[LAU] re Subconscious Affecting Music

david gnome at hawaii.rr.com
Sat Sep 4 07:16:19 UTC 2010


Without memory, we don't have time. Without time, we don't have music. A 
single note is just a sound. A time-series of sounds without memory is 
just separate sounds. With memory, it becomes music.

Arvind Venkatasubramanian wrote:
> Hi All:
> 
> Slightly deviating off the conversation, I am sharing with you all some 
> interesting stuff that I encountered.
> 
> I discovered this while I was walking besides the school of philosophy 
> after completing my class in in engineering. As I was hearing to the 
> sounds of leaves and birds, I was approaching my music lab at the Frost 
> school of music. As I was about to get into my department, I heard a 
> beautiful melody from a saxophone. I kept chanting the melody for 
> sometime as I started to work on my computer. With time, I started to 
> feel the image of the melody subjectively. But I felt that to be too 
> faint to hear. I wanted it to be a bit louder and tried to turn up the 
> volume button in me. I noticed that I could not do that. Any attempt 
> that I made to turning up the level of the music only helped me 
> transposing the melody up my one or two keys (semitones). Similarly, any 
> attempt to lower the tone helped only in transposing the melody down by 
> few keys.
> 
>  
> 
> I started experimenting this at home by listening to music on tape. Then 
> I turned the tape off and "immediately" started to listen to that piece 
> subjectively. I turned up the volume button. It worked now. The volume 
> went up in my head without transposing the music to higher keys. Seeing 
> the contradictions, I tried the same experimented the next morning. This 
> time, I was not able to have control over the parameters of the music. 
> The volume did not go up but transposition happened again.  Is the 
> amplitude control mechanism not possible after data storage in memory? 
>  Does the feel of amplitude control experienced only if external matter 
> is tweaked?  That clearly re-defined the problem formulation in me about 
> the "theory of forms" mentioned in Plato's Cave Allegory/Republic.
> 
>  
> 
> These events lead me to think that memory plays a vast, unpredictable 
> role in connecting independent events of the world and give a meaning to 
> it. If memory does not work, each phrase in a music is an individual 
> phrase; each note in a phrase is individual note, each part of sound in 
> a note is an individual sound; each granular atom in a sound in 
> individual grain. The necessary connections to these events are 
> "believed" to be happening in human brain. But the existence of a human 
> brain is also part of memory. The residence or location of memory is 
> said to be in human mind. Wherein, the human mind dwells cannot be told 
> because it comes from living experience.
> 
> Regards,
> Arvind Venkatasubramanian
> Audio DSP Engineer and studio musician
> 
> On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 8:55 AM, David Santamauro 
> <david.santamauro at gmail.com <mailto:david.santamauro at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
>     On Fri, 3 Sep 2010 17:56:13 +0530
>     Rustom Mody <rustompmody at gmail.com <mailto:rustompmody at gmail.com>>
>     wrote:
> 
>      > There are two voices I hear here vis-a-vis Bach:
>      > 1. Art for art's sake -- the romantic idea
>      > 2. Art for money's sake -- the distinction of commercial vs
>      > commisioned being a fine semantic distinction.
>      >
>      > Bach himself expressed a view however which does not fit in with
>      > either: *
>      > Anything done other than for the service of God is vanity*
> 
>     "The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the
>     glory of God and the refreshment of the soul."
> 
>     God, unfortunately, doesn't pay for food directly. The refreshment of
>     the soul alone would have left him starving as well.
> 
>     Although he was extremely devote and clearly most of his inspiration
>     was generated by that religious stance, he was not above squabbling for
>     better pay. The fact that his employer was the church might also had
>     something to do with that stance as well.
> 
>     "He regarded himself as a conscientious craftsman doing a job to the
>     best of his ability for the satisfaction of his superiors, for the
>     pleasure and edification of his fellowmen, and to the glory of
>     God." [ Grout & Palisca: A History of Western Music ]
> 
>     David


-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community


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