Build on what is real

[kensuguro]

Just saw an interview with Bill Evans:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm6V7bWnVpw
(there's clip 1-5)

One message really resonated. "You can't build chaos upon chaos. No matter how simple it is, you need one point of reference. A reference you know that is very real." I kind of paraphrased it, but you get what I mean. It's such a basic, very cliche statement.. but do we know what our point of reference is? Is that point something "real"?? Or is it some fake image that we conjured up ourselves?

It's just interesting to hear him sound like just any old guy.. he's a genius and all, but it does sound like he practiced like hell, and also thinks A LOT about his music. It's quite far from the "I just sat in front of the piano and it all just came to me from the heavens" image I had. So sad we lost him to drugs.

[paulrmartin]

For a perfect example of this great man's intelligence give a listen to the 1956 recording of Cole Porter's "Love For Sale" by the Miles Davis band. That band included John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley. When Bill's turn comes he summarizes what Miles(blue notes), Cannonball(joyfullness) and John(so stoned he missed his cue) played in one fell swoop.

[kensuguro]

cool, will definitely look for the recording. By the way, I messed up and posted this in the music forum. oops.

[braincell]

While I found him to be articulate and interesting, I don't agree with everything he said. Music is just entertainment. Anyone who thinks otherwise is full of crap.

If you think you are some sort of god or connected to god, you are bound to destroy yourself like he did.

[paulrmartin]

I know I shouldn't but I need to interject.
Is funeral music entertainment?
Is wedding music ("Here comes the broad...") entertainment?
Is the music native american indians sing for shamanic purposes entertainment?
Is the bugle piece for the dead entertainment?
"Hail to Chief"?

[braincell]

In a sense yes those are entertainment, pointless and bland as they may be. There is no reason for them. I don't understand why people find it important to repeat traditions. National anthems are horrible songs usually. Ours is difficult to sing. It's ugly, yet this song will never be replaced because people can't take change.To me, it's just another stupid song, one that I will be forced to hear for the rest of my life, polluting my brain with more garbage. The same with the other examples. It's noise pollution but it will not change because people are idiots.

Ducks quacking is not music yet they must quack because they are ducks. They know not why they do it. They don't think about it. Perhaps it is to say "Here I am". This is not music at all.

[kensuguro]

Music is just entertainment. Anyone who thinks otherwise is full of crap.

Listening to music isn't just entertainment. It's an educational process. Any time you take in a group of symbols and break it apart into pieces, to be put together later in a different order / context, it is a congnitive process. The process itself can be entertaining, but at the same time, serves more than just a few minutes of stimulus.

Of course, I don't see how a music can be a miraculous thing in itself. It seems like that is more for the listener to decide. For some, a specific hymn may make them feel a certain way, for others it may make the want to puke. That sort of imposed behavior isn't inherent in any music. Sound itself is just a series of stimuli that changes over time.

It's all comes back to the signifier and the signified. Symbols signify the real thing, and these things are not in one to one relationship. The relationship is man made, and so it depends on agreement. Specific sounds within a certain social context, becomes music when arranged in a specific way. So, if music signfied both the cultural framework that dictates a specific sound "music", and also the actual sound itself, then music is aural stimuli, and also poseses any other cultural value dictated by the frame work. That may be entertainment, it may be religious, it may be sensual, it may be hateful, it may be cool etc. What you say, sounds to me, like you are pointing to the aural stimuli itself.

Music is a culural phenomenon. Music is meaning / framwork / structure applied to sound. Turning the mechanics upside down, music cannot exist without the framework becasue the framework is what makes it music. The boring repetition of tradition serves as a means to maintain this frame work that build ground rules for you to follow or break.

Traditional music itself may be boring, or seem unimportant to modern, more forward thinking music, but essentially, if all traditions were cut, or if most of it were lost, then music would loose its context along with the long history that gives it its deep context / frame work.

So, while I do agree that listening to traditional / meaningless music is rather boring and unbearable, and that there is no need to dictate tradition as being superiour "because it stood the test of time", I accept that any modern music cannot exist without it. Contrast creates dilemma, and dilemma inspires (or entertains) people.

But anyway, it's great to think about music in such depth. Going back to the duck metaphor, can you explain more about what "is music" in contrast to the ducks quacking without understanding why they're doing it. It sounds to me that you are saying that music has to be an intelligent and conscious activity.

[braincell]

I am saying that music is a conscious activity. It wouldn't be music without some sort of organization. Studies show that people like repetition in music but they don't like it to be too predictable.

Here is an interesting program regarding music and the brain:

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/episodes/2006/04/21


"Sometimes behaves so strangely. Sometimes behaves so strangely."