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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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Music Lane It's all about the music, dude! Sit down, relax and listen to some tunes. |
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In Reply to: Thanks! Another challenge!:-)... posted by SE on October 26, 2006 at 13:00:57:
"is it still "music"?When it's made by a musician. No matter how improvised, you are not hearing random sounds. (Well, some "jazz" sounds that way, but let's not go there . . . ) The musician has skill and experience, (hopefully) a functioning brain, and (again hopefully) a functioning soul or spirit or whatever you'd like to call it.
So (IMO of course) the seemingly random sounds of such a drum solo are in fact informed by years, perhaps decades of playing, practicing, taking drum solos, and (maybe as important as anything) all the musician has heard from others for all that time.
Big difference between that and handing a 3 year-old some sticks and saying "have at it."
What the musician plays will have some kind of organization to it, perhaps imperceptable, or perhaps on a plane we mere mortals cannot recognize with our level of expertise.
In terms of Cage, water splashes, etc. you are describing aleatoric music, i.e. music where someone has told you generally what to do but the actual doing is left up to the performer. There's lots of music with this, including music where most of the other stuff is written down exactly.
But see, that's the context. Are the water splashes you hear in your bathtub music? No. Are water splashes requested by Tan Dun as part of a piece of (however loosely) organized music--when Tan Dun doesn't even know in advance how it's going to come out--music? Yup.
That's why bird song isn't music, even though the case could be made for it being "organized sound." Even the dear mockingbird in my neighborhood!
You should understand that I feel hugely underqualified to discuss improvisation since I'm no good at it. I understand how it works from a theoretical point of view but a real jazz cat might well have some great insights that would never occur to me.
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Follow Ups
- Yes! - markrohr 14:27:40 10/26/06 (11)
- "No matter how improvised, you are not hearing random sounds."... - SE 14:42:08 10/26/06 (10)
- Hey, we can all call it what we like. - markrohr 16:17:02 10/26/06 (8)
- "...but end up being less satisfying than music." You can stop right there. nt - clarkjohnsen 09:23:29 10/27/06 (0)
- Somewhat surprisingly, you're off my point?... - SE 03:56:56 10/27/06 (4)
- "Are you saying you group bird song with cat hissing?" Yup. - markrohr 06:55:14 10/27/06 (3)
- "It takes a certain level of intelligence to create music." Yes indeed. - clarkjohnsen 09:39:52 10/27/06 (0)
- "I find this to be an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin argument." That's a misfire! - clarkjohnsen 09:33:37 10/27/06 (1)
- All fair points. I'll close (really!:-) with this... - SE 07:05:34 10/27/06 (0)
- Identifying something as music by its subject matter is a slippery slope. - jdaniel 19:22:40 10/26/06 (1)
- What you read...are you saying you agree with that view?... - SE 03:58:51 10/27/06 (0)
- Oops. That's "CAN only be put forth as fact". n/t - SE 14:44:23 10/26/06 (0)
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