Moderators Lee Knight Posted February 26, 2008 Moderators Share Posted February 26, 2008 Understanding the science behind the waves may make them more compelling, but no more beautiful. I don't think a scientist looks at a wave and perceives any more visual beauty than would a caveman. I think both Carl Sagan and Bach would disagree. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dean Roddey Posted February 26, 2008 Members Share Posted February 26, 2008 Yep, as I always like to paraphrase from Richard Feynman, you can appreciate a rose for it's beauty and it's fragrance, but I can appreciate it in that way, too, but I can also appreciate it how intricate a biological machine it is and how it works and the chemistry of photosynthesis is used and the cellular constructs and so forth. So my appreciation is a superset of yours, and therefore I appreciate it more. Something to that effect. And I do believe that knowing that this or that riff or chord structure or lyric is a reference to this older song or that this song is a mixture of these styles and so forth, does increase your visceral appreciation of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted February 27, 2008 Members Share Posted February 27, 2008 Quote:I'm all for studying music, but I honestly don't think anything I've ever studied about music has ever influenced my experience listening to it. Did it never happen to you that, having learned a certain number of things studying music, you went back and re-listened to something and heard things in it you never heard before as a result of the studying? My point is that music education should, if presented well, expand anyone's ability to perceive a large number of musical attributes that go unnoticed by someone with no education or training. Part of music education is ear training, which helps us actually "hear" distinctions between scales, modes, progressions, forms, and so on, which appear to the uneducated as a undifferentiated mass. For example: I may be a totally uneducated fan of Coltrane. I dig his wildest, most outthere solos, and I suck untold emotional jollies from his tracks. Then I get a big-time musical education one result of which is, having loved Coltrane before, after the education I'm totally that much more astounded by him because I can actually hear and distinguish where he's moving between modes and playing them off against each other like some fantastic one-on-one showdown. Before - I could distinguish between his variations of fast-slow, intense-relaxed, harmonious-discordant, soft-hard, and so on. Now I can add to it a whole new level of fascinating distinctions that in the truest sense of the word, I couldn't "hear" before. It could still be that my primal, uneducated groking of Coltrane remains the high point of pure emotional pleasure. But on the other hand, there's no question but that the education has enhanced my musical experience. Without it I would of course had my memory of my primal times with Coltrane, but I would have been stuck there. If it don't make you grow up and experience more and expand your consciousness, I'm not sure it deserves the title "education". nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted February 27, 2008 Moderators Share Posted February 27, 2008 Nat and Dean, I wholeheartedly agree. And of course the inverse is true I believe. Those that do not study music or science or basket weaving will still enjoy endless depth in a work of art from their own unique perspective. I do not begrudge the listener who blindly lets the waves of sound do their thing upon their sense. That is wonderful... ...as is the calculated dissecting of a piece. Any ratio of the 2 is more wonderful still, in my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members hogberto Posted February 27, 2008 Members Share Posted February 27, 2008 Yep, as I always like to paraphrase from Richard Feynman, you can appreciate a rose for it's beauty and it's fragrance, but I can appreciate it in that way, too, but I can also appreciate it how intricate a biological machine it is and how it works and the chemistry of photosynthesis is used and the cellular constructs and so forth. So my appreciation is a superset of yours, and therefore I appreciate it more. Something to that effect. And I do believe that knowing that this or that riff or chord structure or lyric is a reference to this older song or that this song is a mixture of these styles and so forth, does increase your visceral appreciation of it.i would argue that appreciating something in this intellectual way, (appreciating how it works and so on) is of lesser value than just appreciating it without judgment. put another way, you can't improve on pure enjoyment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members RockViolin Posted February 27, 2008 Members Share Posted February 27, 2008 Yeah. Once in a great while I get goosebumps from music. Spine tingles. Lips buzz. That experience is never preceded by or accompanied with, "wow...awesome use of the Neopolitan" or, " geez...that Piccardy 3rd came outta nowhere". I've never gotten goosebumps while in analytical mode. Or perhaps analysis is shoved aside at such times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Duddits Posted February 27, 2008 Members Share Posted February 27, 2008 I think both Carl Sagan and Bach would disagree. Ironically, more than any other scientist, Carl Sagan spent his life sharing the wonders of the universe to an audience that did not have a science background. And Bach's music was intended for a musically-uneducated audience. Just because it was some of the most masterful music ever written, doesn't mean you have to know anything about music to appreciate its beauty. I don't think Christoph Wolf, who knows more about Bach's music than anyone on the planet can appreciate the sound of a Bach Chorale, as it is played, any more than anyone on this forum. He could write a book about it, but the Chorale is just as beautiful to him as it is to you or I. But frankly, Carl Sagan and Bach (all of them) are dead. Since they don't really have a chance to register at HC and add their .02, the hell with them! Speculating about their opinions is meaningless. I'm interested in your own opinion, but not so interested in what you think dead people have to say! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted February 27, 2008 Moderators Share Posted February 27, 2008 Catty this morning aren't we? OK, let's leave Carl and Joe out of this.My point all along has been that of course you don't have to have any understanding of art to dig it. To dig it to its fullest potential. I mean this and on this point we agree. Where we disagree: I am moved by music daily. I'm intense in my enjoyment. And sometimes, music that I have spent analyzing and understanding more from the technical side, grabs me in a way that is so intense I can't begin to describe.I never said that I am in analytical mode when I have this sensation either. So Rock Violin makes a very valid point I hadn't thought of. But, the fact remains, if I for instance, look into Bach's ability to imply, outline, suggest, or hit you over the head with CHORDS, all with a single line......then I listen to the Cello Suite. True, I'm no longer in analyzing mode, I'm a listener. But my enjoyment of that, because of the time I spent putting toward grasping a little better what he's doing? Wow. It's godlike. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Duddits Posted February 27, 2008 Members Share Posted February 27, 2008 My point is that music education should, if presented well, expand anyone's ability to perceive a large number of musical attributes that go unnoticed by someone with no education or training. Part of music education is ear training, which helps us actually "hear" distinctions between scales, modes, progressions, forms, and so on, which appear to the uneducated as a undifferentiated mass. For example: I may be a totally uneducated fan of Coltrane. I dig his wildest, most outthere solos, and I suck untold emotional jollies from his tracks. Then I get a big-time musical education one result of which is, having loved Coltrane before, after the education I'm totally that much more astounded by him because I can actually hear and distinguish where he's moving between modes and playing them off against each other like some fantastic one-on-one showdown. Before - I could distinguish between his variations of fast-slow, intense-relaxed, harmonious-discordant, soft-hard, and so on. Now I can add to it a whole new level of fascinating distinctions that in the truest sense of the word, I couldn't "hear" before. It could still be that my primal, uneducated groking of Coltrane remains the high point of pure emotional pleasure. But on the other hand, there's no question but that the education has enhanced my musical experience. Without it I would of course had my memory of my primal times with Coltrane, but I would have been stuck there. If it don't make you grow up and experience more and expand your consciousness, I'm not sure it deserves the title "education". nat whilk ii I agree with you more than you think! i think the key word is "notice." you learn about music, and you notice more, something particularly valuable for us music types. You can say "oh look, he's doing this, and that's derived from that, and that modulates there." All of those things you notice are intellectual doors that have opened up your understanding of the piece. And intellectual knowledge expands your musical experience. That's great. But all of that is intellectual appreciation separate from visceral, actual, in the moment listening. There is still a constant - the piece played in real time as pure music - for everyone who hears it, regardless of their background. Everyone hears the same piece, regardless of how trained they are to recognize its components.If two people eat an incredible dinner, and one is a trained chef, the trained chef will appreciate the food in a way the untrained schmuck does not. However, as they eat the food, it is equally delicious to both (assuming similar food culture). The art of the person who made the food isn't diminished on the person who's never studied it. It's no less delicious to them, and they don't need to know how the chef made the food to be able to enjoy it every bit as much. Don't believe me? Try the famous chocolate cake test! It's no different with music. The ears and brain consume in a primal and immediate way that is impervious to education. If you're interested about it, or you're a musician, then knock yourself out and study it. But the idea that studying ear training or theory makes people better listeners is something I just don't buy and have never seen happen. I think it's a soothing justification for studying music, as if studying music needs any more justifications than it already has (it doesn't). But i don't think it's true. I think it's something people tell themselves, but i don't believe it. Study music for 100 years. Then listen to a beautiful piece of music with someone who shares your culture but has 0 years of musical study. The piece is equally beautiful to both of you, no more beautiful after 100 years of study and no less beautiful after none. A million IMHOs. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Duddits Posted February 27, 2008 Members Share Posted February 27, 2008 Where we disagree: I am moved by music daily. I'm intense in my enjoyment. And sometimes, music that I have spent analyzing and understanding more from the technical side, grabs me in a way that is so intense I can't begin to describe.I never said that I am in analytical mode when I have this sensation either. So Rock Violin makes a very valid point I hadn't thought of. But, the fact remains, if I for instance, look into Bach's ability to imply, outline, suggest, or hit you over the head with CHORDS, all with a single line......then I listen to the Cello Suite. True, I'm no longer in analyzing mode, I'm a listener. But my enjoyment of that, because of the time I spent putting toward grasping a little better what he's doing? Wow. It's godlike. How can you be sure what is actually enhancing the experience? Would it not be possible that as a side effect of analyzing, you are repeatedly listening to the same music, and the sheer repetition familiarizes you with the material, and that your increased enjoyment derives from familiarity? All the knowledge gleaned from analysis may appear to enhance the experience, but might it be the simple fact that you are memorizing notes, and tapping into note memory is the above and beyond experience, not that you happen to understand some higher-level analysis? People, after all, like they what know. I do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted February 27, 2008 Moderators Share Posted February 27, 2008 I think repeated listening is the beginning of understanding, no matter your level. But having said all that nonsense I've been known to spout early in the morning from caffeine inspiration... I concede. You are indeed a very bright kitty. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dean Roddey Posted February 27, 2008 Members Share Posted February 27, 2008 Study music for 100 years. Then listen to a beautiful piece of music with someone who shares your culture but has 0 years of musical study. The piece is equally beautiful to both of you, no more beautiful after 100 years of study and no less beautiful after none. That's a statement that you cannot really back up, because that's not a measurable quantity. But, there seems to clearly be a substantial correlation between appreciation of the beauty of classical music (or other types of music like jazz) and a deeper understanding of music? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted February 27, 2008 Members Share Posted February 27, 2008 This whole topic can easily wander off into veritable universes of debateable issues SO LET ME HELP THE PROCESS hahahaha 1. Duddits, for a cat, you certainly have a very dualistic view of human nature. Two water-tight compartments, "analyzing" and "feeling". "Thought" and "emotion". Two different planes of experience. Turn off your mind and just feeeeeeeeeelllllllll. Well, a cat may be able to do this much better than a human, but I propose that humans are far more complex and the two focal points of experience not only merge into one another at the edges, but invade each other at innumerable points to a beautifully mysterious degree. If you don't understand that, may I respectfully and condescendingly remind you that you are, after all, a lower order of creature than a human. You have nice fur. 2. some music has more intellectual content to it than others. Wild Thing vs. a Bach Fugue. We live in an era that will fight to the last bloody drop to assert that the pure "experience" of both pieces of music has nothing whatsoever to do with education or intellectual training or ideas, structures, concepts, analytical this and that. You get off to the Fugue, I get off to Wild Thing, it all "just" boils down to just how many endorphins are squirted into your bloodstream by some pulsing bag of a gland. The "just" is the clue - this is reductionism of a radical, destructive kind that I hope will work it's way out of Western (mostly American) culture in time. The intellectual content of a Bach fugue (meaning the deliberately complex structure that can't be appreciated without some level of education) is totally disregarded in the dualistic view. It's as if you would say that the complex structure and interlocking puzzle nature of the Fugue has nothing to do with the way it "sounds". It's this synthesis of brain and emotion that I like about music. Music puts together these two modes that our culture for some reason wants to keep separated as if they were Church and State, or two unruly best friends in a school classroom. It's true, they are easier to think about considered apart. But the reality is not so easily chopped up and assigned to separate petri dishes. The real "murdering to dissect" occurs in the dualistic view, not in the wholistic view. nat whilk ii Not to say there aren't days I'd rather crank up Wild Thing (Hendrix's version, please) than a Fugue. To everything there is a season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Duddits Posted February 27, 2008 Members Share Posted February 27, 2008 You are indeed a very bright kitty. As are you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Duddits Posted February 27, 2008 Members Share Posted February 27, 2008 That's a statement that you cannot really back up, because that's not a measurable quantity. But, there seems to clearly be a substantial correlation between appreciation of the beauty of classical music (or other types of music like jazz) and a deeper understanding of music? Therein lies the rub. It is actually you who are making a claim without data. I am assuming that music education does not enhance music listening. That's a clean slate. No pig is more equal than any other. I'm assuming nothing. The other side is "music education enhances music listening" / "I've studied music therefore I hear more when I listen to it and enjoy it more than others." This is widely accepted to be true, but based on what? If I am at an arena or a concert hall listening to music and I am a highly trained musician, and everyone else is a musictard, I don't think that I hear more than they do, or enjoy it more based on my training. But that's what others assume. I think that actual musical training, at even the most advanced levels, is such a huge oversimplification of what music is and how it is perceived by the brain, that it does nothing to alter our experience of it. It does a lot of other good stuff, but not that. At least not in my experience (or any research I'm aware of). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dean Roddey Posted February 28, 2008 Members Share Posted February 28, 2008 Therein lies the rub. It is actually you who are making a claim without data. I am assuming that music education does not enhance music listening. That's a clean slate. No pig is more equal than any other. I'm assuming nothing. That's still a claim. If it was always the case in all areas of life that a deeper understanding of a subject clearly failed to give a deeper appreciation of it, then you'd have some leg to stand on. But clearly it's not. Very clearly in almost every area of endeavor you can come up with (which people do because they want to, not that they have to do necessarily), those who understand it better have a deeper appreciation of it, because they can appreciate it at both the surface level and below the surface. How can you argue that they don't have a super-set of appreciation relative to the lay person with no understanding of it, and therefore is purely appreciating it at the surface level? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members kurdy Posted February 28, 2008 Members Share Posted February 28, 2008 I believe that music education can enhance the music listening experience intellectually. It allows you to have a larger appreciation for the skill of the musicians, the technique, the effort that went into it, etc. However, I believe that the reaction to music on an emotional level is independent of intellectual or analytical thought. The emotional experience itself isn't something that can really be enhanced by knowledge of music theory. Either something moves you or it doesn't. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members philbo Posted February 28, 2008 Members Share Posted February 28, 2008 I don't know... I've been playing music since dirt was a new idea & all (dirt was invented in 1964, right?), yet sometimes learning a song I've always loved but never transcribed makes a bit of the magic of it disappear. I can appreciate the harmonic structure, arrangement, and the artistry involved in putting it all together, but the magic of the tune is just never the same for me again after that... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Dean Roddey Posted February 28, 2008 Members Share Posted February 28, 2008 Something, for me, that really increases my visceral reaction to a song, and it's something that a non-musician wouldn't really pay much attention to, is the mix. I know what a good mix is and I respond very much to a mix that is very good, not because it just sounds good, but because I'm awed by the skill of not just the artist but the people who produced it. This is something that an unknowledgeable person wouldn't really notice other than unconsciously, and they wouldn't separate the performance from the creation of the performance, though they really are two separate things, to simultaneous performances, and my appreciation of both of them increases my emotional response. It doesn't HAVE to be a good mix to invoke an emotional response by any means, but if it's hitting on both cylinders, I know it and respond to it. That response is not just intellectual because it's now to me just like listening to a great guitar solo is to a layperson. I hear the guitar solo and the production of the guitar solo and the production of the environment around it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted February 28, 2008 Members Share Posted February 28, 2008 I believe that music education can enhance the music listening experience intellectually. It allows you to have a larger appreciation for the skill of the musicians, the technique, the effort that went into it, etc. However, I believe that the reaction to music on an emotional level is independent of intellectual or analytical thought. The emotional experience itself isn't something that can really be enhanced by knowledge of music theory. Either something moves you or it doesn't. Another strict dualist. They're everywhere!!! nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Rudolf von Hagenwil Posted February 28, 2008 Members Share Posted February 28, 2008 I only listen to other composers to get to know how not to do it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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