"Ian Iveson" wrote
Interesting. Looking at that and a brace of "you may also like"
suggestions from Amazon, it appears there is a body of theory around what
we might call "psychoacoustics"...the psychology of sound and music. For
me, it kind of misses the crucial issue, or perhaps just loses it in a
heap of detail.
Psychoacoustics no more explains music than an understanding of the visual
cortex explains visual art.
I would expect anthropology and sociology to envisage a bigger picture
with a different sense of "purpose".
I'm uncomfortable with the word "purpose" in this context. Try "function"
instead.
Yes, which seems self-evident. Music and music-makers
seem to have a firm niche in just about every human
social pattern.
Not self-evident for those who only listen to pop,
Sorry, I fail to understand (or agree with) your point. It's a study of
human societies that will tell you that music and music makers have a firm
niche in just about every social pattern, not what sort of music you do, or
don't, happen to listen to.
or who have only superficial knowledge of the world in general.
A truism if I every I saw one, why bother saying it?
A recent visitor to my house seemed taken by the valve amplifiers, so I
asked if she was interested in music. "I'm not obsessed" she replied. I
guess she meant "no".
And the point of that anecdote is?
Though interestingly some Muslims claim that music is
"forbidden" by God.
So do some Christian Denominations. The prohibition of music by Christian
denominations seems strange given the Bible's treatment of music. The
usual Christian canon of holy writings includes the book of Psalms, which
can be translated "songs".
The link between music and religion is an interesting issue.
For some reason I never worked out I was sent to Catholic
schools, one a convent and the other a gothic pile with
Jesuits. God, for fear of terminal unpopularity, had
recently decided to relax the rules of language and music, but my bunch of
fundamentalists, bent on self-anihilation, stuck to the old
ways. Latin plainsong covered the ground between dreary and
angelic, but couldn't do happy or sad. For christmas we were
allowed some jolly polyphony.
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txc/plainson.htm
Yes, and?
snip
.. A
little further afield, France has plenty Arabs who do stuff
like
http://www.last.fm/music/IAM/_/La+Saga
which, for modernity at least, beats any Christian music
I've heard. At the Divine Mission of Christ the Saviour, Bradford's last
stand, they're into heavy metal.
Why this obsession with "modernity"?
Seems odd for something that seems to
be as essentially human as language is.
The banning of pop music would be part of a bid for total control: a
society in which everyone must consider themselves in church wherever they
are. An attempt to make everything sacred, which to Christianity's
traditional dualism is a contradiction in terms. Not even the most
fundamental catholics, AFAIK, tried to make people speak Latin, or
constrain themselves to plainsong, at home or in the street.
Eh?
Not only that, but music is a kind of language, even just instrumental
music.
This is where the crux is, I imagine. But where's the Music/English
dictionary? Linguists have, sensibly IMO, drawn a line. Are there several
languages of music, I wonder, or is it universal?
Transcendental, perhaps. Whereas English is the language of individuals
within a society, music is the sound of society itself. Just as the cells
in our bodies can't understand English, we can't understand music.
Again - Eh? what are you on about?
Should an audio engineer know?
Depends what you mean by "audio engineer". If you mean a
recording engineer in the music recording business - yes,
otherwise not necessarily.
I haven't met an audio engineer who does not seem to think that music has
a purpose. Some of them can be quite eloquent about it, even those who
are far removed from actual music production.
How does that sense of purpose manifest itself in the work of the
engineer? Does it guide him, or merely spur him on?
Depends of his job, obviously.
David.