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

[vurt]

my mate, zen dave, says "if you need to ask what the difference is, are you even sure there is a difference?"
c**t never gives us a straight answer.

[blueman]

Who knows, maybe people will get bored of 12-tone et and move on to new frontiers...

I'm ready for that

[Michael Benjamin]

if you want to separate both the words noise and music by a definition, then i would do it like this:

noise has full entropy, and doesnt really exist, just in a possibly isolated view.
music has a varying degree of entropy, but not totally, and not zero, instead it contains a certain amount of complex organisation, so it is universal as it also reflects the universe.

[Ogg Vorbis]

if you want to separate both the words noise and music by a definition, then i would do it like this:

noise has full entropy, and doesnt really exist, just in a possibly isolated view.
music has a varying degree of entropy, but not totally, and not zero, instead it contains a certain amount of complex organisation, so it is universal as it also reflects the universe.

So if sound is highly organized, even if it's not intended to have organization, then it is still music. But if something is intentional, but has a higher level of entropy, then it is less musical?

[Michael Benjamin]

you could probably say so. but how do you determine if its intended or not? i see no possibility for an experiment to determine if something is intended or not.
the other thing - if a conscious being randomly draws sample points for a while, the result will approach noise the more random samples are drawn. certainly less musical. but for perfect entropy the noise would have to be white over an infinite amount of frequencies and over an infinite amount of time, which might be impossible for any being to do.

[vespers75]

At what point there is silence?

[eduardo_b]

It seems every time this topic comes up, the discussion eventually becomes noise itself. There's no reason that multiple explanations of the difference between music and noise can't co-exist. They don't matter anyway, because outside of these discussions noise is anything not considered music by the person being asked. Same definition as art.

[Real Grooves Audio]

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?

I think it boils down to the ear of the beholder. Case in point: I hate the Grateful Dead (and a slew of other jam bands that followed their example). They noise they make sounds like dying southern chickens to me... yet I do recognize that on some level they've got talent.

Oh well, dif'rent strokes...

[vurt]

noise is anything not considered music by the person being asked.

what about music that people consider to be noise?

[thecontrolcentre]

[eduardo_b]

noise is anything not considered music by the person being asked.

what about music that people consider to be noise?

That's my point. When they don't like it, it's noise. My wife loves music, but when she hears something she really doesn't like, she says it's noise. And to her, it really is.

[thecontrolcentre]

when she hears something she really doesn't like, she says it's noise.

[wrench45us]

it's a little like weeds and the plants one pays money for at the nursery

we have plenty of 'plants', some plants are weeds we like and let grow and soem are weeds we dig up and kill and some plants we keep an eye on and cultivate

the history of music is prety much the history of lettimg more and more 'dissonant elements' into the mainstream

[dodokvr]

It's a two way thing - Between the composer and the listener.
In the end, they both smell of fish.

[yellowfever]

Music is arranged to flow in a manner pleasing for the listener. Noise is.......{insert current disliked genre}