5 Apr
2007
5 Apr
'07
8:02 p.m.
As I've said several times, I don't buy that a jackhammer could ever
sound as sweet as a songbird; no one will describe them as
interchangeable. I don't believe that anyone would say that a
super-distorted electric guitar - even if they love the sound -
arouses the same emotional response as a "lyrical" oboe solo. Certain
sounds are by nature disruptive, certain sounds are smooth, and no
amount of conditioning to "like" or "dislike" can change that.
You are a big fan of putting words in my mouth, and of assuming you're
the only person who has done any research into music cognition. Maybe
that's true in 99% of the groups you find yourself in, but believe me:
Some combinations of sine tones are simply more musical than others.
The actual research that has been done in this area has shown this to
be true. Conditioning in 12-tone ET does not make musicians think an
ET third is more harmonious than a just third. The ability to hear
consonance in a just major triad is not something that needs to be
learned, and it can't be unlearned.
-Chuckk
On 4/5/07, Ivica Ico Bukvic <ico(a)vt.edu> wrote:
Oh dear...
There are sounds and then there is music. Commonly music within this context
is a collage of such sounds assembled through human arbitration (direct or
indirect). First you argue how certain sounds are not musical and that is
this is a universal fact (which it isn't), now you argue that those sounds
in and of themselves cannot be music (which again is not universal truth).
Please note that two arguments are not synonymous, but rather separate
issues altogether.
That being said, I'd suggest looking into writings of John Cage which talks
about the notion of "happening" and removal of human arbitration from the
compositional process. To some extent the same goes for the Second Viennese
school. For what it's worth, in that (albeit extreme) context, yes,
sonification of hard drive data could be considered a kind of artistic
expression. On a more moderate level, such sound could be
harvested/recorded, just like one could record a bird song, and then use
such material to shape a work of art. Therefore, the sounds which may or may
not appear to be musical to you (but could appear to be musical to others),
would be placed within a context where they are treated musically just like
notes and/or pitches are treated within a traditional Western music. This
would, by definition, result in a piece of music. Now, whether you like such
an end-product or not is irrelevant from the fact that any sound can be used
for musical expression and that music can be defined simply as a conscious
[human] attention/musical treatment of any sonic material.
Another eye-opening place I would suggest investigating is Ars Electronica
which is arguably the most prestigious annual competition for the
contemporary multimedia arts...
Ico
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If placed within the right context, yes. As a matter
of fact a lot of
modern
electronica/glitch music relies heavily upon
various kinds of noises,
including
white noise. Besides, subtractive synthesis +
white noise = a lot of
cool aural
material...
Well, there is a Linux program that will read the entire contents of a
hard drive as though it were one big audio file. So I guess we have
no more need for musicians, because that would be a collection of sine
waves of various frequencies, and that's all it takes.