RoR: Forum

Stop it!! If you intilectualise music to this level, its like dancing to calculus!

Post 1

Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - 1:05pm

I can't stop, someone must have cut the brakes.

Keith, what is your fear? Why is it wrong to bring an understanding of the nature of music to the conceptual level?

To play devil's advocate for Keith for a moment...there was a little parable about the bug who was jealous of the dancing caterpillar's ability to dance with one hundred feet. The bug asked the caterpillar to explain the process by which he coordinated all those feet. The caterpillar, who had automatized the process, began to demonstrate, but become so twitterpated that he could not remember...

I think this is what arguments like Keith's may be trying to say...but I think there may be a confusion here. (One of dem ther "false dichotomies.") One does not have to know HOW it works, in order to appreciate or dance to the music. But as a composer or performer, an understanding of the process can be a bane, because the muse, as they say, is a fickle mistress. Rand detailed the creative process and the role of the subconscious in THE ART OF FICTION, and agreed that the artist automates the process. But in order to do so, he first has to integrate what he already knows. He may have to bring it back to the conceptual level, however, when new concepts and understandings are found. But he will automate and integrate the new concepts again. To suggest that musicians be like the caterpillar and only rely on instinct is to keep man at a certain level that allows no progress. It's really an argument against technology and progress.

(Edited by Joe Maurone
on 2/14, 1:11pm)

(Edited by Joe Maurone
on 2/14, 5:10pm)

(Edited by Joe Maurone
on 2/14, 5:11pm)

Post 2

Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - 2:14pm

Seriously Joe, intelectualize away. There needs to be more of this thought as applied to music.

---Landon

Post 3

Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - 2:37pm

"Intilect" and "intelect" - y'all went to public skool dint ya..........;-)

Just to set it correct - it's 'I N T E L L E C T'..........

(Edited by robert malcom on 2/14, 2:39pm)

Post 4

Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - 2:40pm

Good thoughts, Joe - carry on!

Post 5

Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - 4:06pm

Came on the following, which thought might be of interest to this.......

Why are some songs so much more popular than others? To your average teen, the answer is simple: they�re better. But then why is it so hard for even experts to predict which songs, books and movies will be hits?

A new study suggests both questions have the same answer, researchers say: people tend to like what they think other people like. And quality has something to do with it, but not much.

The sociologists from Columbia University in New York City set up a website where people could listen to and download unknown songs by unknown bands. Participants in one group were given only song titles and band names as their guide. Other participants could also see how many times each song had already been downloaded.

A song�s download rate was meant to give viewers some measure of how much other people liked it, since the site was set up so that they could optionally download a song after listening to it.

The researchers found that popular songs were more popular�and thus, unpopular songs less popular�in the groups where participants had access to other people�s opinions. But which particular songs became very popular was less predictable.

�In general, the �best� songs never do very badly, and the �worst� songs never do extremely well, but almost any other result is possible,� Matthew Salganik and colleagues of Columbia wrote in a paper in the Feb. 10 issue of the research journal Science.

The researchers said they could assess to what extent randomness influenced the process by conducting eight runs of the same game, all at the same time. They did this by dividing those participants who could see the download rates into groups.

Each was �randomly assigned to one of eight �worlds,� each of which evolved independently of the others,� the scientists explained. �Songs in each world accumulated downloads only from participants in that world, and subsequent participants could only see their own world�s download counts.�

This strategy overcame the drawback of testing under real-life conditions, they added. In the real world, only one history can be known, the one that happens; so there is no way to analyze it by comparing it to alternate possibilities.

�By studying a range of possible outcomes rather than just one, we can measure inherent unpredictability: the extent to which two worlds with identical songs, identical initial conditions, and indistinguishable populations generate different outcomes,� the researchers wrote. They recruited 14,341 participants from a teen-interest website to play the game.

In a commentary in the same issue of the journal, Peter Hedstr�m of the University of Oxford, U.K., wrote that Web-based experiments like this one can help sociologists understand the relationship between individual and group behavior.

Post 6

Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - 4:10pm

Dammit Robert you beat me to it.

---Landon

Post 7

Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - 5:02pm

Interesting, Robert. Could be that popular songs are popular because they share a common denominator of a Gestalt, or maybe the Gestalt becomes the common denominator because of popularity? It was the case with the QWERTY typing system over seemingly easier systems, or the case of BETA vs. VHS.

On a somewhat related note, know those songs you can't get out of your head, whether you like or hate them?

"Earworms" -- and the psychology of music
You know when you can't get a song out of your head? James Kellaris, a professor at the University of Cincinnati, recently studied the problem in 559 students. At the latest meeting of the Society for Consumer Psychology, he reported his findings, which are totally fascinating.

Apparently, "earworms" -- songs you can't stop humming in your brain -- most often plague women and musicians. To try and dislodge the song, two-thirds of the time people will try humming a different song; 14% of the time, they try humming the song to its end. Kellaris has no idea why earworms occur. When he asked his students -- whose average age was 23 -- to describe the worst earworms, their top-10 list was:

1. Other. Everyone has his or her own worst earworm. 2. Chili's "Baby Back Ribs" jingle. 3. "Who Let the Dogs Out" 4. "We Will Rock You" 5. Kit-Kat candy-bar jingle ("Gimme a Break ...") 6. "Mission Impossible" theme 7. "YMCA" 8. "Whoomp, There It Is" 9. "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" 10. "It's a Small World After All"
I did some digging into Kellaris' work, and it turns out he's done some interesting research into music and psychology. Specifically, he's studied the ways that music affects shopping:

"We've found that lively music can shrink shoppers' perception of time passage, so that they think they've been in a store for less time than they actually have," he says. "And the more time they spend there, of course, the more likely they are to make unplanned or impulse purchases."
Even people put "on hold" on the telephone have thought they were waiting for a shorter time when they listened to faster tempo music, according to the marketer's research. If relaxing (i.e., boring) music was played, clients believed their time on hold was longer than it really was. ...

Human crowding is one circumstance where adjusting ambient music seems to make a difference, according to the researcher. Combine a lot of shoppers with very loud music -- think "Jingle Bell Rock" during the Christmas shopping crunch -- and the store will seem even more crowded than it is. But playing slow music when just a few customers are in a store also makes shoppers uncomfortable.

"We found that people evaluate a store most positively -- and this is a little bit different than their perceptions of crowding -- when there is either fast tempo music and not a lot of people shopping, or where there are a lot of people and slower tempo music," the professor points out.

In The Republic, Socrates bans "music without lyrics", because he felt that it was immoral. Music without words, he argued, could be used to subtly stir men's passions. When you read his ideas, they sound oddly naive -- until you think about muzak and its role in urging us on.

Post 8

Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - 5:59pm

Time is a measurement of duration - but there's factual duration and psychological duration, as you've attested.......

Post 9

Tuesday, February 14, 2006 - 6:19pm

Try playing Kraftwerk in a busy record store at lunchtime...talk about wierd.

Post 10

Wednesday, February 15, 2006 - 10:14pm

Joe, thanks for sharing this.

I think there is something about the complexity of a piece that affects whether someone will like it. You can have more depth, more integration, and a more complex theme. I just don't think this is primary. I don't like music just because it's complex or there's a lot going on. The degree of integration has to be there. The music conveys some kind of mood. I think these are more important than the complexity.

I was trying to think how this kind of cognitive theory would apply to other forms of art. Take literature as an example. A complaint some people have about Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged is that it's too long, there's too much going on (in AS), too much philosophy, etc. I take this as an example of the art being cognitively complex more than they're mentally prepared for. Children like short stories with simple plots. Fairy tales usually don't even have to make sense. I think these and other examples are probably a reasonable parallel to the cognitive aspect of music. It's not an esthetic primary, but might affect how people respond to the art.

I don't quite see the parallel in the visual arts (painting, sculpture). If Newberry is reading this, maybe he could comment on it. Or anyone else. If there isn't a parallel, it might be because the visual arts concretize in a much more perceptual way instead of a conceptual way.

Post 11

Thursday, February 16, 2006 - 7:21pm

(Keith, this applies to your first post, as well.)

Joe, I personally shudder at the thought of reducing musical enjoyment to mathematics(the way Rand seemed to hope for), as advanced mathematics are the bane of my existence. And that's the key, isn't it? People can appreciate music without great mathematical ability.
The beautiful thing about the Gestalt theory is that it doesn't require a conscious mathematical ability on the part of the listener. As you point out, complexity is NOT a primary. If the attraction to complex music increases with a more able mind, that doesn't mean enjoyment of music depends on complexity.
I think that what the Gestalt theory promotes more is the idea of anticipation and release, which doesn't really require great complexity. Jourdain uses the example of the Pink Panther theme because it is fairly well known, not because it is a particulary complex piece. What makes it memorable is the setup of the first few lines, setting up a pattern that is predictable, and defies that predictability with what could be called a "musical plot twist." The effect requires the listener to have certain expectations to begin with. (You mention how children like simple plots, it's a similar think with music; they haven't yet acquired the "vocabulary" to listen to Rachmaninoff, so they work through Twinkle, Twinkle.
And it should be noted that many complex compositions are based on simpler melodies, such as folk songs, and their vocabulary expanded. It's all heirarchal. Children can be seen banging pots and making vocal sounds, but they are usually out of time and tune until they learn and transfer the particular Gestalt of their environment. Even if it's subconscious, the cognitive factor is still essential. But the real enjoyment comes not from the process of cognition, but the (e)motion it inspires. When you write "The music conveys some kind of mood," you are right, but if you think broader, and trace emotion to motion, the cognitive factor becomes a mean to an end. Remember, the point of motion is to further the organism. For some people, there IS an enjoyment of the complexity for complexity's sake, but I agree that is not a primary to musical enjoyment. Fortunately, the Gestalt theory doesn't require it.

I think if you look at it from that perspective, it's easier to see how the theory relates to other arts. If you think of art as involving the sense of life and emotions, you still have the motion theory, how the art motivates the organism. And expectation, anticipation and resolution are still essential. You mention the fairy tales that don't make sense, but the "nonsense" plays off of expectations. If one had no expectations, then the idea of being nonsensical would not even come up. (And that's probably why children are drawn to them, because they are still at the stage where they are making sense of the world themselves, and have less expectations. It's also a learning tool; for example, the "which of these things don't belong" game.) In painting, Rand gave a good example with the portrait of a beautiful woman with the sore. If your standard of beauty is a certain image, then the introduction of that sore violates the anticipation of the Gestalt (in this case, the Gestalt is not a pattern of sound, but a visual pattern based on anticipation of what human beings look like.)
(Edited by Joe Maurone
on 2/16, 7:22pm)

(Edited by Joe Maurone
on 2/16, 7:44pm)

(Edited by Joe Maurone
on 2/16, 8:27pm)

Post 12

Thursday, February 16, 2006 - 8:04pm

Another way to look at it is to consider "the silent partner" of music, dance. When we appreciate a dancer's art, or experience it ourselves, the emphasis is not on the cognitive aspects of form, but on the motion. What motions, what movements are possible to man? Which movements embody the dancer's sense of life? When we look at dance, we can say that the dance steps are the Gestalt pattern, made up of discrete patterns, similar to notes, connected through a hierarchal system. Music is the tonal embodiment of motion, which is where the recreation lies.

Some related thoughts on the matter from Anthony Storr's MUSIC AND THE MIND:

"The idea tha tmusic causes a general state of arousal rather than specific emotions partly explains why it has been used to accompany such a wide variety of human activities, including marching, serenading, worship, marriage, funerals, and manual work....There can be no doubt that seeing the movements which musicians make during live performance is, for many people, an important reason for going to concerts as opposed to listening to music at home on radio or disc. Some of the greatest conductors...kept their physical movements to a minimum, others are more flamboyant. But some listeners confess that their appreciation of a particular work is increased by observing the gestures of a conductor." Actually, the word conductor is telling...

Post 13

Thursday, February 16, 2006 - 8:11pm

Joe,

Regarding dance:

Just ran across this today. "Are Dancers Genetically Different Than The Rest Of Us? Yes, Says Hebrew University Researcher"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060213183707.htm

BTW: I liked your article and am enjoying the discussion.

Mike E.
(Edited by Mike Erickson
on 2/16, 8:13pm)

Post 14

Friday, February 17, 2006 - 7:14am

Joe R: "I don't quite see the parallel in the visual arts (painting, sculpture). If Newberry is reading this, maybe he could comment on it."

After two readings I didn't understand the article.

Michael

Post 15

Friday, February 17, 2006 - 12:43pm

Thank you, Mike. Interesting article. I wonder if the question is are some people more inclined to dance, or do some people endowed with a better ability to dance? Either way, I have to wonder about the choice of photo chosen for the article, since it's not clear that aboriginals are actually dancing...why aboriginals? Why not ballet dancers, tap dancers, breakdancers even? I wonder if it was chosen to suggest a primitive connection to dancing?

I seems wierd to suggest a genetic link to dancing, since dancing is so popular and universal. That's like suggesting walking is genetic...many people dance regardless of skill (we've all seen them!) and even non-dancers can be caught tapping their toes...

"The dancer "type," says Ebstein, clearly demonstrates qualities that are not necessarily lacking but are not expressed as strongly in other people: a heightened sense of communication, often of a symbolic and ceremonial nature, and a strong spiritual personality trait."

What about a case like Ayn Rand, who chose to learn ballroom dancing later in life? Was it a late genetic manifestation? Was Ms. Logic overcome by instinct? Hmmm...

Post 16

Saturday, February 18, 2006 - 9:39pm