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

[Ogg Vorbis]

music is planned structured noise. Noise is Rap Music - Rap NOISE isn't music. Sorry kids but I ain't buyin' it. Maybe cause I'm old. Same as my parents when I played Jimi Hendrix records all day & night... they couldn't buy it either. It's a cycle.

You've just illustrated "Meffy's Theorum" (see prior posts)

[blatanville]

I started reading back at the beginning of this thread...

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.

I can live with this, too...

[TiUser]

noise is very complex music. ...

music is planned structured noise. ...

If we agree here that we had defined "noise" to be the opposite of "music" when this thread was started then these statements are quite confusing. For the sake of fun, relpace "music" with "no noise", then we get:

"noise is very complex no noise"

"no noise is planned structured noise"

To me the first makes no sense, the second very few, but probably one can explain?...

It's again just a proof how "flexible" people use language... and without any precision... so language still works... does it?

[vurt]

If we agree here that we had defined "noise" to be the opposite of "music"

did i miss a memo?
i wasnt aware any agreement such as this had been reached

[dcfac73]

My take is - music= sound made or manipulated in any way with the intention of being listened to.
noise= ditto without the sound being intended for an audience.

Pretty simplistic, but hey I'm not a huge thinker.

[Meffy]

If we agree here that we had defined "noise" to be the opposite of "music" when this thread was started

As vurt said, music and noise were not defined as opposites. Most of the posts in the thread support a view that they are overlapping categories and that it is the individual listener who decides which category a given sound belongs to.

[strangedogs]

Right! Music is in the ears of the Beholder. As well as noise. Music soothes the savage beast - noise irritates it.

[vurt]

Music soothes the savage beast - noise irritates it.

a babbling brook, heavy rainfall, birdsong. some soothing "noise" there, id say.

[ukm]

Neil Diamond made "beautiful noise" and at the european song festival it was only noise.

ukm

[TiUser]

If we agree here that we had defined "noise" to be the opposite of "music"

did i miss a memo?
i wasnt aware any agreement such as this had been reached

No you didn't miss a memo - and I said "If..." as otherwise I can't see any serious reason for this discussion, i.e. if you think music can be noise at the same time, so how can it be no noise at the same time - just referring to a simple logic...

But you can also find other opposites to noise - like the "useable signal" referring to information theory. However I think this was not the initial question asked here, wasn't it?


Second: I added a at the end, so...? Didn't you see I'm playing mind games here?

Third: some disagree with simple logic here and prefer "unsharp lingual logic", allowing the overlap of "music noise" or "noise music"... so it would be interesting if you see a difference between the last two composed terms...

Anyway, specifying one or the other with one or the other does not really solve the basic definition dilemma IMHO, I just think ideas get more and more weird...

Finally "beautiful noise" is always "noise", as any other type of noise you may specify... to get a contrast you need a different type like "horrible noise"... maybe you discover now that the word "noise" is somewhat unnecessary to what you try doing. You could also say "beautiful music" and "horrible music" and you still do not know more about what noise or music is...

Concerning Neil Diamond I think he didn't intend any definition of noise or beautiful noise = music, it's just a song title...

[jancivil]

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?

'Is music a way of hearing' is the best thing you ever said.

I first had this argument with my homie I was in with at conservatory once we got out west. He believed intention was the difference. I think it, music (v. noise) is a way of hearing, but I certainly didn't have those words. I refused the limits imposed by that, intention.

Beyohd my own perception though, I actually believe this planet is meant to sound, and to sound amazing. That the universe is cyclical, vibrating, is the big piece of music, that we perceive - and manipulate - this information, to taste, into smaller chunks. Existence is time. If you have sound, that is a coloration in space, of time. Since sound is perceived, it exists in time. There may or may not be a primary (teleological) idea behind that big piece of music, but to be vibrating it's of time.

IE: I used to smoke a joint and listen to San Francisco streets at night. I wss hearing it and remixing it 'in ear', filtering, reinforcements/cancellations. Active capacitance at work, listening. Sounded pretty good to me, some of it. Love to have a copy. To everybody around me I'm sure it was just noise.

And, music is an improbable miracle.

[xtp]

I class standing next to a concrete cutting saw as noise.

Because I have damage to certain frequencies of my hearing, if i turn up the volume of music [past a level I am comfortale with] by a musician I like then it also has the same effect on my system that the concrete saw does.

It becomes uncomfortable and becomes noise and loses all sensory value.

So I dont class noise as something that is intentional/unintentional, crafted/uncrafted, rather I class it as a condition I find physically uncomfortable.

In my case: Volume + frequency = noise

[vurt]

if I may quote vurt from a few years ago..

'music isn't what you hear, it's how you listen'

i did say that, and i still fully agree.

and therefore ergo and whatnot, if you intend to listen to "accidental music"(the sound of birds, wind through trees, local machinery...), you then become the composer, so intent is indeed the forebearer of musical goodness, in all its forms, from the dawn of time noise was there, and will be till the end of space and the universe itself, embrace it, and find your path within the wide scope of sound available to us in these times, but dont belittle people who work outside your choice.
there are no right sounds to use, there is only circumstance and situation.
damn i love painkillers, and noises!

[vurt]

I class standing next to a concrete cutting saw as noise.



In my case: Volume + frequency = noise

just wondering, but as this is from damage to your ears, if someone used said concrete cutting saw as a low level background sound would you be ok with it?
is it just the fact that being stood next to it makes it around the threshold of pain to most people without protective measures?

[Armored78]

not sure if anyone has said something to this effect yet or not, but:

i personally think of noise as a quality to the music, as opposed to being other than. i can include noise in music to attempt to achieve a specific reaction in the same way i make the tempo faster or slower. noise is a composition tool, just like chords or leads, though perhaps applied a little differently.

just MHO.