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

[dremits]

You guys should check out John Cage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage

[pgvpgv333]

I have read all the treads on this subject here. What I like to say is that: It has nothing to do with beaty.
I listen to Stockhausen sometimes and somebody asks me do you like that?. No I dont like it but I think it is intresting music to listen to.
Also somebody said that we are accepting more and more dissonance in music. That is true. And it is the same in all other artforms.
How do we define beaty?

[Meffy]

The Rolling Stones defined beaty, or at least provided the canonical example.

(Sorry, couldn't resist -- it's a difficult word, spelt "beauty.")

I agree with the point about Stockhausen and such. I wouldn't say I enjoyed or liked listening to Berg's opera "Lulu" a couple weekends ago, but it was interesting and ear-opening.

[cryophonik]

There sure is a lot of noise in this thread, or maybe it's actually music?

[whyterabbyt]

You guys should check out John Cage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage

I think you'll find a good number of us in this particular thread have.

[Meffy]

Those familiar with Cage would seem to be natural participants in a thread like this.

[Km7]

Yes, we know Cage quite well. Schoenberg himself said he isn't a composer. I don't completely agree, though, for Cage, as you know, composed some influencial stuff that could very well be considered musical even by the most conservative people. Besides, I like the guy. But he also made some stuff I personally don't consider musical at all.

[Ogg Vorbis]

You guys should check out John Cage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage

I think you'll find a good number of us in this particular thread have.

Cage actually got me thinking that it is the AUDIENCE MEMBER, rather than the composer or performer which determines whether something is music or not. I am starting to wonder if the audience member is the one who actually composes the music (or at least re-composes it).

[Meffy]

You can tell Schoenberg that Ferrell said he isn't the authority on who is and isn't a composer. :-}

Well, you can't really. But if you could, you could and I wouldn't mind. Anyway, not all music is musical. Not all noise is noisy. Natural languages aren't rigid / precise enough for that to work (and artificial ones tend to be unpopular).

Here's another try: Music is noise that has an agent and/or a manager. No more true than my previous goes, no less so either I suppose.

[Km7]

Cage actually got me thinking that it is the AUDIENCE MEMBER, rather than the composer or performer which determines whether something is music or not. I am starting to wonder if the audience member is the one who actually composes the music (or at least re-composes it).

The only thing I could do is to send you my congrats for this post. It is really the audience in the end, as I see it, so let's just let it to decide. As for the second sentence: I sometimes say that the moment a piece is heard by other listeners after the composer himself, we have composers; we have more than one composer of this piece. To some people it sounds insane, though. I am pleasantly surprised to see that someone thinks in a similar way. I came to this thought after thinking about highly abstract art a few years ago.

[dremits]

You guys should check out John Cage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cage

I think you'll find a good number of us in this particular thread have.

Forgive my ignorance. As a music student who is only just exploring new areas of music it's easy to forget that so many others have already encountered figures such as Cage and Schoenberg.

[Km7]

Then is a classical work when it comes to spectral music, which I personally love and find very beautiful and enjoyable - you might like it, too. Grisey is great, lots of respect for him.

[vurt]

vurt, do you mean that you prefer something like this: "Sounds that are intentionally arranged/produced by human beings are music."?

yes!

If you are using tools (like hammer, soldering iron, etc.) to make something and you're making sound / noise by doing your job, we could hardly say that your intention is the sound, so is it music? But if your intention is to produce this specific sound and record it, then is it music?

again yes, although it would depend on the intent, ie i could be recording those sounds for foley work, then it would not be "music", if i take those sounds and arrange them in time, with or without discernible rhythm, then it is if i wish to call it so "music".

personally, i dont call myself a "musician", not because i feel that what i do isnt allowed to be music, more that i find the term "musician" to be somewhat smaller than what i do.

And I intentionally said 'by human beings' - what about birds, then? They can sound pretty organized, pretty rhythmic, etc. Is this music?

theres an inequality to this equation, you either need to specify which genus of bird we are discussing or open it up to all mammals.

as for the question as it stands, birdsong while sounding musical to our ears is not music at all. if we take one species of bird, the song is often similar, and while often rhythmic is very rarely melodic, its only when our ears combine the songs of several species that we approach anything we would consider "musical" in the western harmonic sense.

then, what if i suggest we use crows as our "bird" exemplar? id imagine few who for example enjoy pop music would be able to find that musical

as for what birdsong actually is, if not music then what?
its just shouting, usually "i want sex" or "get out of my 'hood", so i were to try to equate it with some human endevour of musicality, i would suggest gangsta rap and rap battles have more in common than anything else

[Musicologo]

I have been following this thread all along, reading everything and I just feel disappointed because I wrote all that stuff on page 1, and we haven't got out of that yet. All these 8 pages talk about some features of it, of parts of it, but we're still on the same wavelenght and haven't evolved anything really.

Sometimes I wonder "Why do I bother?", noone really reads what I write, and six pages later they write the same stuff as if it is something really new...

Ogg Vorbis, about the audience, a composer and a performer IS audience of himself. The problem there is a matter of agreement and diversity. Does it really matter if you have 1, 15 ou 15 000 people listening to the same sounds?

In the end it will be the same: music for those who can make sense of those sounds, noise for those who can't.

We all listen different. And that just reinforces the idea of each one of us being a composer, because we all interpret the world through our senses and our cultural frame. My interpretation of a tune, will never be the same as yours. The same for other stuff. Colors for instance. Is my blue, your blue? Or is mine darker?...

It's all inside of us.

[ozmoz2008]

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.

In fact I would say that they are the same. It's only some qualities of certain noises that becomes music for some purist. In fact music is noise to some people and pure genius to others.

Music is a modeling of reality by humans, but at the end it's all noise from a larger perspective.

Defining the boundaries will limit our imagination and musical possibilities, I think.

BTW...for me, birds do make music to my ears.