posted
When I asked my friend why people are so drawn to music, she replied, “We listen to music because its the closet thing to the human experience that we can recognize”. I would phrase it more simply: music makes us feel.
What do you think? Do you have playlists dedicated to different moods? Do you internalize the music you listen to? And do you know why?
As a starting point, my friend always sings to her son, who has severe autism, when he is having a fit of rage. It is the only thing that can calm him down. I understand that it's not uncommon for children with autism to learn how to sing before they speak. Music serves as an important tool in distracting people from rage and, as I have found, grief. Why do you think this is so?
Posts: 47 | Registered: Mar 2010
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posted
music is one of the best things ever. It makes my soul sing. It makes every cell in my body happy. Since my synesthesia is tied to music, I can smell it, taste it, see colours in it, feel it on my skin, it's essential for me. Plus I like to feel. Feeling is nice. My favourite song in the world is Kate Bush's the Fog. The arrangement of it, everything about it is just so GOOD. The vocals, mmm. I just adore it so much. Then there's Dir en grey, which doesn't have one song I hate. Their songs make me happy, make me ache, make me feel sad, all at the same time. Mmm. Music is the best thing.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Huh. I listen to music because my ears get bored.
I know that sounds like I'm being facetious and flip, but I'm not. If I'm not listening to something, I start hunting for things to hear. Interesting fact: you can hear electricity. If you try hard enough.
Posts: 354 | Registered: Jan 2006
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posted
All art is a depiction of an experience of a facet of reality as seen through the values of the artist. My inclination is to say that music is more evocative, generally speaking, than visual art, but that could be a personal take on it. I imagine there are probably people who find visual art more compelling.
Not all music makes me happy, but it all makes me feel. Earlier today, I was listening to Suzanne Vega's song "The Queen and the Soldier", and as always, it gave me goosebumps and made me tear up.
I have music that's calming, and I have music that gets my adrenaline going. If I had to live without music or without being able to read, I'd lose the music first, but it'd be a close call.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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It produces an emotional response, and does so across a lot of barriers that affect other mediums. Not everyone can recognize great art...or even agree on what makes a visual piece great, really.... but tempo and beat carry across a lot of cultural lines.
Not everyone agrees on what good music is, of course...there are many different types of music....but it carries emotion or mood better than most mediums. Particularly amongst people of a similar cultural background.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Some songs make me feel certain ways, particularly Freebird due to personal reasons but mostly music is just a way to entertain my brain. I hardly go a day without listening to something and my MP3 player is on forty-one hours a week while I work, but I feel that its more to sate the back of my mind while I mop floors and make coffee (i.e. mindless and boring repetitive actions) I will say that while I do regularly go to shows, I go and sit around sober and bored inbetween sets because all I want is music, not random strangers to talk to. Live music fills me up and helps me let go, collarbone vibrating to the sound from the speakers and the raw power of a single voice taking over my inner monologue. Aside from caffiene its my only addiction and I never intend to give it up, but I do have to keep a certain distance from the speakers these days (note: God is not a concert speaker, you should not be close to Him, I learned the hard way.)
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Two good books on the topic. Well, the first is good ( a little dry at first but finishes well), and while I haven't read the second, a close friend told me I'd like it and it's sitting on my bookshelf now.
Posts: 1711 | Registered: Jun 2004
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It can also pull up memories. They say that smell does that the best, but I know that there are certain songs or albums that totally bring me back to a particular episode in my life, or to a book, or even to a particular time reading a book.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by August: When I asked my friend why people are so drawn to music, she replied, “We listen to music because its the closet thing to the human experience that we can recognize”. I would phrase it more simply: music makes us feel.
Your friends is right. Music exists as far removed from cultural and symolic context as is possible in human-constructed art. What you feel is a connection to the cultural construct built around specific elements of musical experience. Music itself is just a medium for the expression of feeling- it by itself does not make us feel. That's why the musics of distant cultures do not much appeal to us emotionally- we have no point of reference for them. Music itself is purer than anything else. It is the only art in which subject and theme can be self-contained and removed from external references, either of objects, linguistic constructions, or physical gestures.
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I have also read the first one, and found it to be excellent. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll go look for the second at the library!
I listen to my ipod whenever I have to walk more than half a mile to get somewhere. It makes me feel like I'm in a movie. My music makes me remember that life is short and beautiful, and not to take it for granted (hence why I'm more apt to do reckless things while listening to it). Also, I cry more. Even though the feelings are not always happy, I am addicted to my music. Right now, I've been listening to Rilo Kiley's first few albums (Take Offs and Landings, and The Execution of All Things). Their wistfulness reminds me of the 90s, and a feeling of loneliness that somehow cannot be cured.
Posts: 47 | Registered: Mar 2010
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posted
Orin, very well said. I tried to allude to that......the fact that cultural context DOES matter....but you said it much more concisely. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Two good books on the topic. Well, the first is good ( a little dry at first but finishes well), and while I haven't read the second, a close friend told me I'd like it and it's sitting on my bookshelf now.
Also check out the book "Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy". It explains some of the psychological, neurological, and physiological aspects of music, and also explains a lot of music theory in ways that make sense to most music lay-people I know. Heck, it even re-explained concepts I knew about in new ways that were very enlightening to me.
Posts: 1099 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Orin, very well said. I tried to allude to that......the fact that cultural context DOES matter....but you said it much more concisely.
Well they didn't give me the degree for nothing, I guess.
ETA
The advantage of music is that it is divorced from aspects of human experience which are more utilitarian. Virtually every art is connected with another sense, and derives more closely from another craft, which is not artistic. Sculpting and carpentry, writing, poetry, and speaking a language, theater and storytelling (conveying information), painting and visual representation- all these art forms are based on other forms of communication that are non-artistic. But music is not linguistic, even though it is auditory. It is not visual, and it is not physical, although it occupies a space of time and manifests itself in discernible structures. It appeals to every element of the human mind that recognizes aesthetic choice, but is unsullied by any specificity of personal experience.
When I say: chair, I evoke both a concept and an image. But that image is different for different listeners, and there are a million elements that are involved- the material of the chair, its location, its function, the culture that uses it, or doesn't use it, etc.
When I paint a landscape, I evoke similarly chaotic associations. When I sculpt a figure, I do the same.
But with music, the art is divorced from these elements. Music appeals to the intellect- to the very innate human sense of aesthetics, of structure, and of beauty. If it chooses to evoke an image, it does so, but it does so without the muddy complications of symbolism, or glyphs. It can be used to *make* glyphs, but those are similarly free of complication that is not intended by the author. So they are like diamond- a perfectly conductive medium of expression, at once the most clear and crystalline substance.
That's why when you talk about what music makes you feel, you're really talking about musicians. You're talking about composers. You're talking about everything that makes music, because music itself is a cypher, nearly meaningless without a key.
I love music, and use to play about 9 of them. The only one of them I still play only occasionally is my flute. I bought a guitar a few years back, but never learned to play it....at least not yet.
Yet because of the emotional impact music has for me, I will always consider myself a musician, even if I never touched another instrument for the rest of my life.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I Don't know what it is about music that pulls my strings, but it does. Some songs can just press buttons in me that don't get pressed very often in normal life. How a series of notes and beats that change to a mathematic time signature can be so stimulating, I don't know, but I'm about to read those two links to try and find out.
Dang it, they were links to books. Off to find an article of some kind.
Posts: 278 | Registered: Apr 2004
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You could buy the books, of course. Brain on music is a bit poppy for my taste, but it's good in a general sense. I think it's a little breezy on the philosophical points, but it's meant to be accessible. I haven't read musicophilia.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: You could buy the books, of course. Brain on music is a bit poppy for my taste, but it's good in a general sense. I think it's a little breezy on the philosophical points, but it's meant to be accessible. I haven't read musicophilia.
You know, I was just disappointed that my desire for instant gratification was thwarted yet again. Posts: 278 | Registered: Apr 2004
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