From: Eldad Tsabary (tazberry_docs@yahoo.ca)
Date: Sun Jun 20 2010 - 07:46:27 EDT
Yes!
Semiologist David Lidov made a distinction between what he termed
grammar-based music (vocabulary and syntax) and pattern-based music, which I
understand as music that is not based on any common grammar but on the
tendency of our aural perception to "hunt" known patterns in sound (and
especially music) we hear, or when such patterns are not found, to organize
(and store in our working memory) the sounds we hear into patterns of
varying complexity and therefore develop a referential vocabulary and
perhaps syntax during the listening process itself. I like this dichotomy,
though I don't think it necessarily complete.
I think the point is, however, that the music is not external to us. It
happens in our perception, so for some the same piece (a Bach fugue for
instance) could be heard on one perceptual level (to a Bach scholar for
instance) or another (for example to an African villager who never heard any
"art" music coming from the west, or any music that is not functional in
nature, that is not an integral part of daily life).
Perhaps a better example, imagine listening to a poem in Amharic. If you
understand the language, you are familiar with its sound components
(phonetics), you know and understand its vocabulary and syntax level, which
allows you to listen to higher levels of (semiotic) perceptual organization
(semantics, pragmatics), happening farther towards the front of your brain -
complex and ambiguous constructions, double meanings, emotional content,
cultural references, etc. On the other hand, if you don't know anything
about the language, you listen on the lower phonetic level, perhaps
following the natural tendency of perception to hunt down patterns and
listen to relationships, repetition, variation, sequential (temporal)
organization, rhythm, etc. therefore listen on the "pattern-based" level.
These are two completely different experiences. Perception is where music
lives. "Sound-based music" can be whatever we decide it to be (depending on
what we perceive as sound and what we perceive as music). Language is
tricky.
My question is (like most of you) what did Timothy Morton mean by
sound-based music. Putting the criticism aside for a moment (not that it is
not interesting), what are the characteristics that he intended to classify
in this term? Perhaps, by sounds he means "sounds of nature?" or as simple
as "sounds not made by known musical instruments (found in the dictionary)?"
Cheers
Eldad
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Kevin Austin" <kevin.austin@videotron.ca>
Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2010 4:09 PM
To: <cec-conference@concordia.ca>
Subject: Re: Organised Sound - call for submissions 'Sound, Listening and
Place'
>
> Two streams here. Music can think, and even re-think if there is an
> external reality, unless perhaps the phrase is the quite cosmic and
> metaphysical. Perhaps the concept is that we are all connected, and in
> this connectedness, the "thinking music" is formed.
>
>
> From my thinking, "sound-based" has at least two different meanings here,
> one physiological, and one language based.
>
> In the language-based form of "sound-based", why did Bach not write
> progressions like: C - Ebm - D ? Some of my musician friends say that it
> doesn't sound right. There were language constraints as to what was
> acceptable -- the language constraint in some areas being translated as
> aesthetic. In this definition, environmental aesthetic could be a
> substitution for language constraint.
>
> The language constraint here seems to me to be at the vocabulary level,
> whereas the progression proposed above is at the syntactic level. In many
> ways, the 20th and 21st centuries have experienced the growth of the
> vocabulary, and the diminution of the semantic.
>
> On the highway in the country, the train horn is a welcome sign of
> possible danger. It is something else if sounded in the Intensive Care
> Unit of a hospital. This could be considered a syntactic constraint. In
> art [sound], the syntactic level has become much more difficult to deal
> with, possibly because there are few (noż) syntactic limitations on what
> sound can occur with what sound (vocabulary), or which sounds can follow
> each other, and in what order.
>
> Individual artists may create their own language constraints – Klee,
> Kandinsky, Miro, Stravinsky, Strauss, ee cummings ... does the
> environment?
>
>
> Kevin
>
>
>
>
> On 2010, Jun 19, at 3:42 PM, lawrence casserley wrote:
>
>>
>> On 19 Jun 2010, at 17:51, Mathieu Bouchard wrote:
>>
>>>> How can, and does, sound-based music ‘rethink’ environmental
>>>> aesthetics?
>>
>>
>> Hmmmm....
>>
>> Lot's of comments about "sound-based" and ramifications thereof (eg
>> 4'33"), but I am most intrigued by the idea that sound-based (or any
>> other sort of!) music can 'rethink' anything. Music, or any other sort of
>> art, does not think, or rethink. Musicians may indeed think (occasionally
>> I have my doubts about some of them!), and their music will no doubt
>> reflect that thinking. Many of those musicians may also think about
>> environmental issues, and these may well have an effect upon the
>> aesthetical thinking behind their music - might even affect the music
>> itself! The music, however, does not think about anything.
>>
>> Anyway, music that is not "sound-based" is surely the equivalent of
>> conceptual art, which is not "art object based". "Aus den Sieben Tagen"
>> for a proto-example?
>>
>> Best
>>
>> Lawrence
>>
>>
>> Lawrence Casserley - lawrence@lcasserley.co.uk
>> Lawrence Electronic Operations - www.lcasserley.co.uk
>> Eye Music Trust Ltd - www.eyemusic.org.uk
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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