This is something I've never been able to understand: Is understanding, and appreciating, music something that only some people can do?
When I'm listening to music, even though I don't know music theory, I can in my mind predict exactly where a song is going. I can riff off of what was played, and I know what notes, chords, etc would be able to turn the song from one feeling, one movement, to another. I just kind of innately understand the ebb and flow of music as a FEELING, even if I don't know the hard theory behind it.
I kind of always figured that everyone could do this;
However, now that I think about it, I see TONS of people that have the complete inability to do this, or so I think. I hear people singing off-key, humming along and they lose the track, or more. It seems like they remember music note-by-note instead of by understanding the key etc and because of that they get lost as fuck
Is this something that only some people have? It's impossible to just ask other people because it's essentially an insult and nobody wants to insult someone else for just singing and having a good time.
Sorry if this is a pretentious question, I just can't think of another way to phrase it.
Bump for curiosity
>>66431367
Idk
I imagine that different people have different abilities by birth. For instance, there are people whose brains are naturally wired for music and can recognize differences in pitch easily (Mozart had perfect pitch like this) and there are people who are tone deaf, who can't tell one note from another. There are differences in natural ability in music just as there are in science, literature, or any other area.
With this said though, there does seem to be a natural understanding of music among all people. What you were saying about knowing what chord is coming next: music theory tries to deconstruct these types of phenomena. A case where you would "feel" the motion of the chord would be when there is a dominant chord about to move to the tonic. For example: G7 to a C.
Our brains search for patterns in music. When there is a major chord, things sound wholesome and together. A dominant chord in a sense dances very close to the major chord in order to build tension. When it changes, there is a sort of sense of relief.
I'm not an expert on any of this, so just take this all with a grain of salt. This is just what I've gleaned from various sources.
>>66433202
Also, forgot to mention: You may have perfect pitch and just not realize it. I have perfect pitch, and I didn't know for a long time.
I don't know how common it is, or really much about it at all.
>>66431367
I mean, this comes down to nature v. nurture but for what its worth, what you're talking about is most fundamentally pattern recognition, and while some people will have a seemingly "natural" affinity for it, a great deal of it is the product of either active training or passive conditioning.
Language has inherent tonal and rhythmic dynamics which directly influence the regional music of people with certain dialects. On a larger scale, all language has its roots in an overarching system based on how the human brain functions. Music and language are not that different yet people can speak without analyzing it, though their fluency varies to many degrees.
I think everyone is at some level musical, it's just wether or not they can apply this innate ability to and exterior source (instrument)
Check this out around 3:30. René Lussier has explored this connection between speech patterns and musical phrasing
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TcGTIiSf6FQ
All of this plays into John Cages theories on how everything is music and all sounds carry encoded message content
>>66433384
Okay 1) I love you. A little drunk, but I love you.
2) Honestly, I was expecting you to link Lucier's "I am sitting in a room", but yeah, inasmuch as language and music are both grounded in terms of sound's progression w/respect to time (albeit in the case of language, complicated by predication and semantic content), there's definitely some overlap between the two - it irks me a bit that critical reception so readily treats the two as separate.
>>66431367
Def something only some people have naturally. I used to perceive a piece of music as a single blob and couldn't differentiate between instruments.
>>66433630
Thank you for the love anon
Alvin Lucier is fantastic but René Lussier is much different though both are in the avant garde camp. I'm about to go get drunk myself. Cheers, hopefully more people post in this thread because I love this topic and it's rarely discussed here
>>66433287
Well pattern recognition would be understanding the music, but if I hear the first half of a song I've never heard before I can reasonably continue it in my head... Including all of the backup instruments. Had I the ability to write down everything in my head (I.E. if I knew stuff about music theory), I feel like it would be GOOD. Of course, this could just be me talking out of my ass, but I'm usually extremely self-critical (and critical of music) but I feel like it's something that would be decent.
I always figured that composers were just people that had the ability to write down what was in their heads, but I only recently realized that a lot of people don't even have that music in their heads in the first place.
>>66433384
The weird thing is that I suck at learning languages because I suck at memorizing things like vocabulary. I remember concepts and ideas far easier. It's bizarre, I remember abstractions super easily but I struggle with things like names.
>>66433619
Wow thanks for your contribution to the thread, weeaboo
who cares dude its just music
>>66433928
Who do you think makes music, anon
>>66434013
uhm people?
>>66434063
yeah, people who ask questions like this and figure out what makes music music beyond the theory
I think your question is too wide, OP.
think of a much simpler task, like putting someone at a piano, then playing a simple melody, and ask them to play it back.
the ability to do this varies greatly, as it involves pitch recognition, memory, spatial layouts of the keys and their relationships to each other, etc etc.
the first part is to be able to have the tune "in your head", so you can trial and error your way through the correct keys, even if you had never played a piano.
this is a simple example, could it be practiced? sure, but it definitely comes easier to some more than others. its somewhat a "bundled" function of the brain that requires various processes functioning well at once to generate a correct replication of the heard melody
your question I think would be better suited to narrowing down various aspects of music and from there analyzing innate/vs learned abilities and inclinations
>>66434720
cont'd
where I think it gets interesting is you need to realize first the difference between the input and output systems.
your senses are the input systems, but to then translate that to an output requires the compliance of your physical body to do explicitly what your mind demands
for example, think of a free throw in basketball.
imagine you're not actually playing just by yourself, and you take 100 shots, what percentage do you think you'll make?
clearly, if you haven't practiced you won't get a great percentage, but what's even more interesting is that EVEN IF YOU DO PRACTICE, its extraordinarily hard to up that percentage to near perfection.
i say this because this is something that requires NO CREATIVITY WHATSOEVER, its simply a physical action, and your mind is completely compliant in what you are asking it to do, so why then is it so difficult to adjust the minute functioning of your muscles, limbs, and fingers to produce a perfect shot every time?
a system like this i think is a good example of how the body itself needs honed in its capacity to do exactly as the mind demands, repeatedly and consistently to make a fluid connection between the two, so then if you hear a melody, you effortlessly sing the melody physically just as you aimed to without any variance in what is reproducing the sound, i e your physical vocal cords.
its entirely possible some people can absorb music properly but lack this output mechanism to reproduce it to a high degree of perfection themselves, and like I said, this is not even beginning to take creativity into account
Fuck you, OP, and everyone else ITT.
