KVR Audio

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 7:22 pm

"What is the difference between music and noise?"

Meaning.

Music has or is capable of symbolic meaning, whereas noise can at best be a sign.

This is an extremely problematic definition, filled with all kinds of caveats and redefinitions and exceptions. And I'm sticking with it.

hibidy · Post by **hibidy** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 8:23 pm

I don't know what "genre" it is but seems to me I've heard all kinds of stuff both here on kvr and other forums with people that have made cool music out of "noise"

Not sure if that's on topic

Aleatoriac · Post by **Aleatoriac** » Sat Oct 04, 2014 8:43 pm

Slappyfight!
Music / noise no difference it's all in our heads. Now I'm a quantum physicist too. War out!

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 8:21 am

herodotus wrote:"What is the difference between music and noise?"

Meaning.

Music has or is capable of symbolic meaning, whereas noise can at best be a sign.

This is an extremely problematic definition, filled with all kinds of caveats and redefinitions and exceptions. And I'm sticking with it.

Did you read the post where I defined this according to well a established mathematical truth? Not problematic at all.

Except that most people will never understand this...

However, the fact people may be incapable of understanding an abstract mathematical truth does not affect its truth.

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 12:05 pm

aciddose wrote:
Did you read the post where I defined this according to well a established mathematical truth? Not problematic at all.

Sadly I missed this revelation. As we are at 40 pages and climbing at this point, could you quote it?

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 12:32 pm

noise is beautiful, like an embryo of sound, endless possibilities. full of the universe, every moment offering something amazing. vibrations of molecules interacting with one another providing a soundtrack to everything in time and existence.

music is well a little bit meh!

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 1:07 pm

vurt wrote:noise is beautiful, like an embryo of sound, endless possibilities. full of the universe, every moment offering something amazing. vibrations of molecules interacting with one another providing a soundtrack to everything in time and existence.

Poetic.

music is well a little bit meh!

Well that's cynical.

Music is just people interacting with sound.

Don't you like people?

Sendy · Post by **Sendy** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 1:47 pm

All this talk of beautiful noise makes me want to watch Eraserhead.

vurt · Post by **vurt** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 2:14 pm

herodotus wrote:
Don't you like people?

theyre ok from a distance

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 8:42 pm

vurt wrote:
herodotus wrote:
Don't you like people?

theyre ok from a distance

Other people are totally overrated.

herodotus · Post by **herodotus** » Sun Oct 05, 2014 9:08 pm

ghettosynth wrote:
vurt wrote:
herodotus wrote:
Don't you like people?

theyre ok from a distance
Other people are totally overrated.

aciddose · Post by **aciddose** » Mon Oct 06, 2014 9:38 am

herodotus wrote:
aciddose wrote:
Did you read the post where I defined this according to well a established mathematical truth? Not problematic at all.
Sadly I missed this revelation. As we are at 40 pages and climbing at this point, could you quote it?

It's only a few pages back.

In any case it's a definition of music as data you can decode and noise as data you can not decode.

It can also be put as "data you're looking for, data you're not looking for".

"Music to my ears, not music to my ears."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%2 ... _theory%29

I also demonstrated that you can take the very same data representing "music" in the form of PCM and apply a compression to this such as that used by 7zip. The result is transformed into what is indistinguishable from white noise given that the "listener" lacks the tools required for statistical analysis of the high-entropy signal. The data contained within however remains identical and definitely "music".

Conversation then turned to whether or not birdsong is music. We've been able to find that it is indeed music. Again, for many of us "data we weren't looking for". Not only data but in fact there seems to be enough understanding of birdsong (wide-spread and well established for 100s of years) to definitively define some of it as music equal to human composition. To question this is possible of course (was the music intended to convey emotion? which emotion? are birds capable of this?) but to call into question whether we define birdsong as music also would bring into question whether we define human compositions as music.

Of course this doesn't give us any information about the meaning of symbols encoded in the signal or what they may represent. That is in the subjective/interpretive domain. We can however make statements about whether symbols are present or not and how many of them are present (entropy / data density) definitively.

My suspicion is that for the most part the entropy of human music is very, very low. PCM is an extremely inefficient encoding. This opens up lots of discussion regarding complex timbre,, higher order modulations and so on. Given that we take only the most basic representation of a melody however the ratio is extremely large between notation vs. PCM.

PurpleCatfishBettie · Post by **PurpleCatfishBettie** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 7:27 am

'music' is what a person 'likes'. 'noise' is what they 'don't like'.

The_Hidden_Goose · Post by **The_Hidden_Goose** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:14 am

I like both in the right context.

Noise can be music to me in the sense that my mind can make stories/images/context out of white noise at the right time - even though it can't be "decoded" as such, it can have an effect that works much the same.

In the same way that one can sometimes make static or sometimes moving images out of white noise, simply because of how the information gets from the world into your brain and the potential for unexepected interpreatations and mutations fo that information on the way.

I tend to find it happens more easily when in a hypnagogic state, when the brain is partway through winding down but still taking in external information.

gassle · Post by **gassle** » Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:55 am

Easy... Noise is a type of sound. Music is an art form based on sound. So they are very different.

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