music musings

[raino]

Writing my eco book while listening to my Spotify list "Romantic/dramatic" and have to wonder about the existence of music once again. Certain sounds arranged one after another evoking feelings, even specific scenarios. Latter is greater part cultural but former greater part innate, at least it feels so, though it can very well be that the music available to me even from remote cultures has gone through a filter which removes the incomprehensible and hard-to-relate. One example springs to mind. What little I've been exposed to gamelan music is interesting but can't gleam much emotional message or satisfaction from it.

One of those universal human things, which all human peoples share yet no other animal shares – I mean birds sing and wolves howl and so on, but that's more analogous to language (I think).

Human specialities: Music, fashion, religion (split later into science&philosophy&maybe psychology?)...

Fashion (in a very broad sense) is about being aware of oneself as an individual in a social setting.
Religion is very multi-faceted, but something about dealing with the need to have structure in the universe, an overarching story, which our brains are looking for.
Music = ? social cohesion, but also just the satisfaction of being able to affect one's emotional state quite precisely. But why sounds? Why not smells? Or touching different materials? These was this article titled something like "Science at last discovers why music exists!" and it was that it was discovered listening to music releases dopamine in the brain. Eeehh, thanks for nearly nothing. We already know it's pleasurable and that it's specifically dopamine, well, interesting for brain researchers but not one step closer to answering "why?".

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in other news, I've reserved almost all the tickets I need to get from Finland to Dublin for Worldcon by ground travel. Just the bus ticket from Helsinki to Turku harbour missing, they haven't been released yet. I never realised Ireland was so far away. Most of Europe can be reached in 2 days, to Dublin it's almost 3. It's going to be uncomfortable and expensive (at least more expensive than flying Ryanair or such - about 350€ just one way...) but that's my extreme experience. No mountain climbing or deep diving, just sitting in a bus and train and bus and train for nearly 3 three days straight.

Comments

[used_songs]

I wonder where bird and whale songs figure into this. Are they communication only, or do other birds and whales feel pleasure when they hear them?

When I sing to my dogs their tails wag. Is it because they love my voice or because they like music?

[flexagon]

I thought of whales also.

[raino]

I did not think of whales, great point! their songs might very well fall within the category of music. Intentional variation, emotional communication, (separate from factual communication), for pleasure rather than practical reasons... Maybe I'll go and cross music off the list of human specialities. At least I'm rather secure no other animal does fashion!

[kareina]

When you mentioned fashion I couldn't help but wonder if the human tenancy to use markers of clothing and bodily adornment as signals of tribe/class/ran/group/etc is one we got from seeing animals, and particularly birds with their feathery adornment that also serves to signal to other birds of a compatible type that "I am a good mate for you".

[raino]

Makes sense, since animals must have had a fundamental and profound place in ancient humans' worldview - probably in place of many concepts we now have they used to have animals, weather patterns etc.

[cordjostler]

Music is so weird in that way. kind of "magical". It's pretty corny, but I remember being younger and marveling at some jimi hendrix song making me cry. and even younger, before I was really conscious of what was happening, feeling weepy at a song on an oldies station. I think the hardest part for me to think about is that it surely must all be conditioned, and not just a power inherent to those notes or scales or even some human piece, interstitial to the technology of music.

The "why" is a great question. Why not smells? for real. If I had to make a hypothesis, I'd say that it's technologically determinant - it was probably easier for early homo sapiens (probably.. I've seen anthropological speculations that they are where "music" started) to make sounds than to make smells. Just because things that have a smell are more inclined to rot, or be consumed by use? I don't know.

hmm.. I wonder if birds get anything emotional out of "singing". (I also wonder if birds have emotions.. or what that's like) I wonder if human speech was ever more like birds singing and wolves howling.

A lot of fun stuff to think about.

[raino]

I just remembered this alarm clock my grandparents used to have, which played some sad melody, and I would sneak in their bedroom and listen to it, even though it made me feel melancholy. And wondering at the same time why should I want to listen to something that was so harrowing and sorrowful (a music box rendition of probably some musical song... might not have such an impact on me today :D ).

"it surely must all be conditioned" > I don't think that's true, there are certain universal similarities in speech tones and for example melodies to sing to kids to make them sleep are apparently easy to recognise across cultures. There was a study on that, I need to dig it up!