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

[ozmoz2008]

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.

Indeed that's an interesting definition.

[eduardo_b]

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?

I was actually using common sense as yet another example, but let's go with this. Listen to how people use the terms noise and noisy. It's invariably negative in meaning and connotation. If they like something that's not music to them, they use the term sound, as in "I love the sound of..." So I have to ask myself what that's about. Common sense says that noise is not music, so that means noise defines was music is...I think.

Even the use of the term noise in relation to music someone doesn't like is negative. About the only "neutral" use of the word is if someone says they heard a noise. I don't think noise is commonly, if ever, used as a positive term.

So where does that leave music? Is it anti-noise?

[vurt]

I don't think noise is commonly, if ever, used as a positive term.

x infinity.

[vurt]

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?

read this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Noise-Music-His ... 035&sr=8-1

twice.

just for you ed, from page 2
cheers sean

[eduardo_b]

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?

read this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Noise-Music-His ... 035&sr=8-1

twice.

just for you ed, from page 2
cheers sean

Missed that.

Does this mean yet another package this month from Amazon? Let's see what I can combine it with for free shipping.

[vurt]

i would suggest, some merzbow, some stockhausen and also the book/cd handmade electronic music by nicolas collins.
the ohm 3 cd set with dvd is worth grabbing too.

[eduardo_b]

i would suggest, some merzbow, some stockhausen and also the book/cd handmade electronic music by nicolas collins.
the ohm 3 cd set with dvd is worth grabbing too.

It's like having a personal shopper.

Sweet dreams vurt.

[TiUser]

For humans one generation is about 25 years.

*shrug* For us anthro mephits it's closer to a third of a century than a quarter. But the duration in years is irrelevant; it's the musical effect that is important.

Biologically the period is for sure less than 25 years - i.e. the minimum time option to have children. 25 years is a kind of average. Cultural reasons can of course lead to different timings but maybe 15-50 years is the range...

Maybe that's not relevant to the question - true, but just because it has been asked...

[TiUser]

... that music is organized sound and this should be apparent to the auditory system in some way or another. Cognitive researches show that listening to music leads to activation of many of the same brain centers as when participating in conversations, which explains why semantics are important and hence the popular connection between language and music...

Also I understand your idea the problem has just moved... so what is "organized" and what leads to the fact that this is "apparent" to any listeners? I can't see any static rule or law to finally get a useful definition...

Even cognitive research does not fully understand the brain. The brain can reorganize areas to an extend researchers ten years ago would have smiled at. And finally - which "organization state" of a brain is the standard for the definition then?

I think there is a lot in the dark here - and it remains there.

Many words in language have to be accepted vaguely defined. As long as enough people "understand" the core meaning this is fine and makes language so versatile - compared to math definitions... If you had to communicate this way I am pretty sure we all would be crazy within minutes...

It seems to be a fate of out time that everything shall be defined, specified, but imagine that if it would that way any of these wonderful human discussion - like this one - would be obsolete... and maybe man would be too...


What about another thread concerning "artificial intelligence"... It's great to discuss this as nobody even knows exactly what intelligence is at all... And when we conclude not knowing exactly about intelligence - how can we find out the ultimate about music??

[TiUser]

i would suggest, some merzbow, some stockhausen and also the book/cd handmade electronic music by nicolas collins.
the ohm 3 cd set with dvd is worth grabbing too.

This is an interesting method - "conditioning"... i.e. coming closer to what other people and musicians think music is... or think is music too... but how does this help? It's still relative AND it is putting meaning in temporal move!

As I said some pages before, the term music has no static meaning and new influences will change your understanding of it. So how can there be ever a final definition?

I suspect there is no other way than everyone has to decide in every moment by himself if some acoustic event - including "silence" - is music and also accepting that you can't really repeat this decision with 100% the same result as before...

So you can not really say if the same thing is music for someone else - not in the same moment and not anytime later... so how can we absolutely?

But if we are about the drawers like "classical music", "modern music",... it's the same strange situation as to talk about "artificial intelligence" without really knowing what "intelligence" is.

But what surprises me finally is that many things we deal with we treat exactly this way... we can talk about things we do not really know what they are and still this works!

[Musicologo]

Someone else used to say that we don't know what Everest is, since it's still growing, it's always changing (snow, frost, more rock, less rock), we can't know its boundaries, etc. Howvever we do know man were already on top of it, we do know the kind of animals and plants that live on it. So I guess, we don't really have to know everything about a thing to know plenty of that thing and to know that when we talk about it, more or less, we are all thinking about the same thing.

[Km7]

I totally agree with Musicologo: Music is sound that makes sense to you. Actually, we tend to think in a very similar fashion, though this could seem somewhat clouded by the way I put my post. I tended to put it as him before. Then I decided to switch to music is organized sound, but it's the listener in the end who perceives / decides if the sound is organized, depending on their listening, cultural background, familiarity with / exposure to the 'language', etc. - things that Musicologo pointed out. And if it makes sense to the listener, then I would say they perceive it as organized in some way. Here, although I make reference to the prevailing system of organization and some cognitive facts, I don't state an exact law or laws for organizing sound in music, for I don't think there is a single, objectively right way to do it - look at the other cultures and musics. The only law is to make sense to the listener. However, I do think there are some universal truths in music, so to speak. For example, I recall a research that showed that even people / cultures that haven't been exposed to the major-minor system tend to report minor as sad, gloomier, and major as more cheerful.

Perhaps, it is good to say that art and music are not correct or incorrect, they simply are. Similarly, when you feel sad or happy, it isn't correct or incorrect, it simply is.

[vurt]

The only law is to make sense to the listener.

no it isnt.
do what thou will, thats pretty much the whole of the law.

what if my intention is to confound a listener? or even just to surprise a listener?

what about active listening versus passive listening? where does making sense to anybody come in there?

[robogone]

I don't understand why there are all these 'laws' and 'rules' being applied to music.

Who cares about what it is or isn't. Just listen to it. Or not.

[Meffy]

Challenge: Fifteen Snip-n-Save MeffyBux(tm) for anyone who can make a "word ladder" turning MUSIC to NOISE by changing one letter at a time, each step leading to a valid English word. This will give us an invaluable* metric for determining the exact difference between the two.

[example from Genesis' "Supper's Ready": Mum to Mud to Mad to Dad.
___________________________
* Note: Meffy isn't very smart and thinks this word means "worthless."