Support
Looper's Delight
|
Support |
|
|
I have to step in here. Everybody is trying to find some religiously absolute concept regarding the nature of music, or of a piece of music. I would like to remind eveybody about that famous question, "If a tree falls in the forest, and there's nobody around to hear it, does it make any sound?" My point is that our perception of sound is hopelessly coloured by the cultural notions and beliefs common in whatever culture in which you happen to grow up. Music itself is just vibrations of the atoms in the air. Take away the air, there's nothing to vibrate. Take away the atom vibration, there's no sound. Our concepts of music being what it is has nothing to do with the ultimate reality of music— the atom vibration— it's just something we all agree to accept being that we don't even know we are accepting it by growing up in whatever country with whatever aesthetic values happen to be the rage. What music kids nowadays find "mathematically, emotionally, physically— absolutely" to be cool is very different from I find it to be. I grew up in the Sixties, and the Seventies. Clapton's solos, well-done pop songs, and even long ambitious musical works do it for me. This is partly the source of all this "generation gap" talk that goes on since the Sixties. This thread has been very enlightening at times, and what I have learned from it, or being reminded of, really, is the great necessity for us to be more analytical and aware of the great many factors that influence what we think to be good, to be true, to be any certain way. This is at the crux of the concept of awareness. We can only make a better judgement of goodness and truth only if we strive to know all the thoughts and reasons that make up that judgement. Most of the times we don't. We just go by what is "out there." We act most of the time like sponges, just taking in, taking in. One of the fields of investigation that analyses this is art history. All they do is look at the values and judgements that were made regarding the creation of those works, put a name on it, and teach the children about them. These names and what they describe are no more arbitratry than what the artist him/herself chose to do and why. But we do need them to make sense of our past, of what they left behind for us to enjoy. I'm for that. The beginning of the "questioning of oneself" is the beginning of making sure we have it together. I'm sure everybody is for that. Javier | -----Original Message----- | From: Robert Eberwein [mailto:robert_eberwein@hotmail.com] | Sent: Sunday 21 January 2001 12:04 AM | To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com | Subject: Perception/excellence | | | Haven’t you experienced that? I sense you have. We all have. It | doesn’t mean | anyone has to agree, but it’s not a cryptic/intellectual point. | In music it | is very often so; like I said: many chords/words could work- - | - but one | fits like hand-in-glove. You know it mathematically, emotionally, | physically- - - absolutely. Why should I deny my every | reason/instinct/feeling, and say, *Well, it’s good, but so | would a lot of | other chords/words be good*? |