. Authenticity is a way of creating music creatively - to be interested in authentic music is to be interested in music which means something - on a deeper level it means to be interested in the creative activity of the soul which gave birth to the crystallised (and hence dead, not alive) music. Indeed this creative activity that is searched for through authenticity is primal - a feature of Being itself. Alas, all this is probably too "continental" for your narrow analytic sensibilities... ;)
But individuals create meaning, and different individuals can do that in response to different things.
So would you only be saying that you're referring to music that prompts you to assign more meaning to it personally?
Re the rest, there's no such thing as souls, what in the world is "dead" versus "alive" music, and I'm not sure what you're referring to with a capital "B" "Being."
What has Jesus got to do with your cognitive limitations?
We call music authentic when it crystallises (ie objectifies) the creative activity of the soul - its creative struggle. All music is dead by this definition. Some music though is also empty of content; "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" - such is the music that is created by many modern artists, where their main aim is to sell.
If you stop being pedantic you'll realise that there is such a thing as soul. How did Aristotle define the soul? The activity of the body - the life of the body - the form of the body.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Individuals create meaning in response to reality. The creation of meaning is what the Universe itself does through people. And yes, there is no doubt that meaning is subjective - it's about how you - Terrapin Station - relates to reality. It's your own response to reality.
Quoting Terrapin Station
To distinguish that I'm talking about Being - the ground/activity of Being - not any particular being.
Quoting Terrapin Station
No. I'm talking about music which is meaningful. Not all music is meaningful. Not all music is a creative expression of the individual. And it has nothing to do with me assigning meaning personally - I see the meaning of others in it. And this is so with all art - when I read The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh, it's not me putting meaning in there. It's the author! I experience the meaning that the author has placed in there - I experience the protagonist's anguish when he sees his own girlfriend raped for example - and for a moment, he and I become one. His infinite brokenness becomes my infinite brokenness - I have creatively assimilated his meaning at that point.
Philosophy is also a language, so would that make it the highest music?
Philosophy is the highest universal language - but universality is, paradoxically, not Reality - for what would Reality be without the particular? And the particular is exactly what the universal must exclude to be universal. And so there is a price paid to achieve universality - it's a butchering of Reality. Philosophy can achieve division - but never unity. The philosophy that comes closest to achieving unity is that which moves and moves and moves - only to, at the point when it is just about to achieve completeness, it denies itself and sees itself as nonsense - one must throw down the ladder after he has climbed as Wittgenstein put it :) - unity is realised not through philosophy - but through doing philosophy - through the philosophical activity itself, which reaches its own quietus.
Question: Setting aside your indifference to empirical states of reality, what are the conditions that enable music to provide meaning vis-a-vis consciousness.
Does that simplify it for you?
I don't find that languages come in a heap with one at the top. They're more like a rack of spanners - choose the right one for the job.
What would the bottom most one be sitting on? :-O
This aspect of the eternal properties was precisely my initial enquiry, however I disagree that it is merely butchering reality, on the contrary the divisions that we create is the way in which we increase language; as unenlightened said though completely irrelevant to the question, join a band to improve. We would not be who we are without society and the constructs we create to develop and increase knowledge, without which we would be nothing. Is music a part of or can in enable or strengthen this language?
Philosophical activity though is different from philosophy. I said philosophy butchers reality - I outlined a different possibility for philosophical activity.
Quoting TimeLine
Music deals with different aspects then philosophy and in different manners. Music functions by touching one's heart and soul. Philosophy cannot deal with what music deals, except abstractly - universally - but never in concreto.
In a word, training. It isn't that one has to go to an academy to learn the fine art of music, but one learns it as part of enculturation.
Here, Take some Peking Opera, Japanese NO plays, Native American songs and dance, or whatever it is that is totally unfamiliar to you. On first hearing, I doubt very much that they will mean anything to you. Just as, if you take Mozart, Waiting for Godot, and abstract expressionism, and present these to a previously unmet tribe in the Amazon, these genre will mean nothing at all to them. They can't mean anything.
Art forms aren't universal. The desire to produce rhythm, vocal sound, myth, and decoration may be universal among people, but the specifics are not. What the creators of Peking Opera, and its audiences liked, was learned. You too could learn all about Peking Opera, Japanese NO plays, and Native American dance, and you could become familiar enough with it to appreciate it. The same for the previously unmet Amazon tribe and Mozart.
Training in what way? Instrumental? Because not everyone can play an instrument and regarding what would happen if we take Mozart to an unmet tribe in the Amazon, it would still be difficult to ascertain whether they may be moved and inspired by it in their own way. I was moved by Puccini and other operas, though I come from a very different culture. Radical changes such as expressionism and surrealism were used to challenge artistic methods as a way to infiltrate the material or social elements of art and expose the inauthenticity. Enculturation could be the problem, not the solution.
But that's what meaning is, how it works. Either someone assigns meaning personally to something or there's no meaning (for them)
Quoting Agustino
No, it's YOU putting meaning there. There's no meaning literally in those marks on the paper. The author has meaning in mind when he makes the marks on paper, but the meaning isn't contained in those marks. It's in persons' brains.
Doesn't matter. If you grew up in X culture, you know X culture, whether you can produce its art forms or not. I can't play Mozart, but I can appreciate Mozart, and tell whether it is being played more or less well or very badly.
Quoting TimeLine
It would depend on whether we were playing a recording through a device or had brought out a symphony orchestra to sit in the jungle and play. In either case, they would probably be more struck by the mystery of sound coming out of a box, or what the hell all these people in strange clothing were doing in their jungle. Obviously this is a hypothetical situation. But I'm sticking with it.
Quoting TimeLine
Well, how different? Norwegian as opposed to Italian? You can give me a little more detail without spilling too many secrets, can't you? You still haven't explained how you picked up "whilst".
Quoting TimeLine
And you think the Amazonian tribe would get that?
You are still scraping the surface; the question is about how or why this meaning is assigned and the influence underlying the decision.
:s So you cannot perceive the meaning of others? Really? If you see someone crying you cannot perceive the meaning of the act for them, even if it means nothing for you?
Quoting Terrapin Station
The meaning is contained in those marks, and someone who understands those marks can understand the meaning. That is quite self-evident. Understanding marks isn't the process of assigning meaning - it's the process of perceiving meaning.
I, like Schopenhauer, can play the flute! :D >:O
No, of course you can't perceive others' meanings. We can't make mental phenomena third-person observable period.
Quoting Agustino
No, you can't perceive any meaning there. You assign meaning of your own to it rather, interpreting the behavior as you do, etc.
Quoting Agustino
No it isn't. Those marks are just ink on paper or whatever we're talking about in a given case.
Actually boss, I think I can. Maybe you lack in empathy, that would explain an inability to perceive others' meanings.
The bias of your assumptions on the possible reactions of our Amazonian group is seriously challenging the anthropological position of cultural relativism. Nevertheless, I am confident we cannot distinctly conclude any probable outcomes, so going onto:
Quoting Bitter Crank
Not sure how different, but I never made contact with opera or classical music until I was about 17 and heard Andrea Bocelli one day after school at a music store and really liked it. I had no clue what was being said but it compelled me to further investigate; in my early twenties, I went to the Magic Flute live in concert and that was that, I loved it. My environment is your standard Western environment but where no contact with classical genres are made, so I kept my love for Vivaldi or Beethoven under the radar.
As for Whilst? I am self-taught and I did a lot of reading by authors and translators that used whilst, but from memory I remember it was when I read Plato' Last Days of Socrates that I picked it up, which was a long time ago now.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Cultural relativism, my dear friend. Does the tribe need to get that?
(Y) ;)
It appears that TS is refusing to listen to the question, which is about deconstructing the assignment itself, the reasons for the initial decisions and interpretations we make and why we make it.
The question? :s You mean "to be or not to be"? :B
Ahh right - this question >:O :
Quoting TimeLine
I've outlined an answer before you even asked the question I thought 8-) - but maybe I was wrong :D
Hey TL, I like the music you posted. Both are lyrical poems set to music, laments about doomed love. "Dream Brother"'s music seems to act as the backdrop for the singer's voice, its music expands out from simple notes, its language is much more complex than "Heart's a Mess" which seemed to me to totally different, almost a comfortable/smooth rocking reggae/calypso back beat. "Heart's a Mess" music rocks its way though the song working its way into the connection that he is so desperate to make. His singing voice reminds me of Sting on this song.
A work of art mediates the strife between the form and matter. This strife is in every work of art, but strife is not the lyrical "I", which (I think) speaks to us from the work, the character of the work, the linguistic quality of the work, how it ties into the narrative we tell our self about how we live, what we desire.
I wonder about their honesty. "Dream Brother" is about abandonment and Heart's a Mess about inability to connect. What is the honest response to "Dream Brother"...maybe this separation is right for the children, an unhappy marriage can't be good for children. The song relates the singer's lack of experience with his father... his antagonism is because of his father's abandonment, which does not mean that his friend will abandon his children.
"Heart's a Mess" simple language is repeated and repeated, his voice almost sounds like Sting (to me) the power of the song is seems to lie in its motion and in the simple language of its refrains.
I like "Heart's a Mess" more than" Dream Brother", perhaps because I can relate to it better than I can to "Dream Brother". "Heart's a Mess" has an infectious beat that works for me.
Maybe you could post a song on TPF's creative thread, I would love to hear your voice.
Challenging or confirming cultural relativism? I think it confirms relativism. Western music isn't a universal genre. It's more or less specific to European culture, which of course can be learned by non-westerners. A glance at many orchestra programs will reveal all sorts of star performers from China and Japan, for instance.
There is a 1970s or 1980s film (look on YouTube) "From Mao to Mozart" about Isaac Stern (late famous violinist) conducting master classes with students who were trying to acquire western musical performance competence. The Cultural Revolution hadn't been over for long, and the cadre of western classical music teachers had been thinned out rather severely by the Red Guards. It is quite moving.
We can overcome our relativistic limitations, but it takes substantial effort.
Quoting TimeLine
There's nothing wrong with whilst; it is common in British English. I'm just curious about word usage and geography. (Like whether one prefers "pop", "soda", "tonic", or "coke" when referencing carbonated soft drinks.)
Map of Pop
Quoting TimeLine
No, not really. and I don't much care if they do or not. Not my problem at this point.
By the way, This was found in a hut in the jungle not frequented by westerners. However it got there, somebody there liked it.
I play guitar. There is a major difference between hearing music as a listener, playing music, and composing music. The reason why songs feel a certain way is often the result of a talented group of individuals (musicians, producers, etc.) all working together to make it that way. When you play, you realize that there are only really twelve notes in different octaves, only seven of which are in a given a key and usually make up the majority of the music. You have to watch your timing and often can't just stop and go on auto-pilot mode, so to speak. That is, you can't sit passively and get engrossed in the music as a piece of art, you have to actively take a part in the music, which requires you to usually put your attention into it and constantly think about what you are doing. I can only imagine this feeling of dettachment would only increase as a musician who spent hours writing a 3 minute piece of music and many more hours practicing it in order to play it live.
I suggest that being an active part in music is what is making TimeLine feel their music is off ("inauthentic").
It is great deconstructing why I am compelled to certain music as I never interpreted Dream Brother as you have and perhaps the morality behind the lyrics is what I appreciate being someone dedicated to traditional virtue. I also remember that when I first heard his album, I was struck by Corpus Christi and a few other songs that just made me believe he was original in his approach, which lifted my respect for him. I have listened to Jeff - he doesn't have many songs because he died so young - over and over again over the last decade and never get sick of him. Yet, Bob Dylan is someone I have the same respect and adoration for but I have trouble listening. Music requires a combination of factors and it could be that the reason why I love certain operas is because I don't understand and so the singer is merely another instrument. With Heart's a Mess I felt the same desperation and anger at my inability to connect, as though I was telling me what he wrote in the lyrics.
Quoting Cavacava
Maybe one day ill record something.
There really is nothing more I can add and I will be delving into this area with a focus on musicology over the next week. My only concern is the moving element in your response; is the Higgs Boson the soul and only music can enable us to capture its presence? I find this problematic because I personally view music as having phenomenal attributes without as greater impact on the consciousness of our souls; that is, if we access this barrier and make one aware of the noumenon as it is moving, this becomes a consciousness of the soul but without the clarity of mind to appreciate this consciousness, it renders it null and void. Philosophy provides this clarity and thus it must be that Plato was correct; philosophy is the highest music.
You would have a field day in Australia. Even I don't understand half the things that are said here.
Quoting Bitter Crank
If we were at an Amazonian village, why would they need to care about our enquiry? What about listening to their music. They're not savages who would wonder in awe at the musical box. That is my point about whether they need to because the overall point was challenging the cultural norm whereby people are listening to the same music without really knowing why.
We don't know that anything is eternal.
Haha I see you've been reading your Huxley (Y) :D
Quoting TimeLine
Not exactly, because you don't know the soul as object-for-a-subject (hence the Higgs Boson is an imperfect analogy) - as it is pure subjectivity. You know it by being it - through music you become what you are.
Quoting TimeLine
Is that clarity of mind, or is it attention? Or is attention in fact one and the same with clarity of mind? I can listen to Beethoven inattentively - that means without being actively engaged in the act of listening. I listen to (a live performance of) Beethoven when I play a game of chess - not actively devoted to the music. Or I go to a live concert of Beethoven - what's the difference? Why does the latter feel better? Because I am absorbed in it - I become one with the music. To become one with the music is an activity of my own soul - attention isn't just listening to what is there - it's being creatively engaged with it. The affinity between music and our subjectivity is what draws us to it - that's why Schopenhauer for example viewed music as being the closest manifestation of the Will as it is in-itself (and hence of ourselves as we are). Indeed the temporary contemplation that music gives rise to - the temporary quietus of the Will - that is us becoming, sub specie durationis, what we are sub specie aeternitatis.
Quoting TimeLine
Philosophical activity provides clarity I would say, not philosophy. To be engaged in philosophical activity is different than merely to be reading words in a philosophy book or the like - you have to actively be reflecting on those words. It's similar to the act of actively listening to music :) - and philosophy may be the highest music granted that we relate with it through our reason, which is our highest faculty.
Yes we do know that something must be eternal, otherwise we're stuck with an infinite regress. Whether you're a materialist, and this something is the Multiverse, or you're an Aristotelian and this something is the Prime Mover, or you're a Spinozist and this something is Substance, or you're a Kantian/Schopenhaurian and this something is the noumenon - metaphysics is still stuck in this same form - the idea of each of those thinkers plays the same functional role in their thinking - that is, in fact, what makes it true. Truth for metaphysics isn't correspondence - but coherency and function.
X is eternal if x exists for all time, and time doesn't have an end point.
We don't know either that (a) time has no end point or that (b) there is any x that exists for all time (whether time has an end point or not).
There's no infinite regress there.
I don't buy the idea of a multiverse, or a prime mover, or substance in that sense of the term where substances are independent of properties, or noumenon in the sense if the latter being a "category of understanding" that is independent of individual humans.
“If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.” - L. Wittgenstein
"Timelessness" non-poetically being what?
What makes you think that timelessness is poetic? You have to understand that concepts such as eternity do not refer to empirical states of affairs. So when you define (crudely, as you do) eternity to be infinite temporal duration, you define a non-empirical state as an empirical state. That's contradictory to the very nature of the concept you're trying to define.
Timelessness is being outside of time. What is time? Time is change - ie causality. So to be timeless, to be eternal, is to be unchanging. Values, for example, are eternal. Love is eternal - whether it has any manifestation in the empirical world or not.
There can't be anything extant outside of time. And time isn't causality, but change. Change and causality aren't the same thing.
And what sort if thing are you referring to by "non-empirical"?
Values and love aren't at all eternal. They're mental (brain) phenomena that obtain in individuals.
Change is causality - how can you make sense of change except by causality? By saying this state follows the other, and thus is the cause of it? This is following the Humean notion of causality which I suppose you must share.
Quoting Terrapin Station
The brain phenomena that obtain in individuals are the empirical manifestations of values. You speak exactly like a reductionist, as if the eternal and the temporal were reducible - as if the metaphysical and the physical were the same.
Quoting Terrapin Station
Justify it.
Say that we have a red ball. Randomly/acausally It disappears and is replaced by a green ball. That's a change, but it's not causal--in fact, we just stipulated that it was random or acausal.
Quoting Agustino
I suppose that I am a reductionist. I'm simply a reductionist who includes structures and processes as "parts."
Quoting Agustino
There isn't any that doesn't change, at least in its relations to other things, and even science suggests that a lack if change--basically something at absolute zero--can't obtain.
You stipulated that it is acausal. But that doesn't mean that you have conceived it. For example, didn't you still imagine a red ball, and then imagine it disappearing and being replaced by a green ball? Didn't you therefore imagine a transition from one state to another, and thus a causal explanation in that state X was replaced/followed by state Y?
Furthermore, Elizabeth Anscombe makes this point originally - but if you imagine something disappearing, have you really imagined it going out of existence without a cause? What difference is there between conceiving something going out of existence without a cause from conceiving something going out of existence without a known cause?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Empirically it can't obtain. But, say, "1+1=2", does the relationship that this proposition describes exist even if there is no empirical world? Relationships between concepts - meaning - exists even if it has no instantiations in the world. It doesn't exist in the same sense that chairs exist - sure, but that isn't to say it doesn't exist at all. And this is just one category of things which are eternal - timeless - simply because they don't exist empirically, and thus are not subject to change.
No, I didn't imagine anything causal about it, and it's not about imagining things anyway. It's simply about logical possibility. There's nothing contradictory about acausal events. Yet acausal events are changes. Thus change is not identical to causality.
Quoting Agustino
You'd have to actually present an argument that acausality is logically contradictory.
Quoting Agustino
No, of course not. First off, it doesn't literally describe any relation that's external to us. It's an abstraction of--a way we think about--relations we experience. (And then beyond such simple abstractions, most of mathematics is a game of sorts that we build upon those abstractions about relations.)
Quoting Agustino
Not in the slightest. Concepts do not obtain at all aside from being something in individuals' brains. If there are no individuals, there are no concepts.
It seems like you're forgetting that I'm both a physicalist and a nominalist. I don't at all buy that there are real abstracts. I don't buy that there is anything that is non-physical. I don't buy that there are universals. I don't buy that there are things with no location, etc.
I agree with Agustino on this,
Isn't this the problem. Causality can't be logically anything but the the way it is, to conflate it with reason is the problem Hume had with it. Nature is not set up to follow our logic.
Right I guess it's just about time that we open some skulls and go looking for those damn concepts.
Quoting Terrapin Station
So I suppose in the absence of human beings, one atom and another atom don't form two atoms together :s
Quoting Terrapin Station
For something to be inconceivable, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's logically contradictory in-itself. For example, Spinoza's point that there exists only one Substance is undeniable - it is indeed a necessary truth once you understand the argument. But it's not so because it's logically contradictory that there's more than one substance. Rather, if we try to conceive more than one substance we fail.
So my point isn't that acausality is logically contradictory. My point is that you cannot conceive it. You claim you have conceived it by having one red ball which pops out of existence and is replaced by a green ball which pops into existence. But this sequence - if you actually experience it - isn't outside the realm of causality. Indeed, you have just another instance of state X following state Y (ie of causality, where state X is a cause for state Y).
Schopenhauer: "But time and space are not only, each by itself, presupposed by matter, but a combination of the two constitutes its essential nature, just because this, as we have shown, consists in action - in causality"
My "Amazonian village" was described by Tobias Schneebaum in 1969 -- quite a good book, Keep the River on Your Right. Schneebaum was investigating a group of people who had not been previously contacted by westerners. (They hadn't been contacted by a lot of other Amazonian tribes, either.) He presented himself to them on a river beach near their presumed area. He had quite a bit of western tech (1969 version) with him: matches, cigarette lighter, flashlight, drawing supplies (paper, pencils), some clothing, -- no radio. I think he had a camera too, but his film was exposed during the "new guy party" that occurred
The "investigating team" from the tribe were not hostile; they were VERY curious, especially about the mirror, the matches, and the lighter. He made some quick drawings for them, which also intrigued them. He was systematically undressed and inspected intimately. Then he was accepted as a visitor.
He stayed with the tribe for a year or so, if I remember correctly. The tribe was in conflict with some other tribes, there were instances of cannibalism (no, he didn't report back on what we taste like in stew.) and a lot of sitting around and just maintaining life as they know it.
Over time, he revisited them several times. You can read the book -- you'll have to buy it on the used book market, most likely -- but it is quite interesting.
When the Beatles helped introduce Ravi Shankar, the sitar, and Indian ensembles to British and American audiences, Shankar noted that the audiences, totally unfamiliar with the Indian music, could not tell the difference between their tuning up and their actual playing. Someone who had never heard western music before (if there is any such person left on earth) might be similarly unfamiliar with the symphony orchestra's tune up before the conductor appears on stage.
I'd take you up on this in more detail if this thread was about conservatism - it seems to me that if they got to the point of "unhappy marriage" + "children", then the dice have already been thrown so to speak. Whether they separate or not, the children and they will still suffer; suffering becomes inescapable. Not running away simply becomes the moral way to deal with this - indeed the point of marriage is "through thick and thin together", otherwise why bother to get married in the first place? "Running away" is merely failing to assume responsibility for your own actions. Nobody forced you to get married and have children in the first place.
Second, the idea of marriage is the idea of the spiritual unity of a man and a woman. This is the foundation for children, family and the rest. And the idea of spiritual unity between a man and a woman is underscored by the idea of personalism - of treating the other with the full significance deserved by another person, by virtue of them being a person (and thus according to them or better said recognising in them infinite value). Treating them as an end-in-themselves instead of as a means-to-some-other-end. So marriage is an end-in-itself - the spiritual union between the two people is end-in-itself, and as such is not engaged in for the purpose of having children or for any other purpose greater than itself. Having children is something that either happens or doesn't happen depending on a multitude of factors including material conditions, biological possibility, the wisdom of the couple, etc. If I am to put it in these words, having children is to marriage, just as what your shadow is to you if the conditions are right.
In such a marriage children cannot suffer emotionally because of the parents - such children are born under a house founded on a rock. Now marriage does not occur at the moment when people go in a church or wherever they go to "officially" get married. Marriage occurs when they commit to each other - it is a spiritual affair between the two people involved and their God - the state plays no role in it. As such, two people in a relationship, a couple, are already married. The bond of marriage, Love, is eternal (which doesn't imply infinite temporal duration, because one of the people can die for example - but if they die, it doesn't follow they're no longer married) - otherwise how can it be Love, as Kierkegaard asks us?
So these people who abandon their partners not only cause a grave harm to their partners, but they wreck their own souls (as you can see, this all comes before we even speak of the pain of the children, who have been deprived of the love that they are entitled to as people, as human beings, as ends-in-themselves of which the song speaks about). Those who abandon their partners have never loved them, but have only used them, and hence objectified them. And a torturer doesn't only harm his victim, but perhaps more importantly, they also do irreversible harm to themselves. It is not merely as the legalists and the Pharisees claim that divorce is a problem - it is the breaking of the spiritual unity, and the objectification of the other that is the real problem. Exploitation of the other, whether this is for sex or for any other thing - that is still exploitation and despicable, never excusable. But unfortunately, in all societies that have ever existed, exploitation was taken as the social norm - indeed hypocrisy has always been the face of society. Whether this was, as in the past, cast out as the woman having to "tolerate" their husband's affairs, or as it is today where promiscuity has become open and rampant for both men and women - indeed it has been "normalized". It remains equally despicable.
But the fact remains - marriage is of such infinite value - indeed it is the infinite sharing of value between two people - that no other replacement exists for it - not promiscuity, not anything - and thus, it is as Spinoza has said: "Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself; nor do we enjoy it because we restrain our lusts; on the contrary, because we enjoy it, we are able to restrain them"
I thoroughly disagree. I've been there and done it. There is no way you want to put a child through the anger, pain, and turmoil of a bad marriage. Its adversely affects all the lives that involved, fuck traditional values.
Now that is certainly a great argument :-!
Well for what it counts, my parents didn't have a good marriage, and have always been fighting for quite a bit of time. Doesn't seem like I "fuck traditional values" because of that. Indeed, they were fighting because they didn't respect traditional values :-} One of my earliest memories in fact is waking up to hear my parents shouting at each other, and being so scared that I picked up one of their phones, and called the other one with hidden number so they wouldn't realise it had been me to make them stop. So? Would I have preferred to be without my mother or without my father only not to have the shouting? :s And yet, according to you I should be the first to "fuck traditional values"
It sounds interesting, though I have always had doubts with ethnographic research in cultural anthropology, mostly because fieldwork can quite easily be fraudulent. I will investigate a little on it, though admittingly I myself have issues with cultural relativism being a universalist when it comes to human rights.
Quoting Cavacava
While I am annoyed at the sudden digress from the OP, for what it is worth I think you are both on the wrong side of the extreme. A good marriage is two good people, marrying. You cannot understand others if you do not understand yourself and so one would need to first better themselves. That would mean to do what Cavavaca suggests because one would need to eliminate all bias [customs, traditions, or what others expect basically enable marriages that are bad and the eventual misery results]. As you begin to think independently, you realise that it is not the elimination of traditional values but rather a consciousness of why it is there and so you consciously select the right values on what becomes Augustino’ interpretation, because we begin to value what is moral and that would mean being capable of discerning the difference between what is right and what is a blind custom. We thus become enabled with the capacity to select a partner who we admire and deeply love and you cannot select the right person until you find that initial freedom, just as much as you cannot select what is morally worthy from what is merely blind adherence to social expectations.
That is why they say that when a man is with the right woman, he feels no anger or anxiety and when a woman is with the right man she feels no fear or sadness. The algorithm is quite simple, but the so many bad marriages are because of people being unable to think independently.
While I don't think you've accurately represented my position given:
Quoting Agustino
Quoting Agustino
But:
Quoting TimeLine
You are indeed correct about this, and that's my bad. So my apologies for digressing from the OP O:)
:)
We see the brain activity of such things via fMRIs for example.
Quoting Agustino
1 + 1 = 2, for one, hinges on the idea of units--you have two units of something. That's a universal. But there are no real universals.
Quoting Agustino
I was talking about for it to not be a logical possibility.
Quoting Agustino
lol--the old, "If you disagree with x, it implies that you do not understand x."
Quoting Agustino
Causality doesn't obtain merely by one thing following another. The one thing has to causing the other thing that follows.
They're not "presupposed" by matter, they rather supervene on matter and its dynamic relations. There is no "essential nature." And causality isn't simply action.
How did you begin to "learn the piano"? What kind of "research" did you get into?
In what sense did learning or playing the piano lead you to "feel insincere"? And why did this experience of insincerity lead you to try "research" -- instead of to try banging on the piano and singing your heart out in another way?
Quoting TimeLine
It's not enough to play "correct notes". Hear the sound, feel the swing, mess around with rhythm and intonation, play with emotion, play to the sound, really mean it. Then what you play will be "authentic", even if it sounds terrible to other people, even if it sounds terrible to you when you listen back to a recording of the performance.
It may take years of practice to develop your ear and your playing. Do you have something better to do with free time?
Quoting TimeLine
I'm not sure what this phrase means either. What is authentic laughter, what are authentic tears? What is authentic exercise? What is authentic rebellion? Authentic anger, despair, joy, hope, promises, denials....
Quoting TimeLine
In what sense are you "replicating a Norah Jones song"? It's one thing to "sing the same notes", another to sing more or less like Norah Jones. Even Norah Jones doesn't produce an exact replica of her own original performance each time she performs. Each performance of "a song" is a new product, a new act, a new creation, that more or less closely resembles past performances.
Quoting TimeLine
It would mean you were playing it without the damper pedal.
Is the damper pedal indicated in the score? In that case, it would mean you were playing it inconsistently with the score in this one respect.
But matching the score is only the beginning of performing a composition. And we haven't even begun to speak of improvisation.
Quoting TimeLine
I'm not sure what this means. What is an "ontological perspective"? What is an "eternal existent"? What sort of thing is not "contained within the confines of space and time"?
A "piece of music" -- a fleeting phrase, or a whole symphony that has been jotted down or performed in the past -- may be repeated, in the same way that an utterance or a gesture may be repeated, in the same way that "seeing a sunset" may be repeated. Musical activity is like other activity in this respect; we understand it in terms of generic patterns. But the sound that strikes our ear, the sound that we produce by shaking a string -- that sound is a concrete thing in each instance, and the real focus of the musician on each occasion of performance -- that shaking thing, that motion in a medium, that unique soundcloud, not some abstract "notes" jotted down on paper or recalled by rote.
Quoting TimeLine
A song involves both lyrics and music -- but "the same notes" could be sung in another song, with different lyrics, or sung in another piece of music without lyrics, or played in another piece of music without song. Songs are one thing, music is another. The singer is another thing, and each singing is another thing.
I like Bob Dylan's singing overall. He's like an American griot. He sings phrases with a human voice, not "notes" according to some artificial standard of precision and correctness -- and the way he does it, it's no accident, it's nuanced and musical, he knows what he's doing, he's in touch with the sound he's making and he does it on purpose. Maybe he gets carried away sometimes, one way or another at different points in his career, because he's an artist leaning into his craft one way and another, trying it out, figuring out what works for him by trial and error. He's a real folk singer.
Quoting TimeLine
Of course it's not necessary to understand the lyrics of a song in order to be moved by a song. Music is moving without any words at all, and without human voices singing.
Quoting TimeLine
Each composer, each performer, each agent has his own style, his own voice, his own personality.
Shall we say some styles and voices and personalities are more "authentic" than others?
Quoting TimeLine
I'm not sure how eternity's crept back into this conversation.
I'm inclined to think of philosophy and music somehow together. Perhaps they both tickle my temporal lobes in a similar way.
Que? :-O
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Well, I'm not that advanced yet to simply improvise and I believe my insincerity lies with the fact that I am learning other people' music rather than creating my own, something I hope to do once I feel confident enough with playing. As for the research, that was the other phenomenological aspect of my enquiry, to try and ascertain the properties that enables a person to experience music and whether sound and perception help conceive of subjectivity. Think Hegel' aesthetics and the 'inward movement' or the subjective life that music is experienced conceptually without transcending 'Notion' or toward the immediate perception of 'Being' - music provides the aesthetic opportunity to access and express via sound the inward dimensions and turn it into a form, the “the Ah and Oh of the heart” as he says. When a piece of music is created, it enables us to understand this movement; this 'movement' is not subject to the constraints of space and time and music provides us with the link to these 'feelings'. He also notes that formalizing music may destroy this link or feeling hence your:
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
That is the precise point. If the music was created through this elusive access to our subjective 'movement' would changing it according to the way it was meant to sound by the creator mean we have ruined it?
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
I love Bob Dylan as a person, as a musician and as a poet and was overwhelmed with joy when I heard he had won the nobel prize. But, I still do not enjoy listening to him, however much I respect him. I agree with everything that you write here.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Yes.
I mean, what steps have you taken, how have you approached the project of learning to play piano?
For instance: It sounds like you've mainly been learning to play songs on the piano and to sing along with your own playing. How have you gone about learning the songs? Instructional books or videos, sessions with a local teacher, playing along to recordings by ear, putting each song together purely on the basis of memory.... Have you learned the names of the "notes" corresponding to each key on the keyboard? Are you acquainted with concepts like "octave", "scale", "phrase", "chord", "meter"?
For that matter, is this the first time you’ve learned to play an instrument? Why now? Why piano, instead of guitar or sarod or shakuhachi or dumbek, or any other instrument?
Quoting TimeLine
Anyone who occasionally hums or imagines a tune he doesn't recall having heard before, or slaps a free beat on table or thighs, knows how to improvise music. The trick is, how to transfer or apply this old skill to a new context, to a new instrument, say the piano; and how to cultivate the skill of musical improvisation, as one aspect of musical performance, in any such application and across all such applications.
It doesn't have to be great music, it doesn't have to be a masterpiece, it doesn't have to sound pleasant or marketable. You gain something from the effort, just like you gain something by straining to perform songs composed by others, even if it doesn't feel quite right or sound quite right at first, even if it feels off somehow for months or years. Even great performers feel off sometimes, don't let it get you down. Ride it out, release it, roll with it -- the opportunity for this sort of psychological practice is one of the benefits of practicing music -- and in the meantime, you're developing skills you'll be able to rely on, no matter how you feel on each occasion of performance.
Keep it simple and play freely. Do it like any of us hums a tune or sings in the shower, without worrying about "playing the right notes" or "playing in time" or what phrases to play or whether it “sounds good”. It’ll help you develop the coordination of your two hands, and your voice, and your ear, and your emotions, and a little repertoire of musical phrases, just by noodling around, playing, singing, hearing, feeling, moving, breathing.
Build up the skill from small parts by limiting your options in particular exercises: Try using two notes in your bass hand, say root and fifth, D and A; and five notes in your right hand, maybe D-F-G-A-C or A-C-D-F-G. Play without singing; sing and play simultaneously; sing without playing. Sing along with the notes you play in your left hand; sing along with the notes you play in your right hand; sing notes other than those you play in either hand; don't think about what you're singing, just sing. Play slower, play faster; play quieter, play louder; play more legato, play more staccato....
Really listen to the sounds you're making. As you build up coordination, focus on the emotions and feelings that accompany the sounds, emotions the music seems both to express and to summon, to flow from and to produce. Dig into those feelings, dig into those sounds. Play with greater emotional intensity (not necessarily greater volume). Vary the emotion.
How does "playing with feeling", or with various emotional intentions, alter the sound of the music, and how does it alter the movements of the body that produce that sound?
Quoting TimeLine
Consider the difference between aiming to mimic another performer, and aiming to perform another composer's work in one's own voice, in one's own style. Imagine the same song, say "This Land Is Your Land", as it might be sung by any singer you can think of -- Woody Guthrie, Lady Gaga, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Eddie Vedder, Maria Callas, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan... whoever.
The song, the lyrics, the "notes", don't tell the singer how to sing them. The singer appropriates the song, assimilates it, personalizes it, makes it his own: Ain't what you swing, it's the way that you swing it.
I wonder if your experience of insincerity has anything to do with an attempt to mimic other performers or performances, as opposed to learning to play the song your own way.
Of course it can take years to start getting a feel for what "your own way" might be, to start finding your own voice. That's a natural part of the process, and in a way there's no end to it.
The project of cultivating a voice, a style, an authentic musical personality won't ever get off the ground if you don't develop a skill set, build up a repertoire, develop coordinated habits of bodily movements that produce sound; of hearing and listening; of feeling and emotion, of moving and being moved by sound and by the act of sound-production; of thinking and perhaps speaking about what's involved in the process of making and hearing music.
It's natural for everything to be out of joint in the beginning. If you keep at it and you live long enough, you'll work past it, and bring it closer together.
Your feeling of insincerity may just be a sign that you're sensitive to the process, you feel the unsettledness of the beginning, and you have a strong sense of the emotional value of music. To me that sounds like a good thing. Use that experience of insincerity like a beacon to help you find your way into the craft.
It may be our use of words differs considerably along these lines.
I suppose the "properties" that enable us to experience music include properties of moving bodies that produce sounds in the world, properties of those sounds in the world, properties of ears and nervous systems, properties of the human organism that pertain to the production of emotion and affect in general.... I might ask how all such "properties", and the things they are properties of, are coordinated in auditory perception and in musical perception; in musical sound-production and music-coordinated activities such as dancing; and in musical imagination.
Quoting TimeLine
I'm not sure what you mean.
Surely perceptual experience is very much part of what we might call "subjective experience", or experience considered in its subjective aspect; though in the course of ordinary affairs we may tend to focus on the objective aspect of perceptual experience.
Auditory perception is one sort of perception, I might say more specifically a mode of exteroception.
I say that:
In audition we may perceive sounds, as well as objects or states of affairs in the world in virtue of their sound-relative properties, their relations to the sounds that contact our auditory receptors.
Analogously:
In vision we may perceive lights, as well as objects or states of affairs in the world in virtue of their light-relative properties, their relations to the lights that contact our visual receptors.
In olfaction we may perceive odors, as well as objects or states of affairs in the world in virtue of their odor-relative properties, their relations to the odors that contact our olfactory receptors.
Accordingly, I'm inclined to think of perceptual experience, and thus subjective experience, as closely coordinated with what seems to be a ceaseless play of things outside, upon, and within my body, including the lights, sounds, and odors that appear to me; as well as the things in the world that seem, for instance, to produce, reflect, transmit, or absorb lights, sounds, and odors.
The soundcloud appears as a body in the world, a physical phenomenon. This is the body the musician moves and shapes and responds to and is moved by, the thing the musician plays and plays with and plays to, the thing we hear.
Quoting TimeLine
I feel I don't understand any of this Hegelian verbiage, except perhaps for Ah and Oh.
Quoting TimeLine
What do you mean by "the music"? Do you mean the composition as recorded in the score, or do you mean one particular performance of what's recorded in that score? Either one may be called "the music", and the sense of the phrase varies accordingly.
A score is a script, a recipe, a record of a generic, abstract set of steps for application in performance.
A piece of writing is likewise a script, a generic rule. The sentence "Here I go, singing low" can be uttered "correctly" -- according to the letter -- in infinitely various ways without "ruining" or "destroying" the sentence, without breaking the rule laid down in the instruction.
What if one says "Here I go, singin' low"? Is that a breach of the original rule, or one of the acceptable ways of enacting the original rule? Depends who you ask; but in any case now there are two different rules. Arguably the second is a "specification", "determination", or variation of the first; while the first is more generic, less determined, than the second; unless we agree on a strict standard by which to interpret the first rule as requiring that the last phoneme, /ng/, be clearly articulated in any "correct" performance of the rule thus determined.
As it stands alone on paper, or on this digital screen, or as expressed in my head or your head, a rule like that doesn’t say anything about how it was "meant to be interpreted by its creator". That's another thing that's up to us, to each one of us or each group of us to settle on each occasion of performance.
It may be that some interpreters or performers have insights into a score or text that its creator never had. Once the score or text is completed, the creator stands before it as one interpreter among others; he may change his mind and develop alternative or even conflicting interpretations of his own finished script over time. Accordingly the selection of the composer's or author's intention as definitive is an arbitrary selection. In any case, it seems a score or text is a more generic thing than the same score or text as determined by the intentions or interpretations of any one person at any one time; and it's not clear how we're supposed to figure out the intentions and interpretations of anyone who is not available for comment, who may have left scant traces of his thoughts on the matter, apart from the marks we call the score or text.
Quoting TimeLine
It's hard for me to fathom: In what sense do you "love Bob Dylan as a musician", and why do you "not enjoy listening to him", and how do these two attitudes fit together in the same person?
Quoting TimeLine
I'm inclined to agree, though I find such thoughts difficult to comprehend and articulate:
What is it that makes one style, voice, personality, or performance more "authentic" than another?
Can one abstract or generic composition, for instance a score, also be more or less “authentic” than another?
Yes, I have purchased introductory books on how to play the piano and have learnt the notes and concepts like octave and scale etc. I always wanted to play the piano specifically, doing a couple of music classes when I was in early secondary school [around 13 years old] as part of extra-curricular activities they offered but because I was in and out of school and quite poor, I never got a chance to learn and later other priorities became, well, more important. I guess my reasoning behind learning now is because I feel it is never too late to learn anything and I am no longer there anymore and have the choice and the opportunity to learn. Why weep for the past when you can change the present?
I appreciate and welcome your advice, there is not much to say in response to what you wrote as I will try and adopt the strategies you put forward and turn it into something habitual.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Well, I was once a dancer and recently I tried to dance on my own at my friend's studio but couldn't because of an injury. I cried my heart out when I tried dancing to Ben Howard' 'Small Things' as though the song was expressing the misery within that I wasn't aware of. If you know me, there is no chance of seeing me fall in the face of an injury, nothing stops me, but because I was listening to that song it effected me. I felt wonderful afterwards because I knew something was over, out, that my vulnerability was no longer controlling my inner 'movement' because 'small things' understood me.
I have to go now, ill respond to the other part of your post later.
It is mathematics which expresses eternal properties, and to the extent that music partakes in mathematics, it has eternal properties. Do you understand the physics of consonance and harmony? This is when the wavelengths produce synchronized crests and troughs. Here, the subjective becomes objective, because what I like may be the same as what you like, due to something describable by mathematical principles.
There is a deep paradox to be found in the principles of harmony which demonstrates our inability to understand the relationship between space and time. Anyone who works over numerous octaves using the circle of fifths, or some such activity, will be familiar with what is known as the Pythagorean comma. In some forms of tuning this manifests as the wolf interval. The problem is that there is a very peculiar incompatibility between the fractions which are used produce harmonies. In modern musical engineering, the problem is resolved by using equal interval tuning. But such tuning denies the perfect harmonies which are to be found in "just", or "pure" intonation. The result is that there is no truly objective way of dividing the octave. We compromise, seeking a way which is pragmatic, and also conducive to producing harmony.
I think the problem can be exemplified like this. Suppose we take an octave between 220 Hz and 440 Hz. 220 and 440 are in perfect harmony, being the octave. The next octave would take us to 880. We can find the mid-point of each of these octaves, 330, and 660, so we have another octave here, with perfect harmony. All of these, 220, 330, 440, 660, are consistent with the divisor of 110, so there is a degree of consonance, and we have harmony here, the properties of good music which produce peace and love. But when we take the mid-way point between 330 and 660, we get 495, and an octave lower than 330 is 165. So if we halve this octave, we have dissonance in relation to the 220-440-880 octaves. This makes it impossible to produce the notes within the octave according to the pure principles of harmony. Each note requires that we jump to a different mathematical base, and there is no harmony, peace or love, between these different bases.
What this indicates is the fundamental difference between doubling a number and halving a number. From our mathematical training, we tend to see halving as a simple inversion of doubling. But what music demonstrates to us is that when we are dealing with frequencies there is a fundamental difference between doubling and halving. This problem manifests in the Fourier transform, and is well known as the uncertainty principle.
I find the pythagorean angle tempting but paradoxical and somehow I appreciate Hegel' view that the more we attempt to theoretically formalise music through harmonic perfection, the likelihood of losing a connection to this subjective movement; thus, we never reach the subjective for it to become objective. It is as though each time we attempt to reach into eternity, we form opposing dipoles rather than coherent magnetic field interactions just as we are never able to grasp the relationship between space and time. The numerical or relational properties between the ratio of consonance and harmony can explain qua music in its formal and theoretical as a thing in itself and can explain the diffraction of sound waves, but any objective answers as to why we experience music is no where near as clear.
So, you may need to further explain how you concluded wavelengths can reach into the subjective and objectify rather than it being relative to the individual aesthetic and experience. Are we really experiencing something subjective or have we formed constructs where we attempt to form meaning through tonal patterns where our subjective inspiration is psychological? Is mathematics real? The former, I much prefer but would still be keen to know your thoughts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Look, I absolutely love this that I got a little tingly when I read it, but the equal division of harmony [or two synchronous wavelength sources of equal amplitude] fails to adequately explain the question and is theoretical in its explanation of the concordance between harmony. Would that imply that something may be temporally wrong with jazz music because of its dissonance? Does something need to be pleasant in its consonance to be deemed harmonious?
What I believe is that there are objective aspects of tonal music, just like there are objective aspects of rhythm. In rhythm we find it in the repetition of equal temporal spacing, and in tones we find it in harmony. When we are trained in music, we train our ears to recognize the harmonies of wavelengths. This begins with a recognition of the octave. We cannot deny that the octave is an objective aspect of music. Also, it is objective fact that we can produce an octave by dividing the wavelength in half, or by doubling the wavelength.
Where subjectivity enters in, is in how we divide up the octave. We can make a chromatic scale, major, minor, or whatever, there are so many options. In general, one would choose certain points, such as the mid point between the two tonics, which are objectively conducive to harmony. There are a number of other factors which enter in, such as the desire of the composer to modulate from one key to another, and the capacity of the instrument to produce an octave from each note in the scale, allowing one to play in any key. Whichever scales are chosen, we can train our ears to recognize the intervals between tones, and train our voices to reproduce the intervals. So for instance, the major scale is a subjective division of the octave which has been agreed upon, and therefore conventionalized. Thus we have two distinct forms of "objectivity" here. We have the objective fact of harmony, and we also have objectivity by convention. Objectivity by convention is created through inter-subjectivity, and since it is based in subjectivity it is not a true or real objectivity, like the objectivity found in harmony. Inter-subjective convention is produced by a number of factors likely starting with the goal of maximizing the potential for harmony. But the purity of this goal is mitigated by many factors such as the basic objective difficulty of the Pythagorean comma, and many other practical concerns such as the nature of the various instruments.
Quoting TimeLine
The point to remember is that we are trained, or we train ourselves, to ear the different tonal aspects of music. So we do not automatically hear even the pure objective harmony of the two tonics of the octave. And even if a tone is played, and a second later the same tone is played, we must train ourselves to recognize this as the same tone. Musical theory seeks to determine objective facts concerning wavelengths, but then we must practise in order to be able to recognize the principles put forward by the theory. Subjectivity enters into the theory itself, because of the pragmatics of practise. The theorists may attempt to hide their subjectivity behind conventions of inter-subjectivity, to the point where the average musician cannot draw the line between objective principles of harmony and inter-subjective conventions. The creativity of the artist may inspire one to disrespect all conventions and experiment with new forms, but nevertheless, we all recognize that there are some basic objective facts, such as the octave.
I understand but your argument seems to rest on the assumption of one playing an instrument or creating music; what of the movement music can inspire in people? With regards to the abovementioned, this is where my superficiality was concerned, that my replication of other’ music appeared inauthentic. From an anthropological perspective viz., ethnomusicology, some cultures experience profound mutual emotions without any cognitive awareness as to why because of the symbolic meaning and so this subjective experience is really a study for semiotics and psychology. As you say, the purity of creating inter-subjectively is thus called into question, namely whether the eternal properties that exist outside of space and time merely denote memory or intuition?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I think what sparked my initial enthusiasm was the relationship between wavelengths and frequencies when we objectively ascertain what is considered tonal, particularly where making an instrument is concerned. I found myself thinking about Georgia Brown whose vocal range is 8 octaves but her highest pitch at G10 is considered a frequency rather than a note; is it all just noise? I think of my placid, lazy dog that never barks and how he went mental when fireworks started exploding; what we judge as music could merely be ordered frequencies as part of our hearing range and neurological processing.
Subjective experience can quite easily be flawed considering it is subconscious and therefore wrought with little conscious awareness, but it is nevertheless 'alive' and I tend to believe that the subconscious realm - or intuition - is a network of perceptual experiences that we are unable to identify and make sense of. So, pretend that when you were a child you were walking in the park where there were pigeons and your older brother jumped off a tree he had climbed and frightened you along with the birds that flew up and made loud noises. You grow up fearing or disliking pigeons because the experience with your brother and your limited cognitive and linguistic capabilities have transferred that 'feeling' and you grow up not really knowing why (I read of a similar situation in Helene Deutsch' Character Types). When I think of how my feelings could be flawed in some way, I begin to doubt my intention for liking the experience of music.
A combination of factors can enable us to like a song; the lyrics, the music, even the video (I once watched a video that had a Tekken montage with the song 'Bring me to Life' by Evanescence and loved the combination because of memories playing Tekken with friends, the lyrics, the music, her voice), and what compels us to a song could be psychological. Where I found the latter questionable was why I liked the opera of Puccini when I had no social or environmental connection to opera at all and how I could possibly be moved when I do not even understand the lyrics. As mentioned previously, some cultures are known to not even know why they are mutually emotional about a particular form of music but the outcome rests in its symbolism. Perhaps - from a semiotic perspective - I loved Turandot because of a combination of factors that enabled me to imagine tragedy without having to directly understand what Puccini was attempting to convey. So, I was moved with emotion because I am emotional about tragedy.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Hence my previous remarks and this includes everything that we experience but that we cannot completely maintain at conscious or objective level, filtering out what is necessary. It does not mean that everything else disappears, it is still there, we just cannot articulate it and it is expressed through emotions rather than language.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
It is hard for me to fathom too, just as much as why I like opera though I do not understand the lyrics and why I feel intense passion when I listen to Vivaldi' Summer Presto and Mozart' Requiem, which was used perfectly in Amadeus. Its the feeling; that is, I respect and admire Bob Dylan when I read his lyrics and him as a person as he epitomises the type of man I respect for his dedication to justice and principles, but I do not feel anything when I listen to him, it simply does not work. I feel more when I read his songs than when I listen.
Synchronized crests and troughs are not objectively preferred or better, though.
So it is epistemological?
I would think so, don't you?
Quoting TimeLine
If listening to music were like this, "a network of perceptual experiences which we are unable to identify and make sense of", would it be possible to enjoy music? Imagine if music appeared to you like random unidentifiable noises. Wouldn't this make you very confused, maybe even scared, how could this be enjoyable? Even if you listen to music when extremely wired on acid or some other hallucinogen, you recognize it as music, and make associations. If there were some kind of background music, which you didn't recognize as music, it could really freak you out.
Quoting TimeLine
All kinds of different music causes all kinds of different associations in your mind, many quite emotional, stretching right into the subconscious level. I don't think it's really appropriate to question why you like music. It's just natural to like music, and as soon as you've heard it, it starts to bring back memories. Music helps you to bring up these emotions, understand them, and ultimately assist in knowing yourself. My mother had a guitar, which she would pick up, to play and sing a few songs, from time to time, when I was very young. These may be the earliest memories which I have. A mother's voice, singing, can be very pleasant for a child. When you're a baby, and you know that your mother is relaxed and happy, then so are you.
Yes, but I didn't realise you did. I'm feeling a tad bit like a crusty dragon right now. :s
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am slightly confused as to your position here. I never said that perceptual experiences were the same as listening to music but rather to the architecture of our subjectivity that amalgams memory, intuition and emotion. Our subconscious is filled with a network of experiences that our conscious mind has yet the tools to comprehend adequately with and becomes the reasoning behind why we are unable to articulate the 'movement' or emotional sensations we feel. It is perhaps the reason that makes it possible to enjoy music, since the subconscious mind it still conscious in that it is accessible but lacks a control since you are unaware of why, perhaps intuitively, you feel something is wrong or right. So, we may not be aware of why we associate certain feelings to particular musical experiences, but the logic is that we explore this subjectivity through sense rather than reason. As you say below, music brings up these emotions.
I'm not sure about hallucinogens as I have never taken any form of drugs neither do I drink but I guess Huxley may appreciate the quality of induced transcendent experience.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Have you ever experienced an association with that through songs, such as a singer whose voice may induce the same feeling of being relaxed and happy as you were when you were a child? I take it that associations such as this must therefore be linked to particular memories, but I recently had a conversation with a friend about this who like death metal and what I gathered was that the music he liked provided him with a sensory experience that explained his subjective frustrations, agitation and anger that he felt that listening to the music almost provided him with relief. Though it may not provide him with the tools that would enable him to understand the causal roots for these rather negative feelings he had subjectively, there was nonetheless a connection and this raises the question itself to the fore. It helps articulate the feelings that would otherwise remain dormant, bringing it up to consciousness. Conversely, though, when I think of popular music and the simplicity it affords, I really wonder about the minds of the masses.
There was surely some confusion, and it was my fault, because you had been talking about the experience of listening to music, and when I joined the discussion I started talking about the principles involved in creating music. So we were coming at the same thing from opposite directions. Theoretically, you might think that they would be the same thing, the principles which make music enjoyable, are the same principles which a composer would follow in producing a piece. But since they are opposing sides of the same coin, the relationship between the various aspects, subjectivity, epistemology, objectivity, ontology, is not the same.
The artist will approach composition with intent, and the goal might be to please oneself, or to please others. If it is to please others, the composer will look toward cold hard epistemological principles, grounded in objectivity and ontology. If the goal of the composer is to please oneself, then the artist is freed from such constraints to wander down various creative avenues, perhaps even discovering new objective principles, which may be accepted as epistemological principles in the future. In any case, the artist in today's environment must find an intricate balance between epistemology (what has been proven to work), and subjectivity (what pleases oneself).
With respect to the audience, the audience needs that recognition factor, and for the individual it is a subjective experience. But inter-subjectivity makes this subjective aspect the essence of the epistemological principles which the artist must respect. So as much as you and I have had different subjective experiences with respect to listening to music, the music which we have been exposed to, and conditioned by, is similar, and this grounds the epistemological principles.
Quoting TimeLine
I think that what you are trying to say here, concerning the relationship between the conscious and subconscious, is so difficult to say, that you are having trouble saying it. Perhaps you should consider that all of our sensations have already been processed by the subconscious prior to being present to the conscious mind. If this is the case, then only "reasonable" experience is present to the conscious mind, experience which has been rendered in a form intelligible to the conscious mind. What the subconscious has made sense of, is what is present in the conscious mind. We cannot call this activity of the subconscious a form of reasoning, because that is what the conscious mind does. However it is similar to reasoning as it is a form of making sense of, what is occurring. I think this is what I called "recognition", but it isn't really proper to call it recognition either, because again, this is something which the conscious mind does. If we look at it from a semiotic perspective, it might be called an association, but this may be misleading. The question would be, does this subconscious process proceed by "recognizing" something as the same, or does it proceed by association, in which case one thing is associated with another thing. These are distinct, and perhaps we need to respect them both.
Quoting TimeLine
Here, you use the word "associate". Let me see if I can analyze this process of association. I believe that the essence of this association is to be found in the recognition of something as the same. I think that when something is sensed, it produces a feeling in the subconscious. When the same feeling occurs again, we recognize the cause of that feeling, the thing being sensed, as the same.
So for instance, I told you that my mother had a guitar which she played when I was a baby. The guitar was a particular Martin, with a distinctive sound, unlike any other guitar I've ever heard, unique to itself. I think, that maybe the instant I hear notes being played on that guitar, it produces a particular feeling within my subconscious, an association which goes way back to when I was a baby, when I first heard that guitar, and this causes the sound to be presented to my conscious mind as the same sound. And therefore I hear the sound as the sound of that guitar.
This would mean that I hear the sound as the same sound, because of some associations made by my subconscious. It would not be the case that I hear the sound, and then with my conscious mind, I determine that the sound is the same sound, the determination that the sound is the same sound has already been made by the subconscious, before my conscious mind apprehends the sound.
Now consider the possibility for error. Suppose there is another guitar which sounds very similar to my mother's but perhaps not exactly the same. The sound occurs, my subconscious makes the associations, and I hear the sound as my mother's guitar. I believe I am hearing my mother's guitar. So I look at the guitar being played, and see that it is not the same guitar. Now I must correct my feelings, suppress those feelings which make me think that it is the same guitar, and allow myself to hear that it is a different guitar being played.
I believe that this experience of error and correction is intrinsic to the subjective experience of hearing music. Consider first, the experience of hearing a song which you are well familiar with. The subconscious deals with the associations, and you hear the song as the same song. There is no issue of error and correction here, you correctly hear the song as the same song. Now consider that you hear an unfamiliar piece of music, but a certain portion of note progression is familiar, and triggers within the subconscious, the appropriate feelings associated with that progression. At that point, you have heard that note progression as "the same", so the conscious mind is alerted, in an attempt to remember, "the same as what?". I believe that this interplay between the conscious and subconscious, is fluid throughout the experience of listening to music. Feelings are always being triggered within the subconscious. Being the same as some other time, those feelings signify "the same" to the conscious mind. The conscious mind is then forced with the decision of impressing upon the subconscious, "not the same, forget those associations", or, searching the memory to confirm "the same". This is why listening to music can vary between a tumultuous emotional interplay between the conscious and subconscious, to a passive relaxing enjoyment of the decisive "I know and love that song", to the decisive "I hate that song", right through to the wonderment of "I've never heard anything like that before".
That sounds right to me. If you want to do it, and you have the opportunity, go for it. If you keep at it, you'll make progress.
Quoting TimeLine
Try it and see what you think. Try applying a similar approach, at least once in a while, to the songs you learn, to the songs you write, to any musical structures you want to assimilate into your repertoire.
Quoting TimeLine
Sounds like a very powerful experience. The sort of emotion you can channel into your art and into your whole life.
Perhaps it's never quite over till it's over: You can apply the insight you've gained through your past experience as a dancer to your present experience playing and composing music.
That's a great point but not just yet; I feel that only once the water is rested I will be able to articulate that experience more creatively, as in, in a harmonious manner as I find the harmony within. My songs slowly start to make sense as I make sense of the world.
You get it. (Y) You must be a real musician.
I am still not confident about such authenticity even when the composer attempts to please oneself as I find that we ultimately possess a social language that influences our aesthetic values. If we never had contact with any other human being since birth, would we still experience music? I don't think so; it will always be epistemological.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is why I feel musical experience can never be authentic but rather the emotional sensations music has merely ignite our imagination and enables us access to our own subjectivity; that window or access itself is authentic and not the music.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The subconscious processes perceptual experiences that filters what our conscious minds are able to articulate, so indeed consciousness is experience made intelligible. To me, philosophy is a language as is all learning with the aid of tools such as memory and imagination that enables us to surface our awareness of ourselves or 'recognition' as something distinct; a being. As we continue through this maze of self-identity, consciousness gradually raises pleasant or unpleasant experiences, values and even formerly strongly held beliefs to the fore - via memory and imagination - enabling us to re-present ourselves authentically however under the constraint of semantic rules. It is cognition as a naturally evolving state.
However, and this I assume is where we disagree, I am of the opinion that our subconscious mind also attempts to communicate but not with language, but rather with emotion - what we call intuition - as the subconscious mind is still a form of consciousness. It is the non-linear processes [hence outside of space and time] embedded into a stable network, such as the architecture of a dream explaining experiences in an unintelligible story that paradoxically makes sense. We just cannot explain it since it is unintelligible, only, we can at conscious level appreciate the emotions that we 'sense'. It is representational. Semiotics is a way of explaining such symbolic inferential relations and that our 'quasi-mind' as Pierce denotes has levels or processes that ultimately reach reality [consciousness].
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A tryptych of recognition is explained in Pierce' process of semiosis [representation, object, interpretation] and though inter-related is nevertheless modelled under the general assumption that they are distinct from one another. Working in parallel to accommodate the distinctions, once an interpretation has been reached it is enabled to interpret other objects and representations that continues to define and trigger other definitions and so on. We falter in this process only when we attribute incorrectly through habitus. This is why you would supress your feelings when you mistakenly think it is your mother's guitar.
I tend to disagree with this. I believe the ability to experience music is innate, coming from deep within. Birds sing to each other. Animals in a barn are receptive to music playing. And I think that this is why a mother singing to a baby can produce such a powerful experience. There is a language here which goes much deeper than any socially acquired language.
Quoting TimeLine
But what is that window, other than an innate, and authentic capacity to experience music? The capacity, the window, exists, and it is directed specifically at music, such that we can distinguish music from other noises, even as a baby. Doesn't this imply that music itself is authentic? The capacity is not directed at one of the other infinite possibilities of things to hear, it is directed at music. We are born with the capacity to experience music.
I will however, offer you a proposal for compromise. Perhaps, it is because music is an artificial sound, that it stands out to us, we recognize music because it is an artificial sound, and this allows us to experience it. So the capacity to experience music is not necessarily a capacity which is directed specifically at music, it is directed at artificial noises in general. But if we adopt this principle, then we may ask, what is it about artificial noises, which makes them stand out, such that we can recognize them as special. This will point us toward order, the temporal order of a sound. Now we go deeper than the tonal order, to the temporal order, and here we find a simpler but even more objective order, rhythm. So even if this capacity, the capacity to experience music, is based in the ability to recognize a sound as artificial, this capacity is based in something authentic, the capacity to recognize a temporal order.
Quoting TimeLine
I am not sure exactly what you are getting at with this description of subconscious communication. If we think of dreaming, the dream is not unintelligible, it is just the ordering of experiences in the dream that become mixed up. If we consider individual experiences within the dream, they are quite intelligible, but they get scrambled up in an unintelligible order, the experience is always being broken up and replaced by another. Thoughts are already, in a sense non-spatial, and now when you talk about "non-linear" I assume that you mean non-temporal. But notice that as soon as the temporal element is lost, then the thoughts become unintelligible. So temporal order is essential to intelligibility.
If we consider emotions now, it is the non-temporal aspect of emotions which make them unintelligible. Emotions give us the feeling of "now". I want this now, I am happy now, I am mad now, etc.. We overcome this unintelligibility by putting the emotions into a temporal context. I don't need that now, I can wait until it fits into my schedule. The reason I am happy now, or mad now, is that such and such just happened, or is about to happen, and this is why I feel these emotions now. So we put the feelings which are occurring now, emotions, into a temporal context, and this brings intelligibility to those emotions.
Quoting TimeLine
I think there is more to faltering then making incorrect association due to habit. The true fault lies in the production of the association in the first place. The "feeling" which is associated with a particular sound is inadequate for properly remembering that sound. The feeling is a generality, and may be related to numerous similar sounds, yet the sound itself is particular. So when the feeling is reproduced, an indication is made to the conscious mind that the same sound has been heard, but this is not really the same sound. This is why the conscious mind must turn to other things, sight for example, and other memories, to determine in what sense it is the same sound, or just a similar sound. I believe we need to consider multiple levels of interpretation then, at the subconscious, and at the conscious level. It is through these multiple levels that we work to avoid mistakes.
Which is perhaps the reason why music itself can arouse this 'movement' as Hegel calls it to enable us passage into our innate or subjective self; one cannot articulate this experience because the response is emotional and the stored memory being elusive becomes all the more intense. It is only when subconscious experiences surface to conscious level that our responses are no longer emotional, or I should say as intense because the memory is understood and the genuine emotions are experienced; so with your mother it would be feelings of nostalgia perhaps, of comfort and happiness.
Conversely, when we experience something bad that remains fixed at subconscious level, we feel intense emotions and confusion that could be quite dangerous to us. So, say your mother passed away and your rather peaceful and comfortable understanding of the world was suddenly shaken, you fall into a position of having to grow up and become a man. To see reality at conscious level as it is, but you subjectively refuse to because if you do then it would be the same as accepting that your mother has died, something you subconsciously fear. So, you get stuck at the same age you were when your mother passed away, perhaps taking drugs to inhibit emotional responses that would otherwise enable you to face your intense fear and accept the fact that she is gone, following others and allowing them to think on your behalf, anything to save you from facing this fear. If you were to hear someone playing a song that reminds you of her, you could potentially hate her, harm her even, think it noise or agitating and yet at the same time you would be compelled, obsessed because you cannot express why you are having these emotional responses.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that what is innate is relative to our experiences and that is why it is epistemological and not independently innate. It triggers emotional responses through memory and imagination, only sometimes we are just not aware at conscious level as to why.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The window to surfacing our memories caught in the subconscious realm is our imagination; that is innate, a universal translator of sorts to our emotional responses that are triggered by musical experiences. It is not the same as language acquisition, but I do wander whether it may be a product corresponding to semantic mechanisms, but even then meaning and development is wholly social.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Not necessarily. Ever had an extremely strange dream, cut up into multiple, unintelligible parts as you say that when you wake up think, 'what the heck?' and have a rather intense emotional response to it; but when you think about the dream, are able to piece the puzzle as to why some images were perhaps representations of certain fears or desires, it begins to make sense and the anxiety subsides. It is an intellectual sophistication that would enable one to decipher and relate, just the same as one would when listening to music. Indeed, for the most part a temporal arrow enables us to surface our emotions, but it is not essential. The sophistication itself being as you say:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Also an honesty, only possible when we overcome the angst caused by our fears.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
(Y)
I would not use "epistemological" in this way, and that's why I had trouble understanding your use of this term earlier. Epistemology is the study of knowledge, and knowledge is related to the conscious mind rather than the subconscious. It's true though, that we do talk about innate knowledge, and we must have some innate capacities which make knowledge possible, but I'd prefer to call these innate capacities rather than knowledge. These innate capacities may be related to emotional feelings, but I wouldn't call them epistemological. Those feelings are purely subjective, (of the subject), and with conscious knowledge we try to bring objectivity to bear against these subjective emotions. So I would use "epistemological" to refer to this process of trying to objectify the subjective, not directly to purely subjective experiences.
I really don't know what you would mean by "independently innate". Innate things are inherently within the subject, they are subjective, so what would you be referring to with "independent" here? I figure that everything which is present to the conscious mind during sensual experience, has been produced by the subconscious. So if I am seeing, or hearing something, this experience is actually created by the subconscious, and what is present to my conscious mind is an interpretation of what is being sensed. I think that "innate" would refer to what is at work in this subconscious level. And in the sense that it may appear to be prior to the conscious, in the case of a simple experience of listening to music, we might be inclined to say it's "independent" from the conscious. But even in such a passive experience, one's attention is always being direct through one's intention, so this underlying innate aspect of experience can never really be independent in that way.
You can experience this in a practise such as meditation. Through conscious intention you attempt to free yourself from the subconscious influence of sensation. This requires conscious effort, to completely ignore your surroundings. But if you achieve this meditative state, where sensations no longer attract your attention, then you realize that intention is required to focus on any particular sensible activity. This indicates that there must be some form of intention which is active at the subconscious level, directing the attention of the senses.
Quoting TimeLine
I would not say that if it is a semantic mechanism, it must be social. I would look at the opposite relation. I would say that a semantic mechanism is required to produce social relations, therefore the semantic mechanism is prior to social relations. That means that a semantic mechanism which is not social, can exist. This can be related to the failing of the so-called private language argument.
Quoting TimeLine
In this example of dreaming, what you are making sense of, what is intelligible, is the bits and pieces between the breaks. Each of these "pieces" is itself intelligible because within the piece there is a temporal order. But one piece does not align with the next, in a rational way, and this is where the unintelligibility lies. As much as you can create with your conscious mind, some arbitrary designations as to why this piece followed that piece, and assign an intelligibility in this way, in analysis, I believe that this is purely arbitrary. I believe that there is no real reason why X piece followed Y piece in the dreaming process, and it is truly unintelligible. This assumes a randomness in how the dream was produced. So within the dream, there is a mixing of rational order, which we can observe by understanding the pieces, and irrational order, which is a randomness in putting pieces together. In the dream state, the mind is practising its capacity for truly free thinking.
When we listen to music, we observe a very similar thing, so it can stir the emotions in a way similar to dreaming. In the case of listening to music though, it is not one's own mind which is producing the mixture of intelligible and unintelligible aspects, the composer has already done this. So it is the composer who is practising the capacity for free thought. However, the point I was trying to make, is that the musical composition usually has a particular rhythm, a time signature, which ties the whole piece together, from start to finish. This gives an overall unity to the piece, making it intelligible as one piece. Dreams are missing this aspect of overall unity. So the composer restrains the capacity for free thinking in order to increase the aspects of intelligibility.
It is not that I have incorrectly applied the term epistemological but rather you yourself have failed to understand the subconscious mind and the structural layers of the psyche; I fear you think that somehow the subconscious is distinct from the conscious mind. It is not, and as I said earlier, the subconscious mind is still a form of consciousness. It is just as accessible and communicable only without the same coordinated semantic order of a conscious mind and though it may not have the same reality - or ego - as the conscious mind does, it consists of memories that trap the same sensations, emotions, habits, perceptions that influence your behaviour. The problem is that you are unable to articulate why, exhibiting reactions such as intense feelings of fear or guilt or anger by experiences that you do not understand. It is why when you do understand, those feelings dissipate. Thus trying to objectify the subjective is trying to objectify memories and experiences that you do not understand. Thus it is already epistemological. What we know we know only of experience.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I apologise, I could have perhaps elucidated my point better with the use of the word 'distinct' rather than 'independent' and I do not believe that the psyche is divided into two independent or distinct constituents but that both are layers of consciousness. Think of it like this; as we increase our language through knowledge and experience, we are capable of surfacing - piece by piece - memories of experiences that we at the time did not have sufficient capacity to articulate. So the subconscious mind stores those experience until we increase in awareness to eventually understand it; perhaps if we did not have the facility to do this, we would quite simply go mad.
I believe that our imagination is innate, which has caused me quite a lot of grief since empiricism makes a great deal of sense to me.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I have found the experience of rationally dissecting emotions after experiencing them to be of greater value. Meditation, whilst valuable in that it provides a calmness necessary to enable rational thinking, essentially does not get to the root causes of the emotions but rather becomes a way of managing the intensity. The activity of releasing rather than managing emotional experience through various forms of communication is quite effective in taking those steps toward retrieving memories from the subconscious and being able to understand it. This is why art therapy is quite powerful, as well as writing. And... music. :P
You appear to be entering contradiction in an effort to support an untenable metaphysical position. Subconscious, by definition is not a form of consciousness. By claiming this you only contradict yourself. I believe that you are denying the distinction between these two, conscious and subconscious, which I have utilized, in order to assume that the two exist only as an undivided whole. But this is not the case, because we see from the evidence of evolution that consciousness evolved, and that there was a form of subconscious prior to there being consciousness. So the distinction between these two, is in principle validated, while your claim that one cannot exist separate from the other, should be rejected.
The reality which you seem to be ignoring is the fact that the subconscious is necessary to support the conscious, but the conscious is not necessary to support the subconscious. So the subconscious can exist independently of the conscious, as we see in primitive animals and plants.
In my analysis, which I described in the last post, I have separated intention from conscious, so that the subconscious may still be directed by intention, but this is not a conscious intention. Consciousness is not necessary for intention, as we see that plants and primitive animals act with purpose, but not with consciousness. This allowed me to say that intention can direct the attention, at the subconscious level, without conscious interference.
:D
No, you are confusing the subconscious mind with the unconscious mind. Freud discusses three levels of the psyche; the Ego, the ID and the Superego. The Ego - consciousness - is reality as we experience it and in addition to its faculty to regulate cognitive and perceptual structures of the mind during contact with the external world, it also liaises with the Id. The Id - unconscious - contains the instinctual drives and impulses present since birth and as an developmental apparatus is inaccessible unlike the Superego - subconscious - the apparatus of cognition that internalises perceptual experiences and what we have been taught and becomes the reservoir of meaning and emotion. The proximity of the superego from the agents consciousness is strictly confined to limitations that often distort the content' meaning and requires the Ego to attempt to reconcile the instinctual drives of the id with the superego' feelings of guilt or fear etc.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is not that I am ignoring and I am sorry that you feel that way, I am quite simply not sure where you obtained this idea from and though I am more than happy to discredit my own learning from the psychoanalytic and cognitive sciences - which is controversial in itself - just popping out with some random thoughts of your own vis-a-vis layers of psyche really does not suffice. Even Freud himself stated that Ego utilises programs such as defence mechanisms to regulate behaviour - that is, when our unknown experiences of emotions or tensions conflict with our experience in reality. So, you see someone you instinctually want to have sex with, for instance, or you have a sudden sensation of incredible anger over an experience you have but that you are unaware of why you feel so incredibly angry, the conscious mind attempts to regulate that experience, sometime even with delusional internalisations such as denial, fantasy, projection, disassociation etc. These expose the interconnectedness with the conscious and subconscious minds with the imagination that can be used both in positive and negative ways depending on the nature of the individual. I do agree that both the subconscious and the conscious faculties of the psyche can function distinctly but they are most certainly relational, one in the case of emotions and passions and the other commanding reality. Both are epistemological.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
But, where does this intention come from? I think that it is clear here that you are referring to the Id - the unconscious instinctual drives - and not the superego - the subconscious - which is perhaps where our confusion lies.
Quoting TimeLine I think intention is inherent within life itself, as all living things tend to act with purpose.
Here again it seems you and I use some of the same words quite differently. It may take more careful work to sort out the meaning of our usages and assertions.
I say there is a subconscious aspect to both subjective and objective experience, as well as a conscious aspect.
I might recognize that the sky is blue, without knowing why it is blue. Likewise, I might recognize that I feel sad, without knowing why I feel sad. In each case, I say we have a subjective point of view on an objective matter of fact.
The objective aspect of the experience is indicated when we say, there is an objective "fact of the matter" that determines the truth of the statement "The sky is blue"; and another objective "fact of the matter" that determines the truth of the statement "I am sad".
Contrast those two cases with a third: Gazing at the blue sky, a feeling of sadness flushes through me, and it seems to me it was the sight of the blue sky that made me sad. Perhaps there is an objective fact of the matter that determines the correctness or incorrectness of my judgment that the sight of the blue sky "caused" my feeling of sadness.
Suppose after this one occasion, or after several others like it, I begin to associate blue skies and sadness, and find myself often sad in the face of blue skies. If I go on to infer, on the basis of this subjective association, that "blue skies make everyone sad", or that "blue skies are sad skies", then it seems I have projected the association of blue skies and sadness in my own experience into a misconception of an objective correlation of blue skies and sadness in general.
Experience suggests that subjective associations of that sort are not reliable bases for such generalizations about objective matters of fact.
The error here is not in my feeling of sadness, nor in my personal, subjective association of blue skies and sadness, but only in my confused projection of my subjective association into an incorrect objective generalization.
Quoting TimeLine
Nevertheless, I say it's an objective matter of fact, that I experience feelings of aversion to pigeons on the relevant occasions. Accordingly, there would be an objective basis for my statement, "I'm afraid of pigeons" or "I feel uneasy around pigeons". Though I would be mistaken to suppose that everyone feels the same way that I do about pigeons.
Quoting TimeLine
In one sense, my aversion to pigeons is not a "flaw". My aversion is not, and does not entail, a judgment that "pigeons are scary" or that "everyone fears or ought to fear pigeons". It's just an aversion I have, like some people have an aversion to heights or to slimy food. There's nothing incorrect or imperfect about such aversions, considered in themselves and in general.
I might decide I don't like the aversion and want to be rid of it, especially if it disrupts my conduct too much or too often. In this case I might call the aversion a character flaw. I suppose we might even come to a sort of moral view, that in general it's preferable to be without character flaws of this sort -- it's preferable not to have significant, conduct-altering aversions to things about which we believe we ought to be indifferent, perhaps including pigeons, heights, and slimy food.
Should such considerations, about subjective associations, make us doubtful about our own judgments of taste, our own aesthetic preferences? I don't need a "good reason" to like a piece of music or a piece of food. If I like it, I like it. I might be able to say something about what I like about it, and to say something about why I like it; but these stories may be more doubtful than the experience itself, the enjoyment of and attraction to music like this or food like this.
It seems I gain some experience and insight by liking what I like, and another sort of experience and insight by thinking about why I like what I like. Two activities that contribute to the cultivation of personal taste over a lifetime.
Extramusical factors play a powerful role in determining the course of development of musical taste. Lyrics arguably contribute an extramusical dimension to songs, often including features of narrative such as character and plot. Music videos and operas contribute visual and narrative dimensions, and opera in its intended context is a theatrical performance.
Relevant extramusical factors extend beyond such formal features of an artwork, to include a broader aesthetic and cultural context. Maybe I'm listening to a recording of Turandot, not watching a video recording, not attending a live performance; maybe I have no idea what utterances those voices are expressing, or what characters, setting and plot are involved; maybe I don't know anything about Puccini or Nizami. But I recognize this music as opera, and I have some conception of how opera and Western classical music fit into the world, and this is enough to color my experience of the music one way or another.
Beneath all such extramusical factors there's the music itself. The same piece of music doesn't stir the same emotions in each hearer. The emotions it stirs in each of us depends in part on extramusical features of the artwork and on our subjective associations with the music and its extramusical context.
It seems that hearers tend to respond to music with emotion one way or other, because musical expressions of pitch and rhythm are recognizable expressions of emotion, just like shouts and groans, laughter and weeping, slaps and caresses, are recognizable expressions of emotion.
Perhaps we should add that a recognizable expression of emotion tends to elicit emotional responses in observers; but the emotional response depends in part on the observer's psychosocial position relative to the observed act.
Depending on the caress observed, an observer might be appeased, amused, aroused, made jealous, enraged. Neither the caress itself, nor the intention of the caresser, can account for all the variety in responses among observers.
Quoting TimeLine
Let's see if I've got this about right: You were speaking about a "phenomenological aspect" of your enquiry, "to try and ascertain the properties that enables a person to experience music and whether sound and perception help conceive of subjectivity."
I wasn't sure what you meant, and I made a first pass at sorting out our terms by speaking about some of the physical properties of soundclouds and the things in the world that produce soundclouds; by speaking about auditory perception as a sort of perception; by speaking about perceptual experience as part of human experience, with both subjective and objective features.
Now it seems you've added something about the way a great deal of information about physical context is "filtered out" of conscious perceptual experience. But again I'm confused by the way you seem to associate "objective" with "conscious" and "subjective" with "subconscious".
I might rephrase the thought about "filtering" along these lines: It seems our perceptual experience gives us a rough-grained glimpse of the world from a limited point of view within the world, and a lot of the facts are "filtered out", omitted in experience; though some of these are traceable through rigorous observation and analysis. Even what is manifest in perception is not completely understood or analyzable from the point of view of ordinary introspection. I hear the music, I feel the vibration, I respond to it emotionally and understand it one way or another, but this is only a partial view of a complex phenomenon.
Even so, I suppose whatever there is to my experience of the phenomenon, there is a subjective character to it as well as an objective character. I can use language to describe my experience, including the emotions I feel in response to the music; but no description is a substitute for the thing itself.
Likewise, an abstract set of instructions for a piece of music, like a score, is no substitute for a performance of the piece. It omits a great deal of information that must be supplied by the performer. No one knows, no one can express, the complete set of "rules" that determine a single performance in its perfect concreteness. We don't think or express such rules; we don't understand them clearly and distinctly. We enact them, guided in part by perception, emotion, and volition in the moment, and in part by an accumulation of habit.
Quoting TimeLine
Lyrics are more important to some people than to others. They can add (or subtract) value from a piece of music, but should be distinguished from the underlying musical content of the piece, which could be repeated with different lyrics or with solfege syllables or phonetic nonsense.
Quoting TimeLine
Does this sound right: You like his work as a songwriter, but not his work as a performer and recording artist, though you admire his moral and political principles and the way he brings them to bear in his work?
Precisely, hence why I said that it is a network of perceptual experiences that we are unable to identify and we attempt to make sense of these feelings by utilising both matters of objective facts and experiences in order to articulate the reasons for having these feelings. Think of it like this; some people might feel unwell and so scour the internet searching for answers that could explain the symptoms they feel, yet somehow they assume they have cancer or diabetes because the explanations of these symptoms represent what they are physically feeling, but that is not the case. We do the same with subjective emotions and oftentimes the actual reasons for these emotions are blurred mostly because of our ignorance, which is why learning is everything and why philosophy is a language.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
But this objective matter of fact can be overcome when you are able to articulate the reasons for the fear in the first place.
I once met a young man who I could see was struggling in intense confusion and through conversations with him I was able to locate the source of his difficulties. He was very immature that immediately exposed that he was 'caught' somewhere, stuck at a young age though he was far from being considered young. His mother left his ailing father and returned only near his father' death and he experienced this tragedy at a very young age. It forced the notion that he needed to 'man up' or to grow up, but he was still too young for that and thus the emotional war began within him; he attempted to show his strength physically by using steroids as though such appearances would exemplify this image of 'man', taking drugs and drinking and making himself unwell (insomniacs tend to become so because it brings about a 'daze' that stops thought) just so he could never face the heartache of losing his father and the anger he feels for the abandonment by his mother. His refusal to become a man, basically, compelled him to follow others and allow others to think on his behalf but he was torn between who he was within - the real him and someone who wants to do things differently - to what he had become. What he thinks is his reality now is all a product of his escape from himself and to break that reality would mean to face what he dreads. He is torn between the need for approval by others because he refuses to think for himself with his amazing, beautiful mind that I could see was crushed by the weight of his fears. So, the subjective war only developed a hatred within him and he tried to balance the emotions through new ageism that does nothing really but temporarily enables a management of his intense feelings.
I know of plenty more, another person whose partner cheated on him while she was interstate and he was in complete denial because he thought he was in control of her when it was the other way around. This was projected by his misattribution and by him committing sexually devious acts just so he could feel a sense of guilt that would maintain the relationship. Whenever he would cry out his frustrations about her to me and I would try to provide him with a way towards the real reasons for his frustrations (not just his crap about 'she does this' or 'she does that') he would almost always dissasociate from the conversation. I would be talking to a wall. The reasons were because he had a dominating mother and her controlling behaviour led to a subjective passivity and though he tries to be controlling of his girlfriend such as having access to her facebook and emails etc as well as lash out to irrelevant actions to vent his frustrations at her (but not for the real reasons he is frustrated), the real reason is because he has been trained to defend an abuser as he defends his mother' behaviour.
So, while your objective reality is a 'fear of pigeons' there is a root cause for why, you just need to articulate those reasons and when your (primitive) mind enables defences mechanisms to stop you from facing the subjective memories that is often the source of anxiety - which is the causal reason for the repression - along with our natural inclination to avoid anxiety, acknowledgement of why would dissipate those fears that has been projected to pigeons.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
I think we should always be doubtful of our judgements. What you may 'like' may not be a product of what you authentically like and this is the key difference. Setting aside aesthetics for a moment, we may be compelled by choices to do our best to avoid feelings of anxiety, becoming comfortable in our ignorance that we soon become dependent on them. This 'fixed' state or habit makes us believe that it is somehow real. When it comes to our aesthetic preferences, perhaps our subjective feelings of intense anxiety compels us to death metal music and our attempt to balance those feelings to buddhist mantras. If we are ever able to find true wholeness and authenticity, our objective experiences would completely transform.
(Y)
I said earlier that musical experience becomes a 'gateway' so to speak to our subjective feelings, enabling us a passage through our imagination to realise and perhaps even acknowledge the emotions that soon provides us with the ideas that articulate those emotions. Hegel distinguishes the music as sounds - external, sensory etc - in itself [the objective] with music as representation; the former contributes through harmony and melody in the pythagorean sense to compel our imagination, which is triggered by the sensuous and symbolic 'movement' caused by the emotions it conveys. Hence:
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
It is like a paradigmatic form, whereby music as an objective or conscious experience is mathematical or pythagorean while the subjective or subconscious is symbolic and communicative and the apparent contradiction here is how closely tied they are to one another. I use the Freudian dualism of the psyche - between the Ego and Superego - as an example of Hegelian interpretation of the musical aesthetic.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Lyrics are important to me only because it helps explain the meaning of the emotions that may be advantageous when trying to gain a better understanding of your feelings. For instance, I was a teen when the film The Crow came out and it is still one of my favourite soundtracks. The darkness, revenge, passion all resonated with me, but the lyrics to Dead Souls by Nine Inch Nails really resonated at the time with me because I was really angry back then because of being treated rather badly but I was a genuinely loving person, so torn between such powerful emotions.
Quoting Cabbage Farmer
Yes. It is the same reason why I stopped listening to Kings of Leon when I found out that they didn't write and create most of their songs.
Whenever you feel ready.
Think of the way a toddler starts singing and dancing, and what kind of progress it can make in proportion to time on task, even without lessons. As we get older we get hung up on how it looks, how it sounds, is it right. We lose something in that bargain.
Whether we let loose or try to stay in the lines, there's going to be a lot of fumbling for a few years at least. There are different ways of aiming at harmony. Arguably all of them involve wading through relatively inharmonious action, one way or another. The harmony along the way is the fitness of activity to novice practitioner, not the fineness of product that flows from an accomplished craftsman.
We all begin by crying and cooing and flailing like insects, trying out voices and limbs.
Quoting TimeLine
I play a little.