Random ruminating on the perception of music

[Onder]

See I like music and I value it highly but a lot of stuff about why I like it / or some of it remains a mystery to me. I also study agriculture and some of the concepts that I come across in life sciences or some technical subjects catch my eye and I try to somehow apply them on other things, like art.

Basically I've been trying to explain to myself why I can't stand some shit and then on the other end feel the need to revisit some music like I was addicted. Of course I could just call prog metal faggotry as I was doing for ages but what does it really come to?

First point that I made to myself is that there are some aspects of music that when contained in it make it a terrible experience for me and I can't stand it. Examples: out of tune singers in clean vocals stuff, standard three chord harmony in pop music (recycled for the millionth time), the sound of cheap keys in country/folk music, etc etc. On the other end there are some aspects that make me like the music.

A concept that is closest to this is negative and positive selection, a simple idea in breeding of plants or animals for example. Basically you can watch out for some negative attributes and throw out shit that contains them (negative selection), or look out for positive attributes and keep shit that contains them (positive selection). I know it's simple but it's the closest I got to describe the process of how my mind subconsciously decides what I like, or even how I could learn to deliberately imitate it.

Another thing that I heard mentioned during some gardening lecture (laugh all you want), is the idea of "three perceptions", which are the following:

(1) sensation delight
(2) delight from imagination
(3) delight from understanding

I immediately thought I could apply those on perception of music. (1) Omg the sound on this Ildjarn record, (2) the things that my mind creates as a reaction to the music - maybe some feelings and memories connected with the song or its individual melodies, lyrics, etc, and (3) understanding how the music was written, what it was inspired by, how to play it perhaps, etc.

I feel like the first two are kinda emotional approach and the third one is somewhat technical and I immediately thought of certain people that lean towards the former and some that put more emphasis on the latter. There are people like mom who would never read sheets while listening to music and says that the only thing that matters is what it sounds like and what it makes you feel, and then there are more technical listeners who would go for contemporary music and study serialist tone rows and spectralist tone clusters and have the delight from understanding something that the first group wouldn't consider beautiful at all.

And then there are people who stick cucumbers up their asses. I need to go but I might add some more rambling later.

Phone edit: I realize the idea of three perceptions probably was about art in the first place, rather then gardens but I don't know the origin.

 

[Carpe Mortem]

I think a wedding of all three perceptions is definitely most common, but then you have noise fans and let's be honest there's nothing technically brilliant about sticking a cucumber up your ass with too much lube in a tunnel and applying heavy droning feedback.

And even so, if looking at the semantics, people could argue that delight of understanding boils down to 'It speaks to me, man.' They could argue delight of imagination based purely on lyrics or unusual instruments. They could argue sensation delight as piercing guitars or guttural bass that physically moves your eardrums in an unexpected way.

Maybe I follow, maybe I don't. I'm bored dude. How's your dick peppers?

 

[no country for old wainds]

this is the most profound thing i've read by a farmer since varg's last blog post.

 

[Onder]

I think a wedding of all three perceptions is definitely most common, but then you have noise fans and let's be honest there's nothing technically brilliant about sticking a cucumber up your ass with too much lube in a tunnel and applying heavy droning feedback.

And even so, if looking at the semantics, people could argue that delight of understanding boils down to 'It speaks to me, man.' They could argue delight of imagination based purely on lyrics or unusual instruments. They could argue sensation delight as piercing guitars or guttural bass that physically moves your eardrums in an unexpected way.

Maybe I follow, maybe I don't. I'm bored dude. How's your dick peppers?

I think the sensation delight and delight of imagination are the ones that can be easily explained, the first being simply hearing sounds and the second being your mind's reaction to it. However I'm not sure how to explain delight of understanding even though it feels so close/obvious to me.

The simplest version of it is I think knowing the music in sense of relistening to it several times and "knowing what comes next". My girlfriend listens to jazz sometimes and she once told me she would listen to some album until she "knew what comes next" and then she would move to another album which is really strange and I don't know where to put it.

My nine dick peppers have all germinated and now I'm not at home too much so my mom has to keep an eye on them I hope they won't die. I posted some pictures in the chilli thread IIRC.

this is the most profound thing i've read by a farmer since varg's last blog post.

Varg is a fucking dumbass I would like to see his farming.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

cool story bro.

 

[CiG]

I romanticise music too much to even want to peek behind the curtain. I sometimes think I know how a religious person feels about their faith in God when I think about music, there's something tarnishing about questioning it or trying to explain it.

 

[Vilden]

I think I agree with Cassette to a degree, I try not to analyze on an intellectual scale too much. I'm not musical att all and have a hard time evaluating music on technical merits (except when it is obviously really bad). I see it mainly as escapism which is why I value epic world building music I can get lost in alot rather than blasting headbanging metal (which has alot of merits too though mind you).

 

[Baroque]

I'm definitely on the understanding side if this is actually a thing. I love hearing how guitar solos play through chord and key changes and find delight in that. It's like listening to good jazz contrasted with the beauty of dissonance with the distorted guitars. Metal can be extremely beautiful in that way to me.

 

[CiG]

I consider Metal to be amazingly beautiful at times, not really when it's intentionally technical in nature though. Though there are likely some exceptions.

 

[Carpe Mortem]

I took 'delight of understanding' also as knowledge of how the piece was accomplished, but Onder does make an excellent point about songs or albums somewhat becoming 'old friends'. Truly, how fucking great is it when you're with a few other metal fans and Hall of the Mountain King gets to..... "the part". You know what I'm fuckin talkin bout. Or even by yourself. You know its coming.

Also in regards to technical brilliance, thousands of songs played by classically trained 'expert' musicians would sound less soulful than the original artists. Sometimes slipping on a note makes that song. I'm not making a related point with this paragraph really, I'm just spreading the field of rumination in further directions.

 

[Funerary_Doom]

Interesting post. I think i conceptualize music a little differently because i have this constant "rocking" in me (hooray ADHD!) that when I hear something I want to move. The first two perceptions I get quite frequently. The third one, it just depends. I think music is interesting because when I get the third perception (artists' intentions) I think its really amazing that a girl from the Bronx can be on the same plain with... idk somebody on the other side of the world, years ago (or recent too), with vastly different experiences. Music is very humanizing in that way.

 

[Onder]

Bump.

I had an interesting thing happen to me about a month ago when I was hospitalized for about three days and all I had in the hospital was a random book and an iPod running out of battery. At one point I was sick of reading old czech literature and I deepeared my Etymotics in my noise receptors and laid down on my back thinking okay let's listen to my favorite recording of English Suites. The Glenn Gould one. And let's concentrate on that fully because we have a shitton of whored out time fucked up in here anyway. Can't even call this procrastination anymore so go on.

I closed my eyes and pressed play. And well, my headphones fucking rule so that's always the first thought when the soundwaves start playing with my ear clitorises. But this was different because I've heard this album many times on my way to work and back. I worked 12h nightshifts and used a night tram line to get to work and back and I always listened to something on the way and it was very often this specific album.

And I was listening to it with closed eyes and images of drunken people throwing up in a tram started appearing and images of people eating pizzas that have fallen on the vomit-infested floor topping-down started appearing too. And then the smell of a homeless guy working for the city services and then the smell of five gypsies going to the railway station at stupid fucking 5AM just because they're fucking gypsies and I could see their faces and out of order expressions. I underwent this voyage enough times to see those things in my mind while perfect Bach was played.

And so I thought that Bach was the cleanest music, like an oasis of undisturbed piece, and how I could listen to my English Suites a million times and suddenly my favorite recording was infected with something really dirty. The smell of pissed hoboes and drunken whores' vomit. I fucked up big time. Well since then I moved on to French Suites which are, so far, clean and undisturbed up like a baby butt but still.

Has it ever happened to you that you had some piece of music that you subconciously connected to something stupid and it ruined it for you forever? We can talk about it because I know it can happen even with the purest of musical forms.

I posed the question to a friend and he remembered how he used to cut himself to certain Opeth songs and how he can't listen to them anymore and I was like well, I don't even need to cut myself to have a problem listening to that band.

But still.

Yeah a little sprinkle of Opeth hate won't hurt to finish another story of random ruminating on the perception of music. Random ruminating fuck yeah.

Jingle.

Cut.

 

[EternalMetal]

When you say Etymotic, you mean the godly ER4, correct? The first and still the best IEM ever made, I love mine to death. Unfortunately the left side of mine is starting to cut out when I move around, and im not sure whether it is the cord or the connection. And just a little tip, the red filters sound better than the blue, so if you dont already have them I highly recommend it.

As far as the ruined music phenomenon, ive had this happen to me on a couple of occasions. I used to do a lot of drugs back in high school, and one day I was tripping out listening to Devin Townsend's Earth Day, and I started having feelings of impending doom and had what seemed to be like a drug induced near death experience. Ever since, I always have a hard time listening to that song since it fills me with anxiety.

Otherwise, I cant think of many examples of music that was ruined by merely one experience. My father dragged me to lots of white trash biker runs back when I was a kid, and Black Sabbath's Paranoid was like a staple at these events. As a result I get shitty imagery whenever I listen to it. It also makes it hard to get into a lot of Sabbath's other material as well.

 

[Satanstoenail]

I had my first car accident while listening to The Tea Party's The Edges Of Twilight really loud. The accident was a bad one and although no one was hurt it really shook me up. I listened to the album a few times after that but I'd always end up with visions of the car I hit flying across the roundabout and hear the sickening thud of metal twisting and glass smashing. I sold the album and never listened to it again.