{"id":66,"date":"2011-06-24T15:03:26","date_gmt":"2011-06-24T14:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.corkcitygamelan.ie\/blog\/?p=66"},"modified":"2011-07-26T08:57:37","modified_gmt":"2011-07-26T07:57:37","slug":"but-is-it-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.corkcitygamelan.ie\/blog\/but-is-it-music\/","title":{"rendered":"But… Is It Music?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interesting, but… is it music? <\/em>I often get reactions like this to my work.<\/p>\n

What can I say? I generally reply that if it is made<\/strong> on purpose from sounds (including silence) by somebody with the intention to make music, then I call it music – whether I like it or not has nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n

See, many people seem to say things like this is not music<\/em> when they really mean I don’t like it.<\/em> If they had said I don’t call this “music”<\/em> or I don’t hear it as music,<\/em> then I couldn’t argue.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia has a substantial article about the definition of music<\/a> (the page will open in a new window) with many links to articles on related issues – well worth reading, in my opinion, but way too much to analyze in any great detail here. Edgar Var\u00e8se’s simple description sums it all up for me: He looks at music as “organized sound”. It seems pretty much in line with my own feelings about it, if “organized” implies deliberation and intent… and as I think about it: doesn’t “organized” in this context mean pretty much the same as “composed”?<\/p>\n

Here is my favourite example of “music” as opposed to “not music”, and it is<\/em> the most extreme case I can think of: Say, You are listening to the birds singing. By almost anybody’s standards, that’s a very musical sound, yet, I wouldn’t call it music. It has not been deliberately organized, or composed, with the intent of making music. Now, you activate your field recorder, record a minute or two of it, play it back to me and say that this is some music you just made. I’d have no problem with that.<\/p>\n

What the “bird song” actually means, now… that is a different story all together. I imagine that if I could understand it, I’d be hearing things like “one step closer to my nest, and I’ll peck out your eyes” …\u00a0 \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Anyway, I rest my case for now – but but I shall have a lot more to say on this highly controversial topic.
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Interesting, but… is it music? I often get reactions like this to my work. What can I say? I generally reply that if it is made on purpose from sounds (including silence) by somebody with the intention to make music, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.corkcitygamelan.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.corkcitygamelan.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.corkcitygamelan.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.corkcitygamelan.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.corkcitygamelan.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.corkcitygamelan.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70,"href":"https:\/\/www.corkcitygamelan.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/70"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.corkcitygamelan.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.corkcitygamelan.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.corkcitygamelan.ie\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}