Still one question that I will try to answer throughout my life: What is music? You hear the stuff thats very obviously music and what would otherwise be considered noise. Then theres a lot of gray area that begs the question, What is that defining line between noise and music? Consider speech. When you talk, youre literally moving through hundreds if not thousands of different notes in a sentence, all changing based on your inflection, speech rate, etc. However, when you pick one very specific part of your voice, and stay on it, then youre dealing with a note, a musical frequency that you had to focus on, and maintain. So now apply this concept to the whole. If all that makes music music is its ability to be perceived as an organized effort, then any group of sounds, whether intentional or accidental or otherwise, when put together in a meaningful way, becomes music. Sometimes, if you really pay attention, you might notice that the chirping of a bird lines up with the sound of cars passing by on the street. If this in any way seems organized to you, then you would be interpreting the aforementioned combination of sounds as music. If you perceive the sounds as separate events with no correlation to one another, then it probably seems like noise to you. There is a type of music known as aleatoric music which gives any size of ensemble a certain set of notes to work with, and can choose to play as many or as few, as fast or as slow, and in any order they choose. Apply this to a full orchestra and it sounds like it would yield only chaos. But because the group of musicians is choosing to interact with each other, instead of try and outplay the others, then suddenly the effort seems to fit together, and when done right, can almost seem planned. But it isnt. Again, whether you perceive this as noise or music is on your ears, but it is the best representation of order through chaos. Music can be noise, and noise can be music, but it has to do with whether the sounds youre experiencing seem like theyre a part of a bigger picture, or if they seem disjunct and mismatched. If the artist does their job right, even the most bizarre sounds can interact and become a beautiful piece of art.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 23:29:43 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015