HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

Everyone likes it (I think) but some are addicted, what causes that, is it emotional.

Why do some people like noise and call it music, for me it isn't. If there isn't a harmonic structure and a detectable rhythm, or can it be just one or the other. For me rap is not music, I would call it poetry of sorts. For me the like of Stockhausen is not music, it is a self indulgent noise, the same for Ornette Colman and other free form Jazz. Indulgent claptrap.

So we are all different in what we want - or are we

Absolutely - we are all different. As you say, music generally tends to provoke an emotional response which can be either directly related to the song, or perhaps invokes a recollection of some important event in the past.

I have always been hugely emotionally affected by music; but my taste varies like my moods. What does the trick one day doesn't interest me the next. As for the taste of others, well, see my signature!

I wouldn't want to be without it for sure

Clearly music and sounds more generally are processed by different bits of the brain which goes around the ratiocination bits - a sudden noise will startle you, you don't have to think about it. I've never looked up definitions of music but I'd call it 'rationalised noise' - that is something that the human mind has given some order to - rather like a gardener selecting the material s/he wants and doesn't (the latter called weeds), so you could call gardening 'rationalised landscpe' (and indeed, that's what 'Capability' Brown did - looked at a natural landscape and told the landowner it had 'capability' - i.e. he could work with it to 'beautify' it.

(PS John Lydon doesn't call himself a musician, he calls himself a noisemaker).

It is now known that listening to music stimulates several brain centres and synchronises them, the endorphins produced by this give a 'pleasure reward' which causes us to experience physical enjoyment from the process.

As a developing foetus, the only experience we have of the world outside the womb is aural - sound is something we experience very early and at an extremely basic level. Probably also linking what is heard to emotional reactions.

The music we are exposed to early in life (until late teens) determines what we see as 'pleasant'. For me that was: Classical, pop, rock, punk, folk, EM and jazz - meaning that my tastes are completely inconsistent.

But does anyone here appreciate Chinese Opera or Japanese folk music ?

Yes to both - to a degree.

Ah....the power and emotion of "Skirling Bagpipes".
Never fails to bring a wee tear to my eye.

Never fails to make me grind my teeth, wince, and run in other direction to get away from it.

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote:Never fails to make me grind my teeth, wince, and run in other direction to get away from it.

Yes a rather strange reaction, one not lost to us Jocks and often used to great effect in times of warfare.

jammy395 wrote:Ah....the power and emotion of "Skirling Bagpipes".
Never fails to bring a wee tear to my eye.

Indeed! Give me 'Highland Cathedral' any day

"As a developing foetus, the only experience we have of the world outside the womb is aural"

Our daughter used to dance in the womb at 7.00am when the radio alarm went off. Interestingly she danced at 7.00 am at the weekends too even though we didn't have the alarm on.