I read once that motorcycle racers engaged in a 24 race actually found it easier to race during the night. Their lap times went down during the dark hours. One racer commented that in the dark you are forced to focus on the area illuminated by the headlights and all other visual info is eliminated. With the elimination of background distraction performance improved. In some ways all the audiophile minutae (soundstage, coherence, transparency, imaging, etc.) is non-essential information when listening to music. This is a possible explanation for why so many professional musicians don't become audiophiles. Is it possible that their highly cultivated musical capabilities allows their minds to create music (in the listening sense) more easily than the average audiophile?
music , mind , thought and emotion
There is not a society on this planet, nor probably ever has been, which is without some form of musical expression, often closely linked with rythm and dance. My question is less concentrated on the latter two however.
What I am pondering boils down to:
What is music and what does it do to us
Why do we differentiate music from random noise so clearly and yet can pick up certain samples within that noise as musical.
By listening to music, we find some perhaps interesting, some which we would call musical. What differentiates "musical music" from "ordinary music" and this again from "noise"?
In a more general sense again:
If music has impact on us, what is the nature of our receptors for it. Or better: Who, what are we, that music can do to us what it does?
What would be the nature of a system, which practically all of us would agree upon, that it imparts musicality best?
And finally, if such a sytem would exist, can this quality be measured?
What I am pondering boils down to:
What is music and what does it do to us
Why do we differentiate music from random noise so clearly and yet can pick up certain samples within that noise as musical.
By listening to music, we find some perhaps interesting, some which we would call musical. What differentiates "musical music" from "ordinary music" and this again from "noise"?
In a more general sense again:
If music has impact on us, what is the nature of our receptors for it. Or better: Who, what are we, that music can do to us what it does?
What would be the nature of a system, which practically all of us would agree upon, that it imparts musicality best?
And finally, if such a sytem would exist, can this quality be measured?
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- 119 posts total
Ohn: thank you for your wondeful response. Next I would say, what is the nature of those patterns constructed in the mind? A materialist will default to purely a quantitative orienation to this question and will say that you put the patterns together like counting sticks, or placing blocks on top of one another; the interpretation of patterns is didactic, linear and, accordingly, is seen as a SUMMING of patterns. This mind sees music in the mind as equal to a sum of patterns (hence, no coincidence that materialists are also invariably mathematically orientated). But a question: are patterns in the mind summed? Is the recognition and receptivity to the beauty of music synonomous with a summing of patterns? Just because the ears sums sound patterns, does this mean, necessarily, that the way those patterns are conjoined in the mind must also be linear? (this is my point above about the mode of the mechanism dictating the process of interpretation). Two points. If we look at Chaos/Turbulence theory, we see that order - or rather, what our mind interprets as "order" - arises out of chaos. Or another way, the creative formation that we recognize arises from a formation that we characterize as un-formed (evolutionarliy speaking, we use objectification to order things with our minds, so we instinctively label what is not-order as Chaos). Importantly, this arisement is characterized as one that, in a fractal mathematical sense, arises from non-linear to linear. Applied to listening of our stereos, can we perhaps say that the recognition of creativity in patterns is not simply a linear summing, but is perhaps characterized by both linear and non-linear recognition. In other words, perhaps could we say that at deep listening levels where thought is relatively absent we experience the patterns in a non-linear way, and when we first sit down to listen, and when our cognition is more pronounced, we listen in a linear way consonant with that faculty. If we are experiencing the music as a summing of patterns when we first sit down, does this mean that that mode of perception must continue? If thought is absent at deeop levels, and summing is a linear process wholly characteristic of thinking, then what type of percieving happens when we are not thinking, yet still perceiving the music? Could, perhaps, the deep listening mind be percieving music from that level in a way that is different from the thinking mind's way of listening, particularly if the non-linear aspect of creative arisement is recognized? At surface levels, the mind is linear, looking out at reality and objectifying what it sees. In this mode it sees linear relationships between these objects and its main mode of assimilation is summing experience. At trans-thinking levels, the mind merges patterns into currents and these currents, the meaning they impart/that we percieve, is greater that the sum of their parts. |
An interesting article on the subject: http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/brainmusic021213.html |
- 119 posts total