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><there is no difference between music and environmental ><sounds, as John Cage pointed out. Morgan: >Your point is well taken. However, I must ask why, if "there is no >difference >between music and environmental sounds," people continue to make "music"? >Isn't it conceited of us to think that we can make better sounds than >those >that we might encounter taking a walk, for example? Is the ultimate point >of >Cage and the other aleatorists (including Olivieros) to make us consider >taking a walk to be as "active" a musical activity as making a music >commodity >such as a CD? > >It might be useful for us all to take a big step back (or forward) and >ask why >we prefer to strum chords and twiddle knobs instead of, say, considering >the >sound of our own breathing to be music. (As a former smoker, I can >conceptually get behind "musical breathing"...wheeze, gasp...). This is like asking why we brew beer if we can eat manga. Humans are torn apart by the two basic forces of NATURE and CULTURE: The natural principle is to adapt itself to the ambient (modest/contemplatif) The cultural principle is to adapt the ambient to our taste (creatif/agressif) This conflict may have started when Adam ate the apple of consciousness, or as others interprete, with canibalism that induced the "useless" growth of brain throug bio feedback. We need to ocupy this brain somehow, so lets use it to turn things nicer. In fact, we do not even eat manga in the form that god created it. Humans started a very long while ago to cultivate nature for their needs and taste. The problem is that we tend to love culture so much that we disrespect nature or turn insensible for its beauty. But this is also a very old rap. I agree with Alan that some balance between creation and contemplation is needed. And I liked Kungha's view of the function of the loop in this context: "Just as in looping you are both the active creater and the passive listener. In both activities there is the potential for the complete merging of the two.Diety/Supplicant-Creater/Listener " Instead of making music, we could aslo try to cultivate birds to sing better ;-) Shee - before the mornig tee Matthias