The "Bubbles" experiment - What is contemporary music worth?
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What do you make of the Vassilakis paper?
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To what end though? After all this is a specific thread.
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I don't disagree that music is created/perceived differently by different cultures, nor that what separates sound from noise is the organization; but I don't think the conclusion that the organization is more important than the sounds follows necessarily from either claim. Even if we take noise, there's a reason that things like fire alarms are pitched to around 3kHz-4kHz, and that's because human hearing is very sensitive to sounds in that region and we typically perceive them as unpleasant, and thus react to them quickly; meanwhile, alarms for less crucial things, like most timers or watch alarms, tend to be significantly lower.
Further, our awareness of geometric patterns almost certainly manifests in the kinds of harmonies we find pleasant/unpleasant even if there's also a lot of cultural bias available for more ambiguous example. It's also natural that the sounds of any given instrument playing any given note makes us feel different things than if that instrument was playing a different note, or if a different instrument was playing the same note. You can't take the opening motif from Beethoven's 5th and transpose it to any other instruments or much higher/lower keys and have it feel the same way. I'd think that most composers take all of this into account when composing.
When Stravinsky started The Rite of Spring with a bassoon solo in a much higher register than was typical for most music written for the instrument, he did that deliberately knowing what kind of sound it would produce. In fact, given that he took the opening melody from a folk song it's likely he thought this effect of the sound was probably just as important at the melodic organization given that the latter wasn't even his own creation. One French critic who attended the premiere even said this about the opening: "You hear the prelude, where a wind instrument is dominant. We ask each other, which instrument can produce such sounds. I reply: ‘This is an oboe.’ But my neighbor to the right, who is a great composer, assures me that it is a muted trumpet. My neighbor to the left, no less learned in music, opines: ‘I would rather think that it is a clarinet.’ During the intermission we ask the conductor himself, and we learn that it was the bassoon that put us in such great doubt."
FWIW, I don't dispute randomness can create music, and even good music.
I'm not sure why you'd be skeptical of applying acoustical science to music just because early music was made without things like set intervals or much of what we know as "music theory" at all. If we agree that music is organized sound then there are always principles for that organization even if they vary tremendously and even if they aren't formally established. Acoustical science might can explain why we like some methods of organization even if it doesn't explain why every possible method of organization is/isn't liked, and obviously cultural bias plays a huge role too. As with the old nature/nurture debate, the answer is almost always "some combination of the two."
Unless chipia has posted that they have resiled from their OP, it's difficult not to conclude that this whole diversion about 'harshness' and the science that lies behind it is just another variation on their first thought, ie....
I think that such experiments should be performed more often so that it becomes clear that the avantgarde mentality is causing damage to modern classical music and hindering the development of new music that actually relates to way humans perceive music.
I think that such experiments should be performed more often so that it becomes clear that the avantgarde mentality is causing damage to modern classical music and hindering the development of new music that actually relates to way humans perceive music.
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At most what you're showing is that humans subjective perceive certain objective features in predictable ways, though I'm skeptical of how universal that predictability is. It's difficult to account for the cultural bias variable.
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You haven’t proven that there is no correlation between a listener’s subjective experience and a composer’s artistry. Is the comment about ‘at least three of us’ supposed to imply something significant?
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Musicians speak of consonance and dissonance, with the understanding that neither is good or bad, nor can be thought of in isolation. It takes both to create music as we know it. Composers, good composers, use dissonance in order to create very effective music.
So, any analysis which tries to demonstrate harshness by isolating certain triads or intervals outside of their musical context, they offer little in the way of constructive or instructive analysis.
Composers choose certain sounds or timbres to set their music - but it is the organization which helps determine if a composer is any good or not. So, IMO, organization is more important since different instruments or sounds could be substituted without doing as much harm if the organization is changed. It is how a composer organizes the sound that creates his work.
Acoustical science is based on mathematical descriptions of musical elements. However, when humans sing we do so using non-precise divisions of the octave, and even smaller intervals. So, I don't place much stock in a mathematical analysis of musical elements since it starts from a flawed premise, i.e. that those precise divisions exist in human performance.
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Why would 'correlation' matter?
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I'm asking you though. Since you mentioned it.
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We may just have to agree to disagree about this. I'm not trying to discount at all the importance of the organization, I just think it's foolish to so radically discount the importance of the sound. Sound is responsible for so much of what most listeners (including many composers) enjoy about music.
Now you've lost me, or at least I think we're talking about different things. My first thought is that one can use mathematical descriptions of non-precise divisions and intervals as well. Second thought is that most human performance since the invention of equal-temperament has aimed for such precise divisions even if it's not always successful at achieving it. When humans sing most contemporary tonal music without landing on those precise divisions we call them "pitchy" if they're far enough off the pitch they were aiming for, and most perceive this as a flaw. Final point is that there can obviously be viable music made without such precise divisions, but that doesn't mean that there isn't a scientific/mathematical reasons so many humans seem enamored with music predominantly made utilizing these precise divisions. Hell, most contemporary pop and rock music is so enamored with it that we've invented a lot pitch correction software programs designed to help singers align more precisely with those divisions. Even rhythmically it's common practice now to copy/past beats into extremely precise temporal divisions. A lot of people seem to like such things, even if many others miss the more human imperfections that "live" music traditionally provided.
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I am not "radically" discounting the sound of music, after all that is what we experience first hand. But, the sound of the music is a surface quality. Composers take themes and create cathedrals of sound. The majesty of music, for me, is in the composer's development of often very simple sonic material.
When people sing in a choir a cappella, they lapse into just intonation, whereas when singing with accompaniment, especially a piano, they are forced into equal temperament. IMO, equal temperament is not progress. It is a case of technology trumping humanity.
There are a number of composers working in just intonation precisely for this reason: it is more humanly natural. We don't need instruments to make music, we certainly don't need fixed pitch keyboard instruments. String and wind instruments can mimic the human voice's flexibility. But over the last few centuries, the piano has become more and more dominant. Something I do not celebrate.
We are living in an age that coined the idea of "trans-humanism". Artificial Intelligence is part of the zeitgeist. Computer technology has offered the illusion of perfection, which is an illusion. Audio/studio technology has turned music-making into a product of auto-tuners, and seamless digital correction of "flaws" in a performance. Even in classical music different takes are spliced together in an effort to achieve a perfect performance.
We are in danger of losing our humanity if we allow technology to completely overtake our humanity.
This is partly why I am suspicious of so-called scientific analysis of music. I also do not think if offers an accurate methodology of increasing our understanding of music and composing. Science is good at analyzing the properties of sound. It cannot tell us why or how music charms us.
I assume that culture indirectly influences perceived dissonance by increasing or decreasing the exposure to various sounds or intervals. The increased exposure would then reduce the harshness.
The experiment I mentioned only dealt with isolated chords. They found that identifying the middle note of a chord would lessen the perceived dissonance of that chord. Presumably one could reduce the perceived dissonance below that of another less dissonant chord that one did not get "trained" on.
The research attempts to investigate the acoustics of "roughness", but acknowledges that further work needs to be done to assess the cultural and historical influences that seem to account for the acceptance (or rejection) of differing levels of consonance and dissonance.
I see nothing wrong in the research itself, only the conclusion that others are drawing from it, such as, "Here is scientific proof that there is such a thing as harshness that is unwelcome in CM and it's used only in music that is inferior." The paper explicitly rejects that conclusion.
But nobody here made a conclusion like that, so I have no idea why you repeatedly imply that I consider harshness to be "inferior".
My point was to refute the assertions that there is no correlation between the objective properties of music and how it is experienced by listeners. This study has demonstrated that there is a correlation between measurable acoustical attributes and their subjective experience, in this case between acoustical roughness and subjectively perceived dissonance.
Yes, other factors such as culture are also significant, but none of this contradicts the fact that measurable attributes of music play an important role in the listener's experience and do show a correlation indeed.
Because that was the premise of your OP. You started complaining about randomness and now about roughness.
I'm not clear that anyone has said that. Can you point to the post?
I have never complained about rough music. If anything I often enjoy music with a lot of roughness.
Could you point me to the post that you actually mean? I certainly did not talk about roughness or dissonance in the OP.
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This old man disagreed:
"there was lesser crime, the people were more honest"
One factor here is urbanization. One treats others that he knows better than unknown people. In a small village one knows 100% of the people. In a modern big city one knows less than 1% of the people. People are also more different to each other in modern big cities.
People always fight, it is in their nature. Old concepts like the "honourable merchant" and the "word of honour" are less relevant today. "Honor" overall seems like an old school concept today, doesn't it?
For example there is a decline in the understanding of the word "gentleman".
But the craftsmanship was better in earlier times, because there was less technical help. For example look at the introduction of DAW in film music. The musical craftsmanship in film music has become worse because of the limitations of the DAW. DAW is nonetheless required most of the time, because there are some non-craftsmanship related advantages, like you don't need an orchestra.
Yeah all the kids that look all the time at their smartphone. I guess their brain takes heavy damage.
When I read old books or watch old TV from more than 50 years ago, the language is much better and clear. The thoughts and ideas of these people were more clear.
The IQ is in decline:
Source: https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.1718793115
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