A small rant.

[eduardo_b]

Hm...
Well, I seen some very broad definition here of what is music.
Consider speech then. It consists of rhythm, pitch, timbre and phrase.
Would that make the human speech music ?
When I talk in an ordinary situation, is my intent then to make music ?
Who would know the difference ?

What if I scribble down a few sentences and then decide to "perform"
the piece as music:
"Hello folks. Listen to this tune I wrote. ...and then I start ramling.

I mean, come on.

Argh, it's all in the ear of the receiver.
Without a receiver there's no detection.
And without detection there's no sign of intent.

Not too vague I hope.

I don't know about the detection thing. My wife can detect ambient music, and she says it's noise.

[robenestobenz]

stuff

Between this and your music theory post, I get the feeling you have a poor sense of the various shades of grey.

[hao nao]

what I can't get past is all the intermediate clutter

crickets I don't mind because they probably can't help having occurred

it's the wavicles and sub-wavicles that really crick my wicket

[hao nao]

sound design ~= making the fabric

music ~= making the garment

[pHz]

sound design ~= making the fabric
music ~= making the garment

i still reckon theyre so interwoven as to be indistinguishable ...

slainte rob

[ianweb123]

sound design ~= making the fabric

music ~= making the garment

What are curtains and tablecloths then?

[hoffy]

Do some people prefer rant about music and audio than actually make music? You'd think so by half the threads here at KvR...

PS: Fabric, shmabric, blah blah blah, you're all full of shit.

[.jon]

No they haven't. Sound design is closer in breed to instrument design, both at the building blocks of music, but most musicmaking processes have been unconcerned with instrument design.

All classical music has been composed for specific instruments. Instrument=sound design has governed the compositional process until our days.

No composer ever heard "notes", "harmonies" or any such things as such, they heard tones played by some instruments.

And terms invented to describe properties of western music tradition hardly define music.

Times have changed, music has changed. It will always be so.

[shamann]

Exploitation of timbre is not the same thing as sound design, which is the development of new timbres, and as such is still closer to instrument making than composition. They didn't invent a new violin every time they wrote a concerto. But sound design, as we know and use the term, does essentially that.

Irrelevant if times change, that fact does not erase the delineation between the two concepts. I have nothing against sound design or developing new compositional techniques based on the approach, but to say that composition has always been sound design is misleading.

[.jon]

What was said that sound design has always been composition, not the other way around.

Composers did not exploit timbres, their work was predefined by the timbres of available instruments. No, the composer did not invent a new violin, but the maker of violin shaped the careers of a thousand composers, and every single violin concerto they ever "invented".

There is a fundamental difference between the compositional process for 4 violins and the compositional process for 4 laptops. This is what has changed, and it erases the delineation between the concepts.

We should not be restricted by definitions or descriptions of abstract concepts - there is no "music", neither is is defined by "structure" of "harmony" or "melody". There is only sound made by someone, to be received or rejected by someone else.

[nuffink]

And somebody mixed Vermeers paint. History, unaccountably, has forgotten his name.

[seldom]

And somebody mixed Vermeers paint. History, unaccountably, has forgotten his name.

i think his name was Vermeer.

[pHz]

somebody other than vermeer may have ground pigments and made his paint admittedly (although he was working at a time when many artists still ground their own pigments) ... but its a poor analogy anyway ...

... a painter would almost never seperate out the process of mixing colour (sound design) and composing an image (composition) ... the 2 are so inextricably linked as to be the same thing ...

... maybe its coming from exactly this kind of visual arts background that colours my ideas on music though ...

slainte rob

[camsr]

... a painter would almost never seperate out the process of mixing colour (sound design) and composing an image (composition) ... the 2 are so inextricably linked as to be the same thing ...

But what about the production side of this? Recording onto the media you will use to distribute the song? (I suppose this would be equiv to mass producing the painting and selling it for 9.99 at Wal-Mart )