Tag: music

I don’t understand music (part 1 – first confusion)

Two years ago I thought to myself, “I don’t understand music.”

Why?

I can listen to classical music, then rock, then rap, then musical parody, sung poetry, postmodern music, and so on, and so on, and so on… …and I can’t find many common elements for these songs… And I really can’t understand what music is?

By the way – when I was young I thought that music was mainly melody + rhythm. About 10 years ago I got to know the “cosmic”, emotional dimension of music thanks to W. Komendarek, and only for the last two years have I been listening to music “beyond the rules”. Maybe I understand more now… but I feel like I understand less…

John commented (via email) on my doubts: “For me my background was to treat music as language, a superior one.”. And this is where I have doubts about the meaning of music. What kind of “language” is it if it is “different” for so many songs?? Maybe it’s the language of angels? Maybe it’s the language of our souls? What do they express, what can they express, what can the style of the work prove about the creator? Can anything be proven about them? Apparently so – but I have never found the “global” key. For example, my parents hardly listen to music at all. Does this in any way indicate the quality of their souls? About their life paths, about themselves? You can trace billions of tastes and… I doubt whether there will be a global algorithm describing what music is…

Speaking without grammar?

Once I found on the internet this sentence: “Music is not a language because it has no grammar”… and I could be done with the topic but… Let’s undermine understanding “language” for a moment.

I don’t understand what a language is. And no one is sure of it. There are many thesis what are the main criterias of language. Even if I don’t understand the boundaries of the definition, I know that for something to meet the definition, the criteria of this definition must be met to at least a minimal degree.

I see a problem – the most important criterion of language is communication! It is so important that even body language is called that, even though as an unstructured, ungrammatical and widely interpreted form of communication, and is not a form of language… I can use miming or my hands to communicate many situations, actions and emotions. I know scientists won’t call it language, but being the everyday language of ordinary simple people, they might call it that.

Next problem is that music has structures and rules which are not understood by people. Maybe superior souls have hidden grammar inside them?

I don’t understand music (part 2 – between artist and universe)

…how is it possible that there is so much of it?!? As Władysław Komendarek, a master of inventing forms and tools of musical expression, often repeats: “there are billions of possibilities!” 

Personally, when I was twelve years old and I was fiddling with the piano keys, I feared that I would run out of inspiration to create melodies. It was hard for me to believe that I would come up with something… and then I would come up with it again… and again. There are over two hundred pieces by Chopin and… it was magic for me… The very fact of creating a new melody was something wonderful, extraordinary, impossible – but despite this impression, I did not become a professional composer or musician. 

What I also don’t understand about music: when I listen to music, I don’t have just “ears” for a given song. I am, rather, in the composer’s “world”, as if I was penetrating the intentions and maybe even examining the his soul(?). It’s not that the “world” of his piece becomes my world, but that it fills my “surroundings” (can these be described as “empty spaces” in my thoughts?). How is it possible that so many of these 44,000 samples per second are contained in a wavelength that can contain music, and at the same time can “contain” other “realities” and, even, “souls” (more precisely: to describe music, a much smaller “wavelength” is enough, e.g. just musical notation)? You can put a picture next to a picture and compare your impressions almost simultaneously/in parallel – this is not possible with music. And yet there are “billions” of works in one world describing “billions” of “realities” that can exist in one world at the same time.

Elements and boundaries of music

The main elements of traditional music are:

  • melody – determines the sequence of sounds of different pitches and durations,
  • rhythm – arranges the sound material in time, usually repeated,
  • dynamics – regulates the sound intensity,
  • agogics – determines the speed of the piece, i.e. tempo and its changes,
  • articulation – determines the way the sound is produced,
  • harmony – arranges overlapping sounds in various types of combinations,
  • color – determines the overall emotion or mood.

When we use these attributes then we can compose many different songs… but when we do this, could we analyze in an exact way to reproduce any song?

We can reproduce approximately by determining these parameters (in the score). Problems arise with emotions. My former co-workers, programmers, couldn’t find the reason for an International Chopin Competition. I explained that in piano playing there are many subtle combinations of these elements beyond the score.

Boundaries

Just in case, I touch on the difference between the avant-garde and the experimental. The avant-garde expands the boundaries of traditional music, while the experimental should go further beyond the boundaries.

One of the first musicians who intertwined popular entertainment music with an experimental approach was Paul McCartney with The Beatles. In the middle-part at the end of the song “A day in the life” he added growing noise played by the orchestra.

Now – can someone tell me – is it correct if we define this song using notes and lyrics? What is these weird parts? Aren’t they necessary?

Where are the Boundaries of music?

The most basic definition is that music is “organized sound”… and…
… in traditional music such as classical the most important element is sheet music to organize the sounds. Over time, many technologies of recording have emerged and people were allowed to create more complicated compositions. That was one of the main reasons that Sound Art or Noise Wall was born (someone might not agree with this, but I think that these type of experiments with sounds and noise were from the beginning of humanity). These possibilities cause someone to think a song is a piece of music while someone else might think a song is not organized… in his mind… and this is not music.

Am I understand boundaries of music?

I think that most listeners of music have had more than one moment in his life when he asked himself – is this noise a music? After longer time he starts to think: this is obviously music. Between avant-garde and experimental is also thin boundary. But are they a boundary for an open mind? Maybe it is only time before one organizes sound in his mind? Is an experiment only a part of avant-garde or not?

What defines a song called a musical experiment?

I don’t know and I agree with many people that there is no universal definition of experimental music. For me – a song with such a name must distort elements of traditional music so much that the average listener has a problem calling it music at all. The definition is very relative and fluid in the long run, because people’s tastes change and tolerance increases.

My favorite experiments of the beginning of XXI century

In my personal taste, experimental music should have very strongly hidden melodies, or extensive portamento, or very unusual sounds, or very broken rhythms.

Additionally (and very personally) – I don’t prefer ambience (too slowly changing music), experimental articulations of classical instruments and abstract jazz. Here is the list of my best discoveries in this topic:

  • Qba Janicki & Obsequies – Autolysis – it is a bit like a mosaic of sounds with parts of music of many sources. Emotional, expressive with many levels of loudness. Good quality, big complexity and many changes in time. It is impressive that whole piece creates a great unity.
  • Wilder Gonzales Agreda Music For Dreamers, Real Music For Real People – Peruvian musician created many albums but on these two I hear mostly that he is a master of broken rhythm and weird (but wonderful) timbres.
  • John Macdougall Parker (St Celfer) created not only his own style, but he created his own instrument. His widely diverse music has many different, strange elements like – portamento, many kinds of distortions, floating changes of timbres (including changes of character of sounds). He learned to correctly use every specific feature of discovered effects – his instrument has infinite potential

I omit many experimental music that I love (I have even my favorite noise wall) – but these three are the most significant for me.

I don’t understand music (part 3 – how to define song?)

Assuming that we do not analyze the boundaries of music, I cannot determine, among others: what a piece of music is. And this is just an atom, an entity of music

  • Assuming that a piece of music is an ordered set of sounds, can notes represent a piece of music if they are an abstraction, devoid of the subtleties of sound and arrangement?
  • Assuming that we have a precisely defined piece (notes + sounds + intonations + others) – when does the interpretation of the piece end and when do variations on the theme of a given piece begin?
  • Sound is said to be changes in air pressure, but what if the sounds “sit in the head” of the ex-listener, where there is no air naturally?
  • If we find that a musical piece is defined by momentary samples (digital recording), what if the spectrum distribution changes subtly (for example, the listener’s hearing defects or the player’s imperfection)? Isn’t this lofi version of the song the same song?
  • Something less precise, but requiring greater contemplation: in what cases will a given recording of sounds never be considered music by any human being?

These reflections are my internal reaction to the technical and scientific education I had. A reaction to positivist education which very often promotes empiricism, technocracy and the absolutism of science, and which, unfortunately, I sometimes succumbed to in my youth. In my quasi-philosophy that I shaped while writing this blog – music is something I don’t understand, but it is intertwined with the soul in a way that is beyond understanding. The most important thing in all this is the fact that you don’t have to understand music to enjoy it.

P.S. I remembered something that results indirectly from the text – in the dispute about universals, I tend to side with realism versus nominalism.

I don’t understand boundaries

Someone or maybe most think that a boundary is such a simple term as e.g. integers in mathematic. The imagined geometrical definition is simple – something like a line or surface separating two areas or spaces. In practice, even geometrical boundary, is more difficult to clearly define. In the physical world, when we have to measure the surface of something real like a island, then we have no single number defining area – it depends on precision and the method of measure. Do you think that precision is not important? Quantum-level disruptions could cause massive changes in weather prediction….

These were the simplest thoughts about boundary. The problem is when we think about something that has more dimensions than two or three. Naturally I do not mean spatial dimensions, but certain abstract…

Defining

To understand something, we need a definition. One of the most obvious problems is its boundaries – something is inside – in the set covered by the definition, and something is outside.

Are the definitions real?

Already, in the early years of philosophy (age of Greek domination of ideas), people had a problem with definitions. Until the end of the Middle Ages, people were thinking if definitions, abstracts, entities or only physical units are real? Next problems for philosophy were, among others, how do people get to know the world…?

The most known enemy of realism of definitions is Ludwig Wittgenstein, who said that the most important aspect of life is language and that our minds “create the world” and complicate everything.

Does music exist?

In earlier post I don’t understand music (part 3 – how to define song?) we had technical problems with defining song. Now I go to another plane of thinking – the problem is that a piece music doesn’t exist only in our mind, doesn’t exist only in a score sheet, doesn’t exist only in the air. How it is possible that it can be in these planes at this same time? Does music is a part of physic, mind, structure, or beyond our reality? I don’t understand that and I give myself a rule to undermine understanding music. We have some interesting adventures ahead of us…