New study: Musical talent linked to "Open" personality

[harryupbabble]

So, Mozart's entire music catalogue could also be chaos-based. The music itself doesn't have to be chaos-based, just the ordering of the snippets.

[nineofkings]

Ordered music can be by chaos-based as demonstrated by Mozart's dice game.

And if you have enough monkeys with typewriters, they'll eventually write Hamlet. But Shakespeare was not a group of monkeys.

[jancivil]

I guess by "dice generated" I mean the sequences, as in the dice game's sequences generated by the dice.

And the goalpost shifts again. That music is prefabricated, in order to fit the formal expectations and the content expectations, which are both severe here. The music is generated through musical terms and Mozart's actual_musical_thought. The supposed randomness, reordering sequences does not change that they are sequences made to fit in the least.

[harryupbabble]

You guys are misunderstanding everything. The dice doesn't make the music it just provides randomized sequence combinations for the existing music to be arranged.

[harryupbabble]

And this dice game of Mozart just got me to wondering whether Mozart used dice for the ordering of his bar to bar music, just like the music in that dice game... reordered. Where bar 1 used to be dice says move that to bar 12, for example.

[jancivil]

So, Mozart's entire music catalogue could also be chaos-based. The music itself doesn't have to be chaos-based, just the ordering of the snippets.

Are you just dense, then? You contradicted yourself at once. The entire oeuvre could be 'chaos-based' but it's not the music itself, just the ordering of the snippets. You're really jumping around wildly just to be right about this concept (which was never demonstrated). The music itself is based in things like melody and harmony and formal considerations, and is completely ordered. It can't be ordered and chaos-based. That's nonsense.

[jancivil]

And this dice game of Mozart just got me to wondering whether Mozart used dice for the ordering of his bar to bar music, just like the music in that dice game... reordered. Where bar 1 used to be dice says move that to bar 12, for example.

Now you have to be yanking our chain, or you're an idiot. There is no 'music in that dice game', that's just a lot of speculation. If you had the least idea of what the musical sentences are, and the form that's being fulfilled, you would realize that 'move bar 1 to bar 12' is total nonsense. But you have no interest at all in that, in reality, you're interested in talking about nonsense. That's it, I'm out. This is totally stupid now.

[harryupbabble]

Jan, check a few pages back, Page 6, to be specific... I have been saying this all along:

and he believed, above all, in his mastery and craftsmanship. With that game, he simply showed that. That's how that "game" should be read and seen, IMO.

I'm not disagreeing that Mozart knew the mathematical? "language" of music or his craft. He was a better than decent keyboard player? I'm just saying it's possible that when Mozart was alone... nobody really knew how he was creating his music. His sister said that Wolfgang was heavily into math as a boy and as an adult. It was said that he was even calculating the odds of winning lotteries. Anyways, the modules in that dice game are made of 272 music snippets that Mozart HIMSELF created but consider this... what's the chance that in a 16 bar minuet (using ONLY 16 of the 272 snippets) that Mozart would come up with this ONE example of randomized combination:

Bar 01 = Snippet 04
Bar 02 = Snippet 08
Bar 03 = Snippet 11
Bar 04 = Snippet 03
Bar 05 = Snippet 16
Bar 06 = Snippet 13
Bar 07 = Snippet 15
Bar 08 = Snippet 07
Bar 09 = Snippet 14
Bar 10 = Snippet 09
Bar 11 = Snippet 02
Bar 12 = Snippet 10
Bar 13 = Snippet 05
Bar 14 = Snippet 01
Bar 15 = Snippet 12
Bar 16 = Snippet 06

As stated before, the permutation possibilities for a 7 bar, 7 snippet minuet is about 14 million. You can see that Mozart couldn't possibly audition all the 14 million possibilities in a lifetime average of 40 years? But with the dice method he can at least end up with something he might never have run into.

It's like if you give someone a tool... let's say a hammer, that person might not just use it for pounding nails. They could use it as a paper weight, as a murder weapon, as a counterweight in an equilibrium device, etc. It's possible that Mozart, brilliant as he is at his craft already, used the dice method beyond what he presented in public. And not just on minuets. But, I admit, it's just all speculation. On the other hand, no one can look or listen to a Mozart piece and say "I know for sure he didn't use chaos to compose that". Or can they?

[fmr]

And this dice game of Mozart just got me to wondering whether Mozart used dice for the ordering of his bar to bar music, just like the music in that dice game... reordered. Where bar 1 used to be dice says move that to bar 12, for example.

Harry, take a minute out from your stubbornness and THINK. Do you know how many bars are in a symphony? Or in an opera? One thing is creating a diversion to demonstrate his craftmanship, where he twisted chaos and luck, and actually created something where you can't be wrong, no matter what you try. It isn't a superb piece of music, nor did he want to achieve that. He just wanted to demonstrate that he was capable of create something that defy the randomness, and imposes order even where APPARENTLY there is no order. But it was a 16 bar minuet.

Another thing would be to try that with an entire symphony. The formal building, the scheme that has to be followed in the sonata form, the part division, the motif development, etc., is not compatible with something built out of "snippets". You have to understand what a symphony (or a sonata, for that matter, even a simple one like the C Major Sonata I mentioned) is, before even consider an absurd hypothesis like you did. Now, I think it's time to move on, and put this crazy idea to rest.

[jopy]

Moving off the Mozart chaos topic for just a second, I think there's some confusion about what any study involving experiential openness as a personality trait is talking about. Essentially, the news report is seriously misdescribing what research is all about on this topic. It's also not at all surprising as a finding, since the self-report openness surveys just ask things like "do you enjoy exploring new ideas," and "I value poetry, music, and art." Is it really surprising that people who say they're into being creative are more creative? I think not.

More on point and related to research:

1) Openness to experience has nothing to do with being "open to all possibilities," and that they don't have strong opinions. Robert McCrae, one of the founding researchers on openness pointed out quite specifically that people high on this trait are often extremely opinionated because they are more interested in abstract ideas and think that these ideas are very consequential. The label for the construct comes from Milton Rokeach, who posited that an "open" thinker is one who is capable of considering relationships among concepts in the mind more flexibly than people who are more "closed." Being able to see how many things relate in flexible ways is the core of creating through combining things that were never seen before, in integrating novel ideas. It is totally unlike accepting every point of view as equally valid. It might be better to contrast "flexible" with "rigid," rather than our usual sense of open-mindedness.

2) As Jan noted, openness in one domain doesn't imply lack of openness in another. There is a general tendency for people who are open to trying out different types of food to be interested in integrating different musical ideas and to be interested in art, but that doesn't mean the environment doesn't elicit openness differently and manifest itself differently for different people. Tests of openness have subdimensions like imagination, emotionality, willingness to experiment, curiosity, and tolerance for diversity. People can be high on one and low on others. In general they tend to hang together in a large scale population, but that can't tell you for certain about any one specific person.

3) Openness is a continuum, with most people falling somewhere in the middle. No one is 100% open or 100% closed in their cognition, the average person is half-open, half-closed. There is no dichotomy implied; only the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator deals in absolutes (and Sith lords, they also deal in absolutes). A good test of openness just puts you somewhere on the range.

4) Also to one of Jan's points, although there is a genetic component to openness (about 40% of the variance is genetic in recent meta-analyses), that doesn't mean that openness can't be cultivated through practice and environmental influences. A creative child can be stifled somewhat by a restrictive environment, and a non-creative child can practice thinking in a more open and flexible manner. We can also set up habits to either bring out that flexibility, or to stifle it as adults as well. Just because there's a piece for genetics doesn't mean we can't change the expression of our traits.

5) No personality test can give you results that differ from what you tell it. There's no magic eight ball going on in these tests, and the more that the tests try to "trick" the user, the less effective they usually are at predicting behavior. All the tests are useful for is telling someone else, quickly, how you fit relative to other people on a trait continuum. If you don't know something about yourself, or you're trying to cover something up about yourself, the test can't know.

[harryupbabble]

Harry, take a minute out from your stubbornness and THINK. Do you know how many bars are in a symphony? Or in an opera? One thing is creating a diversion to demonstrate his craftmanship, where he twisted chaos and luck, and actually created something where you can't be wrong, no matter what you try. It isn't a superb piece of music, nor did he want to achieve that. He just wanted to demonstrate that he was capable of create something that defy the randomness, and imposes order even where APPARENTLY there is no order. But it was a 16 bar minuet.

Another thing would be to try that with an entire symphony. The formal building, the scheme that has to be followed in the sonata form, the part division, the motif development, etc., is not compatible with something built out of "snippets". You have to understand what a symphony (or a sonata, for that matter, even a simple one like the C Major Sonata I mentioned) is, before even consider an absurd hypothesis like you did. Now, I think it's time to move on, and put this crazy idea to rest.

Okay Fernando. You want the discussion to stop. Fine. You and Jan can stop. But obviously I'm not quite done. I want to reply to you because looking at your posts, especially your last post, you made it seem like you said, and I paraphrase "no, there's no way Mozart could have used chaos in his music, I am 100 percent sure of that, you are DEFINITELY wrong Harry". Maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'm right. I still don't know.

Anyways, the size of the music should not matter because one who makes huge "anythings" is one that is "laborious". Why would dicerolling, no matter if the music is a symphony, be beyond laborious or more laborious than learning the piano? If learning the piano was childplay to Mozart then why can't dicerolling be childplay too?

Anything can be broken down to subdivisions. And near the smallest subdivision is where Mozart "could have" as opposed to "definitely have" used chaos. In a DAW that has randomize functions, do people randomize the entire song at once or do they randomize little pieces of the song?

Dice is a chaos tool. Mozart was aware of it? Why can't chaos be seen as just another tool in any composer's or musician's bag, no matter what time era they are from?

I know some people think it's blasphemous to compare Mozart to any musician or composer other than the known great ones of his era but hey if you ever visit KVR's own Music Cafe can you tell which musicians or composers have used chaos to make their music? If the answer is no then you don't know that Mozart could have used chaos on his music as well.

For all you know, your favourite musician could have used chaos on their music. I for one, until just recently, did not know that my number one favourite songwriter, David Bowie, was doing just that.

You can call me stubborn for thinking that Mozart "could have" done this too but hey until someone has absolute proof that Mozart didn't use chaos to make his music then I'm open to the idea that he did, and just as open to the idea that he did not.

Saying "just listen, and really listen to Mozart's music" is not absolute proof. But that is just my opinion.

[Jace-BeOS]

Vai credited for 'impossible guitar parts and stunt guitar'.

Fun and interesting.

My perspective is certainly limited on all this, by being neither a formal composer or instrumentalist, and having little interest (currently) in very formal style(s). I get kind of bored with noodly guitar (I appreciate good playing, but it's not my focus). It's easy for me to probably incorrectly slap one label onto a wide group of techniques, therefore. (I'm sure someone will be displeased with my reference to "noodly guitar" for example, but that's the extent of my awareness of labeling options)

Classical music is stuff that, while I grew up with it and was inspired by it initially, it doesn't currently entertain me when I want a foreground music listening experience.

I admit: My palette is limited at the moment. But that's why I think the whole "openness = more musicality" assessment has some merit, albeit in a sort of "no duh" kind of way. As I said earlier, it's not an impressive correlation to me and I take issue with the methodology used to justify the conclusions. BUT, here I am as a person that knows his "potential" is limited by his own interest.

Actually, more on openness and guitar folks: a friend of mine is a pretty good guitarist, where noodling is concerned. I'm the opposite: pretty rigidly structured. When we tried to work together, I tried to experiment with his work; find a way I could step forward into a mix of our styles. But it felt like he wasn't open to doing anything different. So we didn't. He was told by reviewers on Taxi (opinions he paid for) that he wouldn't be likely to see any profitability with his music so long as he refused to engage with a lot more structure (verse-chorus). He's also kind of in denial about anthropogenic climate change...

[jancivil]

I prefer some noodling vastly to other noodling. My own music I want to be more like concentrate than watery, I much rather have a 2-minute track that's loaded than the same amount of content, basically, taking 5 minutes. I reckon I'm conditioned by the length of records, the 45RPM, the single, too. A 7-minute track with me contains several shorter whole ideas, and a 15-minute set of 6 tracks is equally one track. I never quite got to really long form, the arc of classical, architectural development is not for me. Couple yrs ago I deliberately embraced literal repetition and variation of insistent motifs, but my real preference is for new material and a sort of inexorable moving forward. That said, I quote myself often and I have a sort of Ur-text of certain motifs from 'Track #1' I harp on or based other motifs on.

Zappa talked about how early on, he didn't get jazz, say Charlie Parker, he didn't get that noodling but he got Johnny Guitar Watson 3 Hours Past Midnight or Varèse appeal at once, 'a different kind of noodling'.


As to types of openness, I did not want to try new foods when I was a child. I took on a lot of new things in life, but I'm still not very adventurous with food. Whole lotta things everybody eats I can't stand. I used to want everything separated on the plate, I'm almost the opposite of that now. I still do not want the cranberry sauce touching the mashed potatoes and gravy. I want to experience new music, new to me per se.

[jopy]

Super interesting point of openness--there is no tension between having a flexible mindset and being structured. I'm not quite sure where the idea that creative=chaotic came from, but it sure is pervasive. Disdain for any order is more a function of low conscientiousness (orderliness and deliberateness) than a function of high openness.

Mozart is a great example of structured openness, in fact. His music is extremely structured, but in ways that were new and far more fluid than others of his time period. He did use established forms, but with different phrase lengths (such as grouping melodies in five or three bar lengths as opposed to the dominant four bar systems of the time), international styles (incorporation of Turkish music), different modulations, or refinements of existing ideas (like the late symphonies or piano concerto works in general). Bach used structure like a plaything for confounding the listener's expectations, but it's far from chaotic music. Games with structure as a means to try out new possibilities persists through Bela Bartok to John Coltrane to Steve Reich to Frank Zappa to John Zorn to Autechre. Even the most chaotic sounding music from any of these very disparate and creative artists has some really fascinating but often disciplined techniques.

[jancivil]

As to the material in the OP, the test, I thought conscientiousness was compelling. I don't know much about psychology, but I def. agree on the unnecessary dichotomy of structure/freedom. I would say I'm very high as to conscientiousness. I very much believe in developing useful habits.

Especially formative/normative for me were the yrs of free improvisation. Now that conjures 'chaotic' but the goal was to create something right now that makes as much sense compositionally as anything. Sometimes we would write a storyline and decide to hit our marks in time, but the content was more or less completely open to impulse.