What is the difference between music and noise? [years-dead slappyfight revived]

[Ogg Vorbis]

Intention? If it is intention, then is there no such thing as unintended music?

Or is it in the ear of the beholder...in other words, is music a way of hearing?

[Aleatoriac]

Wow what a cool thought. I remember talking about this in a music theory class in college.

My opinion has changed since then.

Now I think music is in the... eh... ear of the "conditioned" so to speak?

Nothing wrong with 12-tone / standard / what have you.

To a being that communicates in bursts of radio wave, interstellar static could be music.

I've been at the drugs again, haven't I?

[ZenPunkHippy]

The intention side of the question is very interesting. If these birds are making music on the Les Paul guitar:

Birds play guitar

Where is the intention? Is it the artist who set up the initial conditions for the art (experiment?), or are the birds enjoying the sound and so acting with some level of intent?

Otherwise, I think "music" as we commonly refer to it and in whatever form it takes is an unavoidable (and beautiful) consequence of evolution (billions of years) and more recently cultural bias (thousands of years), combined. We have learned to build tools that help us mimiic nature and we are refining those tools to help us tune in to something far larger than we can comprehend ...

Peace,
Andy.

[justin3am]

I think if everyone tried to make a ven diagram in their head for 'sound', 'music', and 'noise'; Everyone would have music and noise within the sound circle and the intersection of noise and music would vary from person to person.

I hear sound, music, and noise in the same circle. maybe it's more complex than that? I can come up with "musical ideas" that other people also find musical, even if they are at the edge of what some would call music. Do they identify with the sound I made or with my relationship to the sound? If sound is about an emotional attachment, is a sound that disturbs you music too?

I like topics like this because I always end up with more questions than points.

[hersoot]

The noise I generate myself is music to my ears, but not always.

[hibidy]

perception. This is clear as most of the stuff out there IS just noise. Unfortunately, the perception is that it's music. Ooo, a can of worms

[justin3am]

This is clear as most of the stuff out there IS just noise. Unfortunately, the perception is that it's music.

Unfortunate for whom and why?

I'm just curious, no flame bait.

[Musicologo]

As far as I understand it music is a way of perceiving sounds.

If you hear sounds and you can make sense of them, then you are in the presence of music, but if you can't make sense of them then you say it's noise.

Music is a human phenomena. Birds produce sound. Rain produces sound. But they don't make music. However, if you listen to the sounds birds produce and it makes sense to you, then you're hearing music.

Unintended music is there all the time. Many sounds were not produced intended to be music, however someone might listen to them that way.

Others might be music to some people, including the producer, but might be noise to other people.

Then you might ask "what is making sense of a sound?".

I really don't know. That's a neurological thing I guess.
Recent theories use metaphor to explain that. We're picking up Wittgenstein old theories about sense and about all starts in language. the symbolic deciphering. the building of a reality through symbolic means.

Language and musica are not that different, altough music has not a semantics of its own.

Still, music, according to your cultural context and frame of references, can and will evoke things.

When you listen to some sound, through imagination and metaphor your brain will associate it with other stuff you know. It might be a memory, an object, a smell, a sight. And can produce pleasure, sensations...

So, music can indeed trigger events on you. And I guess that is what I understand for "making sense".

If you listen to sounds that can't trigger anything or they trigger defense mechanisms like pain, for instance, you'll consider that unwelcome, and so it is noise.

Noise in conversation is all that can't communicate a thing. Gibberish, static, etc. It's a content that has no referent, no symbol associated in your cultural context. For you "dfhdjsgfjdsh" is noise, because you can't associate anything to it.

In the same way, I believe, sounds that we can't associate (through imagination and metaphot) to anything, will just not communicate anything, make no sense, and thus will be considered noise.

Finally, there's a thin line between noise and silence. Because silence is virtually impossible, sound is allways present, so why do we say we're hearing silence?

At what point there is silence? I believe it's at the point when you hear sound, but you're not focused, and really you're not processing it.

I mean, to have either music or noise, you have to capture sound, use the imagination, reach a metaphor and reach a conclusion: makes sense, or doesn't make sense. When you have sound, but you don't process it, it means you don't even compare it and make that "test of sense" then you say it's silence.

Anyone agrees, disagrees on these theories?

[cryophonik]

Noise is the space after the music, but before the notes?

It's funny, I also remember having similar discussions in music theory classes, but that was many decades and many beers ago.

[risome]

In common use, the word noise means any unwanted sound. In both analog and digital electronics, noise is an unwanted perturbation to a wanted signal; it is called noise as a generalization of the audible noise heard when listening to a weak radio transmission. Signal noise is heard as acoustic noise if played through a loudspeaker; it manifests as 'snow' on a television or video image. Noise can block, distort, change or interfere with the meaning of a message in both human and electronic communication.(WIKI)
Calling some signal or sound noise is often a subjective distinction. One person's maximum-volume music listening pleasure might be another's unbearable noise.
Noise musician's tend to sketch out wanted noise or soothing noise contrasted with harsh noise, akin to the contrast between loud and soft music. Noise as a genre of music is now more acceptable as our subjection's towards noise unravel and we find similarity and harmony in noise as we do in music? Hmmm

[hibidy]

This is clear as most of the stuff out there IS just noise. Unfortunately, the perception is that it's music.

Unfortunate for whom and why?

I'm just curious, no flame bait.

Oh no!!!!!! I'm not going there again

Ok, part of it was just playin' around, but I was serious about perception. Someone else's music is anothers noise....and the other way around.

It just goes with maybe the second of the OP's questions

[pheeleep]

Noise is music.... But it sucks

A baby banging on piano keys is also making music... And it also sucks Just making that analogy because my 1 1/2 year old son insists on having his time at the keyboard. He gets jealous when he sees me using it... Lol.. So funny. He watches the meters and the visual audio analyzing tools while he plays, with a huge smile on his face. Anyway, I'm getting off topic..

[hibidy]

Noise is music.... But it sucks

A baby banging on piano keys is also making music... And it also sucks Just making that analogy because my 1 1/2 year old son insists on having his time at the keyboard. He gets jealous when he sees me using it... Lol.. So funny. He watches the meters and the visual audio analyzing tools while he plays, with a huge smile on his face. Anyway, I'm getting off topic..

I think maybe then it runs in the family

[blueman]

Birds gave us melody; the heartbeat gives us rhythm.

Music is the interpretation of sound (or, "noise") linked with sense perception. It derives its meaning from its context; from collective and personal experiences, cultural relevance and the repetitive patterns that the brain creates and enjoys.

You might say that all noise has the potential to be music if it is given a context which is meaningful to the listener.

[Silenceborn]

Harmony, Disharmony.. Order and Chaos, this is the duality laws of cosmos, and it can apply not only on music and sounds, but on many other subjects as well, like when you are making music out of chaos, or even making chaotic noise out of ordered music. this duality fight stops only in absolute substance level of every phenomena, but in this level of consciousness which is limited by the forces of time and space those two concepts(chaos and order OR any relative duality) are the most important laws of cosmos.

But Imho, Music is the language of unknowable, the language of indescribable, and one of the most important tools for men to communicate with the other side, or perhaps the dark side of everything.

Both music and noise are nothing but different manifestations of core elements of nature.

Cheers

EDIT : sorry for my bad English.