Does anyone else feel this way about music?

Gargamel wrote:

I would like to define crappy and noncrappy not so much as what genres appeal to me, but whether or not the musician is truthful. When I see a teenage kid with a $2,000 haircut playing a guitar riff I've heard 2,000 times before, and singing about his broken heart, I have a hard time believing him.

I also play in a band, so when an artist gets a record deal without having played bars and parties for years, because he looks like a model, I get a little spiteful.

Interesting thread so far.

Yes - I can see that.....I too am big on paying your dues.

It's like that with actors. It IS annoying when some tart of the month makes a zillion dollars overnight, based on some idiotic role.

0 Replies

Chai Tea wrote:

ENDY - sorry, but all you've done is taken the opportunity to list your music preferences. Never heard of any of them....and I'm not seeking to find a type of music that transcends me, I looking to find out what is is about music that transcends others.

No, I'm sorry - I feel very passionate about music, guess I find it impossible to imagine not listening to it. I listed in an effort to show what music does for me and why - thought you were asking that - got the wrong end.

I think listening to music has something to do with sharing, sharing an experience. I think that was what I wanted to do, but in my eagerness and haste, I *ucked up badly.

0 Replies

ENDYMION wrote:

Chai Tea wrote:

ENDY - sorry, but all you've done is taken the opportunity to list your music preferences. Never heard of any of them....and I'm not seeking to find a type of music that transcends me, I looking to find out what is is about music that transcends others.

No, I'm sorry - I feel very passionate about music, guess I find it impossible to imagine not listening to it. I listed in an effort to show what music does for me and why - thought you were asking that - got the wrong end.

I think listening to music has something to do with sharing, sharing an experience. I think that was what I wanted to do, but in my eagerness and haste, I *ucked up badly.

Not that badly ENDY.

Acutally your enthusiasm is more the typical response from people when they talk about music. :wink:

It's funny, like when people talk about football. I know nothing about the game, but sure appreciate others enjoy it.....Sometimes someone will be describing a play and will get all excited.....I can tell if their happy excited or mad excited.
Or when someone's watching a game and something happens that makes them jump up and yell "OOOOHHHHHH" and then they sit back down.

Ummmmm, was that good, or bad? I don't know, so if they engage you in conversation over it, like saying "DID YOU SEE THAT", I'll say "YEAH" but in such a way that I'm also showing excitment but am not commiting any further in case I make the wrong choice.

That's the trick when people start talking about music......

Here, I can let it out, explain what's going on inside, and ask questions.
When someone enthuses (sp?) about must music, I'll ususally respond with a "oooh" or "mmmmm" with slightly raised eyebrows to indicate I'm paying attention, thinning my mouth in a commissatory way (I know what you're talkin' about brother) and a slight nodding of my head to indicate I'm in agreement.
Then, I'll try to segway the topic onto another subject.

hehehe.

I bet the next time someone gives a response like that to you, on any subject, you'll be wondering....

we all do that....I'm absolutely zaney about some stuff I'm sure very few care about, but that doesn't stop me from saying, whoa, you know what I figured out on that spreadsheet!

0 Replies

I need silence sometimes and can't stand constant noise,

I do like music and a wide range from classical through jazz to contemporary - but I like musicians who can play/sing and instruments that 'talk' to each other, mood, quality ...... hate most country and western (sorry for offending lots of you!), hate schmaltz, hate the dj's mindless drivel between records on the radio. I'm very visual and, thinking about it, a lot of the music I like is very visual - it evokes visual ideas/thoughts/things remembered.

Rodriguez Concerto di Aranjuez, Street Music with Corky Siegel and the New York Phil, Fingals cave - all very visual aren't they? I'd never thought about that aspect of why I like certain music before.

0 Replies

I like silence
and I like music.
Which one I need at any time varies with what is going on with me.
I think people have different brains for music - some friends are good with math, music, and physics, and seem to understand the complexities far far better than I could ever begin to comprehend.
I too am visually tuned.

When I love music, it taps something in - what can I say - my gut. I have mentioned before on a2k a couple of cuts by Maria Callas, an opera singer of some decades ago - when I hear those I think my body chemistry changes. I simply must exult, it is a physical-mental thrill. I could name more, but the names are not what you are asking about.

Sometimes I like music for a sense of coolth, a kind of containment and control it gives to me, as if I have a handle on the world before me for that space in time - that would be from some cool jazz, for example.

Sometimes I like music for its associations of some personal happiness I was caught up in when I first heard it - that can harken back for many years - but in that case I would have also just plain liked the music at that first hearing too.

Sometimes music annoys the hell out of me, especially if it is other people's. I have always had some trouble doing complex thinking when people are talking loudly about other things around me, say in an office, and also if the music is too loud. Now as I start to have hearing problems, I really have to have music low to make a telephone call, or do intensive grading and drainage calculations...

Although.... I can do design concepts with music on, given that I like it, and it might even help free my brain up - though m'brain is pretty loosey goosey to start with. With painting, I often like some music I like on to start with, it sets up the mood, taps in to my emotions or helps me tap into them... but I tend to forget to change the cd after I get involved in painting.

I know that people with a better basic understanding of the nature of music like it for more reasons than I can get to, the beauty of the development of themes, the patterns, the riffs, the recapitulations, and much more, so that for them they also have an intellectual rousing from work they appreciate.

Then there are lyrics, which I often (gasp) don't listen to, though I'm glad to read the lyrics. Though sometimes I've listened, to Dylan, for example, and there I'd say the meaning and the sounds of the words add a lot to my well being.

I'm listening to a lot of italian cds these days, and I don't have time to sit down and figure out what the words are - my italian is rudimentary, if that - I am listening for the sheer pleasure of the word sounds from the different singers and the flow of the sounds of the orchestrated instrumental accompaniment on my ... skin, my shoulders, my ears, my gut.

Edit to add that some of us who frequent the art forum have talked about painting being related to music in many ways...

0 Replies

I relate to virtually all of that Osso

0 Replies

Chai Tea wrote:

That's the trick when people start talking about music......

Here, I can let it out, explain what's going on inside, and ask questions.
When someone enthuses (sp?) about must music, I'll ususally respond with a "oooh" or "mmmmm" with slightly raised eyebrows to indicate I'm paying attention, thinning my mouth in a commissatory way (I know what you're talkin' about brother) and a slight nodding of my head to indicate I'm in agreement.
Then, I'll try to segway the topic onto another subject.

Exactly my reaction.

When women start talking about their "interesting" jobs.

0 Replies

As a child, i greatly enjoyed solitude, and silence. There were no transistor radios, so if you couldn't plug it in, or you weren't in a car, you didn't have a radio. I would take long walks out into the farm country. There are always hedgerows by stream beds, and wood lots between fields. I'd find a spot from which i could not hear any people, any cars or trucks, and just wait. People walking in the woods make a god awful ruckus, and unless you're Natty Bumpo, that includes those of us trying not to do. Pretty soon, the little critters poke their heads out, don't hear the ruckus any longer, apprehend no threat, and go about their business. You hear them rustling in the underbrush and the fallen leaves, you hear birds calling, insects buzzing. You eventually reach a point at which your internal conversation ends, and you're just there. It's rather like meditation, but you don't need to learn someone else's sure-fire technique, and it doesn't require special mats or crystals--it's free.

At other times, i'd find the bole of a tree into which i could fit while sitting, near a road in the woods. People would walk by, or ride their bikes, drive by in a car or a truck--and never see me. They were totally wrapped up in their conversaions, or their internal conversations, or the radio blasting out a song. I've seen people strolling along in an animated conversation, not ten feet away, completely unaware of my presence--because they were that wrapped up in the conversation, that the world around them disappeared.

I've not had a sound around me since i turned off the radio yesterday evening--until the construction vehicles in the lot next door started up this morning. It was nice.

0 Replies

Setanta wrote:

As a child, i greatly enjoyed solitude, and silence. There were no transistor radios, so if you couldn't plug it in, or you weren't in a car, you didn't have a radio. I would take long walks out into the farm country. There are always hedgerows by stream beds, and wood lots between fields. I'd find a spot from which i could not hear any people, any cars or trucks, and just wait. People walking in the woods make a god awful ruckus, and unless you're Natty Bumpo, that includes those of us trying not to do. Pretty soon, the little critters poke their heads out, don't hear the ruckus any longer, apprehend no threat, and go about their business. You hear them rustling in the underbrush and the fallen leaves, you hear birds calling, insects buzzing. You eventually reach a point at which your internal conversation ends, and you're just there. It's rather like meditation, but you don't need to learn someone else's sure-fire technique, and it doesn't require special mats or crystals--it's free.

At other times, i'd find the bole of a tree into which i could fit while sitting, near a road in the woods. People would walk by, or ride their bikes, drive by in a car or a truck--and never see me. They were totally wrapped up in their conversaions, or their internal conversations, or the radio blasting out a song. I've seen people strolling along in an animated conversation, not ten feet away, completely unaware of my presence--because they were that wrapped up in the conversation, that the world around them disappeared.

I've not had a sound around me since i turned off the radio yesterday evening--until the construction vehicles in the lot next door started up this morning. It was nice.

EXACTLY!!

I've done my share of sittin' in the woods too.

Amazing what you see when there are no distractions.

Ahhh, the music of the crickets and froggies......

and the mating call of the elk.....BBWWWAAAAAAAAWWWWWW, grunt, grunt, grunt.

0 Replies

We didn't get a lot of elk where i was at . . . we did get the occasional Shriner, though . . .

0 Replies

they sound very much alike.

0 Replies

spendius wrote:

Chai-

I'll think about it.Some of your ideas require a serious answer.For now try to imagine music in a way that compares light patterns in eyes with sound patterns in ears.Just like the light fills up the visual space around you so does sound fill up the aural space.You discriminate which visuals you like so learn to discriminate which sounds you like.There is probably a connection and you haven't yet discovered it.Your ears may be dazzled.

That's interesting.

Some folks do appear to be *screeners* It's easy for me to become accustomed to the sound of the air-conditioner at night, when I'm falling asleep, for example. I like the sound of running water, too. The dishwasher..the shower, when I'm drifting off...snoooooooze.
I like it well enough that I'll miss it the first night I don't hear it.

Perhaps it's just associations...but I think there may be more to it.

0 Replies

Sounds like the air conditioner, washers, etc aren't bothersome.

Neither to me are the sounds of workmen banging hammers or sawing (not of course if they are right on top of you)

I've thought about this, and it's for 2 reasons....

The sounds are rythmic and unchanging, like an air conditioner.

Or

The air conditioner or the workmen are just doing their job.
A few months ago they were redoing the office space above us, and everyone complained all day about the sounds of the workmen, except me.

My thoughts were - They are there to remodel, they can't help that it's a noisy process. It's the sounds of people working.

Music is just so intrusive, it doesn't HAVE to be playing.
Of course there's a beat to music (mosty) but all the changes that go on, it like you can't relax because you don't know what's coming up next. Like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

It's all just so overstimulating, no down time.

Sometimes I wonder.....

Not so long ago, music was only played in person, and on non electronic instruments.

Music was a special event, heard once in a while.

I don't think people were any less happy in their lives.

Nowadays, for some people, it's 24/7.
Some people say they can't imagine not having that. But, if you were born just a few years back, you would have been just fine without.

I think that's why I wonder why some find it necessary to have that constant clamor.

It just doesn't feel natural.

0 Replies

Life without music isn't worth living for me.

I had a thread on Abuzz once, where I talked about a concert I went to. I felt like I'd found a missing part of my soul at that concert. I go to as many live performances as I can afford, and fit into my schedule. I like the interchange of experience between the performer/s and the audience.

0 Replies

I can appreciate you passion. I feel that way about books.

Tell me, what would you have done if you lived a few hundred years ago, in a rural environment?

Seriously.

0 Replies

I also have a great passion for music. I could never own an Ipod or any portable music device because when I hear the music I can't stop dancing. That looks silly when waiting for a bus.

0 Replies

Chai Tea wrote:

I can appreciate you passion. I feel that way about books.

Tell me, what would you have done if you lived a few hundred years ago, in a rural environment?

Seriously.

A few hundred years ago, my family lived in cities - most particularly Hamburg. I would have gone to performances of music by Bach and Buxtehude and Telemann. I would have gone to house parties where music was performed - as that was the principal form of entertainment. I would have probably focussed more on my own musical education.

0 Replies

Fair enough....

How about if you were born in some time where you were in a rural environment and there was only a festival maybe 2 or 3 times a year, and you didn't have personal access to musical instruments.

Not trying to be contrary, I just think about stuff like this.

Like saying you can't live without TV, well, lots of people did for 1000's of years.

Of course you could sing, hum, whistle. Believe it or not, I do quite a bit of that, but just little snatches of song, maybe 5 or 6 seconds.

If you lived in a time where it was normal that you had little access to music beyond your humming a little tune or the like, you don't think you'd be happy?

I think I relate all the external input people get today with a yearning for a simpler time, without so many artficle distractions.

0 Replies

Chai Tea wrote:

If you lived in a time where it was normal that you had little access to music beyond your humming a little tune or the like, you don't think you'd be happy?

I wouldn't be fully alive without music. It is as simple as that.

0 Replies

okey dokey kareoke.

0 Replies

Does anyone else feel this way about music?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know