I also wonder about the nature of the power of dance music as a way of uplifting the spirit and emotions. I do have a lot of dance; trance etc and don't dance to it, but use it for meditation, because it seems to encapsulate higher states of consciousness or awareness. I don't know if this is my perception or whether others see it that way, sort of like the opposite to Slipknot, although I think that ' When All Hope is Gone' is a fantastic album. One way of bringing the darkness of metal and the vibrancy of dance together in an innovative way is crossover genres, such as explored by Pendulum and Skrillex.

That's just silly Jack. :grin:

Adorno was a pretentious windbag with a censorious attitude to the human heart.

I have loved music for most of my life and, this is probably true of most people, and I have never learned to play and instrument, so this thread is coming from the angle of appreciation. — Jack Cummins

I resemble that remark. I think I've read or heard other folks, smarter than me, who have opined that music plays the sound track of our lives. When we are young, and our hormones are raging, the music in the back ground (or blaring in the foreground) will imprint itself upon us. If it has been remembered, from our formative years, then it did not ruin the memory or the song. Even if the memory or the song are sad or bad.

Compare: If I hear a favorite song, from back in the day, used to hawk a fucking product, then that song can be forever ruined. The shit they want to sell me is not mine, their marketing is not mine, and their picking one of my favorite song in an effort to appeal to me is a big fucking fail. But maybe they aren't going after me. Maybe they are turning a new generation on to a bad thing with a good thing. I'd hate to see some kid equating the Animals rendition of The House of the Rising Sun with a fucking widget.

End rant.

You have told me that something which I have said is 'silly' but I need you to specify what, before I can think about it.

I think that the way music and memories goes deep. In particular, I was once running music appreciation groups in ana mental health ward for older adults and I discovered how through listening to music from the past, so much could be touched upon or triggered through listening to songs from the past.. Music and memories may be so interrelated.

You have told me that something which I have said is 'silly' but I need you to specify what, before I can think about it — Jack Cummins

Beyond logic, Jack, there maybe something but it would be incomprehensible nonsense to our minds.

Jesse Cook, from LinkedIn:

"45 years ago on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976, The Band performs its final concert, ‘The Last Waltz,’ at San Francisco's Winterland before an audience of 5,000 who were treated to turkey dinner, an amazing playlist, and a star-studded show that included appearances by Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Ringo Starr, Emmylou Harris, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Hawkins, and Neil Diamond. Director Martin Scorsese filmed the concert and made it into a documentary released in 1978. In 2019, ‘The Last Waltz’ was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for The Band’s version of ‘When I Paint My Masterpiece.’ I don’t know what Bob Dylan intended when he wrote the song, but to me, it uniquely explores the difference between where we are and where we think we should be. Our present condition is portrayed as a bumbling tourist “sailing ‘round the world in a dirty gondola” while our greatest potential will be achieved only after “I paint my masterpiece,” some amorphous, maybe-it-will-happen-maybe-it-won’t type of fantasy. Underscoring the feeling of longingness and separation is the narrator’s presence on this great adventure in Rome and Brussels, yet he is wishing he was “back in the land of Coca-Cola” and thinking about “someday” when “everything is gonna be diff’rent” and “everything is gonna sound like a rhapsody” when I paint my masterpiece.

This holiday, I’m wishing you a Thanksgiving where you are neither dodging lions nor wasting time and are instead perfectly content as the masterpiece you already are."

Jesse Cook.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wq2e7DPhyHg

I am not saying that logic and rationality aren't important because they are essential, but it does not mean that anything beyond that is 'incomprehensible nonsense to our minds. The various functions include sensations, rationality, emotions and imagination or intuition. Music appeals to parts of us that are not just logical but are important, especially the realm of emotions. Some people like very emotional music, like romance or possibly sad aspects of love.

Beyond logic, Jack, there maybe something but it would be incomprehensible nonsense to our minds. — TheMadFool

Hence a thread about music, or a thread about poetry. Most advertising for example is deliberate nonsense because it aims to bypass the logical analyst and appeal to a nonlinguistic non rational aspect of humanity. You surely do not claim to be unaffected by anything but logic?

Many mathematicians or computer scientists like classical music. Because it's nicely structùred probably.

It does often seem that those who are good at maths are also good musicians too and I have often wondered about why that relationship exists. Perhaps, the symbolic aspects of both involve the same aspects of the brain, including the reading of music.

Some impressions from someone who still regrettably sees themselves as a musician:

1) The so-called subjectivity of music is overblown. Yes, everybody *likes* different music, but that doesn't mean they hear different things. Even across musical cultures, certain musical effects seem to rear themselves up again and again. Especially among musicians (who are not an elite but have merely spent more time paying attention to the relevant details), attitudes towards certain kinds of music or certain kinds of musical ideas tend to be quite prevalent. You can play a group of music students some pretty weird stuff far beyond their comfort zone, but if they're patient they will usually come to appreciate certain things going on in the music, and they will often agree in their assessments. There is, in fact, a universal aspect to music, as much as this troubles the strident post-modernist. And why shouldn't there be a universal aspect? It's just frequencies and rhythms anyone with a functioning set of ears can hear. Scales and chords are just pitches with mathematical relationships. Rhythms too in fact.

2) The tendency for people to forge their tastes around music they listened to in their childhood and teens is particularly true of popular music, but I'm not sure this actually used to be a thing before the mass commercialisation of music. Of course nostalgia can be part of appreciation, but there is nothing stopping someone from discovering new musical styles later in life. The main problem as I see it is that they have to fight not just nostalgia but also the entire weight of the music industry, which is designed to feed them more of what they already know, and to tie music to a brand or image. It's very difficult to discuss 'the metaphysics of music' in an environment like ours which saturates music with extra-musical artefacts, particularly in the visual department. Music moves us, but it also moves us to build a world around it, to explain, to eff the ineffable. And so we end up doing a lot of dancing about architecture, to paraphrase Miles Davis.

I am not saying that logic and rationality aren't important because they are essential, but it does not mean that anything beyond that is 'incomprehensible nonsense to our minds. The various functions include sensations, rationality, emotions and imagination or intuition. Music appeals to parts of us that are not just logical but are important, especially the realm of emotions. Some people like very emotional music, like romance or possibly sad aspects of love. — Jack Cummins

How right you are Jack Cummins! It all depends on how you define stuff, I mean words. If I play around with the meaning of "comprehension" and "sense", we could very well comprehend and see sense in almost any damn thing we like. I propose a motion. Redefine "comprehension" and "sense" in a way that does justice to the true extent of human cognition and experience.

By virtue of endless repetition, we've begun to automatically associate comprehension and sense with logic, it's been drilled into us and we're now so habituated to thinking this way that no one, perhaps some, really asks if there's any necessary connection, a rationale to, this linkage.

Perhaps, taking a page out of David Chalmers' views on consciousness, the inability of logic and rationality to cover the whole gamut of human thought and existence, also reality itself, should be dubbed The Hard Problem Of Logic. :grin:

It does often seem that those who are good at maths are also good musicians too and I have often wondered about why that relationship exists. Perhaps, the symbolic aspects of both involve the same aspects of the brain, including the reading of music. — Jack Cummins

Douglas Hofstadter is a pianist. Queens guitarist Brian May is cosmologist. The brother of Killing Joke singer Jaz Coleman is particle physicist. The grandson of Hugh Everett (many worlds interpretation of QM) is Eels member. Stevon Alexander is a jazz musician. Etc. See her also. The other direction is less common. There are more musicians with no interest in math than math people with an interest. Good musicians not interested in math make better music in general than musicians interested. Math confines.
Sometimes a single transgression from one tone to another can already evoke emotion. Even 4:03 minutes of silence can be music. How experimental can it get? You can see music just as painting with tones. Some like abstract expression (it's my view that the most abstract paintings are the hyper realist ones, but that aside), some like easy viewing or easy listening, some like march music, some like dance, jazz, punk,, etc. There is no universal formula.

Hence a thread about music, or a thread about poetry. Most advertising for example is deliberate nonsense because it aims to bypass the logical analyst and appeal to a nonlinguistic non rational aspect of humanity. You surely do not claim to be unaffected by anything but logic? — unenlightened

I'm always gonna be what people, derisively call, a wannabe. I think I'm a character simulator, I think such programs (I consider myself one in The Matrix :joke: ) are known around the world as actors.

I guess that I am really asking about the nature of metaphysical realities which may be underlying our appreciation of music. — Jack Cummins

Ah, metaphysics... The world's your lobster!

I also wonder about the nature of the power of dance music as a way of uplifting the spirit and emotions. — Jack Cummins

A lot of those cultural differences derive from different dances (again, Adam Neely is really insightful on this). I think there's two really important factors in our appreciation of music, one relating to the social, there other to the aesthetic, with origins in dance and prayer respectively.

The so-called subjectivity of music is overblown. Yes, everybody *likes* different music, but that doesn't mean they hear different things. — coolazice

Surely as a musician you've noticed that you listen to music differently to non-musicians? When I speak to my partner about what I like about a song, she gives me very blank stares then mumbles something about listening to it as a whole not the sum of its parts. (She apparently hasn't heard Feynman speak about the beauty of a flower.)

The relationship between dance and music or between music and prayer is an important aspect of music. I actually meditate to dance music, and when I tell some people this they often look puzzled, so I tell them I am dancing inside my head. I went through a phase of meditation to metal music but that is another story.

It is interesting that your partner and you appear to listen to certain music differently. I often wonder to some extent each of us hears music a little differently. One reason why I wonder about this I sometimes feel that certain music has sounded different if I am ill with a fever, or in an unusual state of mind.

It is probably true that there are more musicians who are not good at maths than those who are. I agree that music can be so experimental, 'like painting in tones'. I have often thought that 12 inches singles seem to give more scope than 7 inch ones, especially the ones on ZZT label, which include 'The Art of Noise' and ' Orbital. I also came across a CD by 'The Flaming Lips' which came with 4 identical discs. The idea was to play all 4 at the same time. I was able to play 2 at once and I think it did make the experience rather different from just listening on one player.

Yeah, or just as you get older, or after certain experiences, or from different standpoints or cultures. I hear music in its parts more because I have been in bands since I was at school, as a songwriter to boot. I can't not separate out the bassline, each part of the drum kit, the various harmonies, the effects applied, etc. even as I still hear the whole.

Different parts speak to me in different genres too. The double bass is king for me in jazz, pour myself over it. Melody is the most important part of songs for me. Some of that is going to be quite idiosyncratic, e.g. I'm hearing jazz quite differently to a jazz drummer or horn player.

I read a book on logic recently, called'The Art of Logic: How to Make Sense in a World That Doesn't,' by Eugenia Cheng(2019). The author shows how logic, including the basics of maths, is a foundation 'to verify and establish the truth'. However, the following statement may be applicable to this thread discussion on music in relation to emotions:
'Emotions and logic do not have to be enemies. Logic works perfectly in the abstract mathematical world. But life is more complicated than that. Life involves humans, and humans have emotions'.

So, music helps soothe emotions and can be cathartic. I often find some really dark music can be cathartic and uplifting, although I do like 'The Logical Song', by Supertramp

It must be great to perform in bands and I do know some people who do. Do you sing as well?

You are probably right that it is more in popular genres that people are inclined to stop exploring music after teenage or student years. Even though I am into rock and alternative music, I do like to continue to find new music and I will probably always continue to do so. That is because I read reviews in music magazines.

Of course, one other aspect which does affect the whole industry is streamlining as opposed to people buying records and CDs. I still buy CDs and find them to be the most durable form of music. Some people think that records sound better but this may just be because some CD players have such poor speakers and having decent ones is important. I even know of some people who collect vinyl who don't have a record player. But, what may get missed with online music is the culture and subculture surrounding music, but this does have an industry component.

I am sure that people who have more classical or jazz tastes find specific venues to share their interests. There are specialist stores for all genres and I love going to a punk music shop in Camden Town.

Besides a heavy emotional impact, like from the heavy contrary and agressive distorted punk guitar blasts and aggressively fat swollen bass shootings, seasoned with machine-gun drums, to the sweet violins accompanying Nat King Cole, and the madness accompanying "Horse Latitudes", from the outwordly anxious Bartok, the alienating experiments of Holger Czukay, to the naive joy of early Depeche Mode, or from the sounds of Philip Glass accompanying Koyaanisquatsi imagery, to the nervous and jittery VU, to absolute silence, from the soothing sounds of Coldplay, the ecstatic dance drives of house, and the soundscapes of Jean Michel Jarre, from the pumping guitar and synth of the Krupps, you can make up all kinds of contextual stories. Or movies, and even life itself. It can even be thought provoking. Mostly, when not dancing on it, it's just nice or fun.

It must be great to perform in bands and I do know some people who do. Do you sing as well? — Jack Cummins

Yeah. I used to be okay but kind of losing it through lack of use tbh

How you listen to music is often a matter of attention rather than subjectivity. Good music teachers can direct your attention to things which enable you to hear music in a different way. But this is not quite the same as subjectivity, anymore than an engineer showing you the principles of bridge construction means those principles are subjective just because you didn't previously pay attention to those principles.

I can't not separate out the bassline, each part of the drum kit, the various harmonies, the effects applied, etc. even as I still hear the whole. — Kenosha Kid

:up:

I don't know what else to say except this: Record all the sounds humans make, that includes sounds made by machines, and see if they they form a melody or a harmony. — TheMadFool

I agree people hear different things in music, and not even just musicians vs. non-musicians. If you take an album like Laughing Stock by Talk Talk, as a musician, I still hear something new each time I listen to it (that has more to do with the endless layers than anything, I guess). Another interesting thing I've noticed is that I sort of log songs I hear casually into "like" or "dislike" categories, but subliminally. I'll hear a song in a store or something and either immediately be like "ah what is that, I like that song", or the opposite. When I realize what it is, I might be sort of embarrassed at myself, if it's, for instance, a Katy Perry song I was enjoying. This is apparently based on the social acceptability of certain music within certain circles, which goes into another topic, but the point is that apparently I don't even always hear the same song the same way; i.e., I may not realize I instinctively like a song or piece until I hear it in a new context.

Subjective experience is as much generated by the mind as by the environment.

EDIT: That was rather brief and meh, apologies. Point being the subjective experience of someone trained to be more attentive _is_ different to that of a casual listener because they _are_ hearing it differently. Likewise the cultural aspect. What sounds odd to me sounds normal to an eastern European and vice versa. That in itself is a different subjective experience.

I hear you. I appreciated Britney's songwriters more when I heard a pianist friend of mine playing them instrumentally on the piano. I've tried to train myself to be a bit more open-minded since then.