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

[vurt]

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

spend a day listening to nothing but crows and gulls and tell me that

[vurt]

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...

sorry, i only came in on page 2 or 3, so i missed your insight
plus, i went and checked your post, you never mentioned the birdsong/rap connection, so you at least missed some bits i got to

[ckatrun411]

perception..... one persons music, is another's noise.. organization... music is an ability to place tones at certain points in space time... emotion....

[Ogg Vorbis]

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.

Sorry that you feel your post was glossed over. I hate that. I will go back and check it out!

[ozmoz2008]

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

spend a day listening to nothing but crows and gulls and tell me that

Even then it is compare to so many "artist" music.

BTW Crows are quite facinating animals.

[nix808]

I think crows can count, I have bring this up in philosophical conversations, but no-one believes me. I guess it's probably bollox.
I haven't read the whole thread, but yes intention certainly defines music. Also order, of rythm(sorry, spelling) and melody.

[Ogg Vorbis]

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?

Hey Musicologo, your post is quoted here in full for the benefit of those of us now joining this thread already in progress...

You are taking an approach that I like to think about a lot. When you say, "music is sounds that make internal sense and triggers internal associations" (sorry if I mis-paraphrased) I think that this is a key ingredient to music that one doesn't hear about often.

Music is just sound vibrations in the air. They cannot contain information or have "emotion or meaning encoded in it." I think of it like MIDI data. MIDI contains no sound information, it's just triggers. It says, "I am sending a signal to trigger something inside of this other device which will ultimately make a sound."

Music says something similar, "I am a signal(auditory event) which may or may not trigger something that is already 'pre-installed' in an audience member. They may have an associative experience with this signal and call it 'meaningful,' or they may not have a templated association and call it 'noise.'

Film music is an obvious example of this. In Star Wars or Star Trek or other space action films, you always hear french horns playing open fifths or like a hunting or battle call. This is a film music template for "heroic" themes or "the good" or "nobility in thought or intention."

People have this association "previously installed" because it's something of a cultural template in western society. This is convenient for film composers because they do not have to write the rules for each new project...you just sort of play around with the pre-existing templates that everyone has and you'll be able to trigger associations within an audience member.

I used to HATE John Williams because he used so many of these cultural templates in his scores. But now I've come to realize that he's really doing his job quite well.

Of course film music is a very obvious example of this kind of thing, but I wanted to try to illustrate how things might work in the purely musical sense.

Over abundance of originality has no experiential or associative template with which to bind in its audience member, so it will sound like random noise.

Here's an interesting "what if..." for your next barbecue... What would a Wagnerian music drama sound like to Guillaume de Machaut? Without the necessary cultural templates to associate the themes, harmonies, sounds and so on, Machaut would likely say it was complete discord...noise...merde!

Anyway, Musicologo, I've probably taken what you said and went off on a totally different direction than what you meant. Or is some of that what you had in mind?

[eduardo_b]

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.

This assumption of emotional responses to music because music stimulates and triggers many associations has merit, but I don't see it being the only reason for the emotional connections to music and emotional responses to noise. One of the unique aspects of the human brain compared to others is the ability for abstraction, which to me doesn't require any association per se to function. To me, the question might be, if abstraction works for music, does it also work for noise. If music is positive, then is noise negative. In language, the common uses of the terms music and noise are different because the brain perceives them as different, with music far more positive and welcome than noise.

For me, this attempt to define noise and define music is like trying to define common sense. We know the meanings of these terms, but putting it into words doesn't really explain them. Even if we don't like all kinds of music, we still respond to the term music positively and to the term noise negatively. Defining precisely what makes one the opposite of the other perhaps is easier as a personal response than as a mental exercise.

[mcnoone]

Music is noise. I have proof too.
I put a "noise gate" on my master track, then I turned it to it's most extreme setting.
All my music was gone. Couldn't hear a damn thing.
Maybe they should just call it a music gate instead, but they don't.
Therefore as far as the computer is concerned, it's all noise.

[Musicologo]

Oh! THANK YOU! Feel much better now!

Yes, I was going there Ogg you understood quite well my point. So, following your thoughts:

Here's an interesting "what if..." for your next barbecue... What would a Wagnerian music drama sound like to Guillaume de Machaut? Without the necessary cultural templates to associate the themes, harmonies, sounds and so on, Machaut would likely say it was complete discord...noise...merde!

That mental experience is already solved by past experience. Take Debussy premiéres, or the "Rite of Spring" by Stravinsky premiere as examples. They were OUTrageous! People shouting, people claiming their money back, people feeling insulted by what they were listening. Just read chronicles of the time.

People didn't have yet any references any "mental frame work" to deal with those new sonorities and dissonances. The sound "made no sense", so Debussy/Stravinsky music was pure noise to them. (or at least something very unpleasent).

However, just a few years later all that changed. When it was no longer a surprise, after some more auditions, people started to assimilate those sonorities. And we all know what happened then: praise the lord, we have genius!...

So, we are reaching a question: is there a point when noise becomes music? When the same person, in a given culture, starts building references to some kind of sounds and begins to make sense of them?

Can we say, that if it is that easy, as we grow older and we listen to more and more and more, we become more tolerant? Will be there a point where no noise is left? When all is music, because we have reference for everything?


Eduardob,

I don't get your point of abstraction. You are saying it is possible to NOT associate a sound with anything at all, and still it is heard as music?
I don't believe that can happen. For the first time you hear a sound you'll make an instant association. Or you get it or you don't. And depending on that result you'll have a response to that. That's electric impulses working in there... it's like switches...

The maximum I can concede is what I'm discussing above... what if you don't have a previous association? It is instant noise, or you can build one association in the moment? A good one? For the future, and then when you hear it again, it will sound as music because you've built a good association?

I think film music does it all the time also, because you're seeing images as you hear sounds. So associations are very easy to build, in many many ways.

At this point I keep telling to myself: METAPHOR is the key to understand music as a phenomena.

[eduardo_b]

I don't get your point of abstraction. You are saying it is possible to NOT associate a sound with anything at all, and still it is heard as music?
I don't believe that can happen. For the first time you hear a sound you'll make an instant association. Or you get it or you don't. And depending on that result you'll have a response to that. That's electric impulses working in there... it's like switches...

The maximum I can concede is what I'm discussing above... what if you don't have a previous association? It is instant noise, or you can build one association in the moment? A good one? For the future, and then when you hear it again, it will sound as music because you've built a good association?

I think film music does it all the time also, because you're seeing images as you hear sounds. So associations are very easy to build, in many many ways.

At this point I keep telling to myself: METAPHOR is the key to understand music as a phenomena.

Hmm. If you remove lyrics and have only melody, what about it isn't abstract? Yes, there are cultural cues that we recognize in terms of Western music in contrast to music from other cultures, but music is highly abstract and can exist unattached to anything but its own sound. And be enjoyed for only the emotional response we have to this abstraction.

Now, these musical abstractions can have familiarity because of aspects common to other music of its particular type, but that doesn't mean one has an association with that particular composition. We can pick something like drones, which are found in a number of cultures and vary in their tonal qualities. How are drones associated with anything? They are abstract in the purest sense of the term, only having octaves and notes/chords in common with other kinds of music.

In fact, I could make a better case for association with noise. Squealing brakes, banging garbage cans, knocking on a door, ringing phone, the sound of dinnerware being used and so on. These could have all kinds of associations, but are noise, not music, for most people.

As for metaphor, where is it? In nature, in sounds of a city? I don't see metaphor in melody, but I certainly could in lyrics.

[ozmoz2008]

If music is positive, then is noise negative. In language, the common uses of the terms music and noise are different because the brain perceives them as different, with music far more positive and welcome than noise.

Yes but the definition itself is open to judgement. Today with all the music around us, would it be more appropriate to say that music isn't necessarely "positive" and what we call noise by "common sense" necessarely negative?

The terms itself is more a definition of "quality" than a true representation of the reality. IMO

It's not a matter of if you like something or not, but if you find that particular "noise"(even if that noise is music) annoying or not.

Also just to put things even more in perspective, noise(by the a priori definition) can also gives shivers,emotions and so forth.

Interesting thread BTW...

[Bobbotov]

To me noise is anything that is extraneous to what is intended or expected. It really has nothing to do with timbre, cacophony or dissonance. The musicality of anything is completely dependent on what the creator intends and what the listener expects. C is a perfectly good note. So is C#. But put them together and you have what some would consider to be noise. Others would say that a siren playing in the middle of a symphonic piece would be noise but Edgar Varese didn't think so when he wrote Ionisation:

I worked in telecommunications for many years and it was all about signal to noise ratios. Once the criteria for what a signal is then anything that does not conform to that is noise. That definition works for me in music as well.

The other aspect of noise is tolerance. How much noise can any of us tolerate? I suspect that living in a modern city one is bombarded with noise that would make a person used to a pastoral environment cringe. And noise tolerance is also related to how sophisticated a person is with sound in general. It is similar to people's attraction or revulsion to abstract art.

In short, noise is anything that doesn't fit the context in which it appears. It has nothing to do with its sonic characteristics, which may, in another context be perfectly valid.

[vurt]

right, im on the way to bed, and my leccy is off later, so i will just say

"some of you seemingly have both a limited world view and a shocking lack of historical data, i would suggest further research."

good night.

[vurt]

In short, noise is anything that doesn't fit the context in which it appears. It has nothing to do with its sonic characteristics, which may, in another context be perfectly valid.

what he said