[LAU] Re: That must suck. For me it's about beauty -- music isjustone path

Chuckk Hubbard badmuthahubbard at gmail.com
Wed Apr 4 14:01:33 EDT 2007


On 4/4/07, Ivica Ico Bukvic <ico at vt.edu> wrote:
> > > apparent that all sounds have beauty that simply needs to be uncovered
> > > regardless of their source. This art is also known as acousmatic music
> > (or a
> > > sound removed from its source).
> >
> > I don't buy that.  Factories and machinery have vibrations created and
> > enforced by hundreds of forces working at different rates and in
> > different directions, caused by objects that were assembled with very
> > little regard for the sound they made.  A song bird actually hears
> > what it is doing, and makes patterns based on the sound.
>
> I invite you to please read then more on the topic of acousmatic music.
> FWIW, what exactly constitutes a pattern? If there is a rhythmic vibration
> of an industrial piece of machinery, how is that different (from a
> "definition" standpoint) from a rhythmic drumming? I think you are mixing up
> pattern with cognition. But even if we consider cognition as a point of
> contention, the machinery has a purpose and a role and as such its
> manifestation is not meaningless at all.

It is different because a human being is listening to the drumming and
choosing what sounds pleasing and what does not.  A single rhythmic
vibration in a piece of machinery is one thing, but rarely does a
factory have one machine.  And the machines are generally not tuned to
each other nor adjusted to make more pleasing sounds.  I suspect the
average factory worker would be fired if he changed the settings on
machines in order to compose music with them.
There is a fundamental difference between listening to something and
learning to find value in it, and listening to something and changing
it to make sounds in which you find value.
There is a pretty well-developed science behind how people recognize
pattern in what they hear and experience emotions in response to it.
What is traditionally referred to as "music" didn't exist by accident;
sentient animals create it according to their experience, which means
there is a reason we respond to it.  It was not just one of the many
ways to arrange sound, it was the one that drew people's attention.

-Chuckk

-- 
http://www.badmuthahubbard.com



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