Definition of Music:
A complex organization of sounds that is set down by the composer, incorrectly interpreted by the conductor, who is ignored by the musicians, the result of which is misunderstood by the audience.; )
...in their playing you hear not only precision, color and balance, but thunder, lightning and the language of the heart."
Boston Globe critic description of a performance conducted by Benjamin Zander with the Boston Philharmonic.
Melody (temporarily defined as a sequence of distinguishable pitches) is often emphasized as "essential" for the making of "Music" (temporarily defined as an organization of sound for, at least partially, "esthetic" purposes). To paraphrase composer Christian Wolff, melody may even be largely "inescapable" as long as it exists conceptually because most, if not all, sequences can be imagined within its context. For Example: starting with the premise that what's perceived as a distinguishable pitch varies with the perceiver's ability to distinguish, a hypothetical listener might hear a "texturally dense" sound in which the "main" change that establishes a "sequence" may be something as subtle as the changing of 1 harmonic (only) as a "melody" (what's defined as "1 harmonic" being too much to go into for these purposes) while another listener might just conceive of the same sound as undifferentiated "noise". Therefore, if one accepts that a "distinguishable pitch" can be any sound (or, ultimately, anything), any sequence can be accepted (or heard, felt, whatever, etc..) as a Melody. Of course, some people will, "understandably" be opposed to this reduction (or expansion) of "melody" to a synonymn of "sequence" - maintaining that the word must be more specific in order to retain any value.
Topic:
STRUCTURED RANDOMNESS
How we work, how nature works, and what we can do to make electronic music fit into such a wild and natural world... or something like that.
In a computer we can model almost any element of human cognition: sight, smell, hearing, touch, lexical processing, voice and facial recognition, etc. All of these functions are modeled in the computer's perfectly symmetrical, mathematical, and logical internals. The computer performs these functions well, but we still cannot even get close to getting the computer to "create" or to infer or to reason without logic. In theory, we could build a neural network that can simulate the same number of neurons in the brain of a small mammal, such as a dog or cat, but that network would still just sit there in the computer mindlessly and logically doing what we told it without a single shred of initiative or feeling.
How can this be? If we can model neurons -the very foundation of our own minds- so perfectly and flawlessly then why doesn't our massive computer do anything but sit and drool all over itself? Many would argue that the answer lies in randomness. You see, every single neuron in a living breathing organism is just slightly different than its neighbors. Each neuron has its own specific tolerances, its own slight subtle variations, you could even say its own personality. Could it be that this randomness at the neuronal level build up to our massive differences in personality type? We each think a little differently, and we each have seemingly random experiences everyday that shape who we are. One could argue, that the very definition of the term "natural" is "randomness."
Extend the metaphor to modern music. Here we are, using logical, mathematical, and symmetrical tools to produce a product meant to be consumed by random unpredictable mammals and hey, look at this, a lot of the newest music making tools are intended to model instruments that have a certain random nature in them, like the natural harmonics in a vibrating violin string subtlety influenced by minute changes in air pressure and resistance. I think that the brain enjoys randomness, seeks randomness, and is consumed by the search for new and interesting things.
You can extend this metaphor to almost any form of art. Film, for example. How many times have you read a film review where the reviewer said the plot was formulaic? I'm sure quite a few. How many movies have you watched where you could almost predict the outcome of every plot and subplot the writers threw at you? Could you identify a problem with the production quality? Probably not. Could you identify a problem with the acting ability? Probably not. Hollywood did, after all, spend a zillion dollars to produce it. They spent every single penny making sure the acting was flawless, the sets were flawless, the special effects were as believable as possible, and the audio was spectacularly well mixed. They spent all that money and skimmed over the thing that the whole movie was put together for in the first place... the story. And your brain? It went out to get soda and go to the bathroom because the true randomness wasn't there. All that money, and the movie flops.
I think that the big secret to making music that stands out is a lack of pure tones. The music that stands out most to me, uses sounds I have never really heard before.
So there it is...It's just me, my brain, my listeners, and nature. What am I going to do with it?
I'll just to have to see what noise comes out...
