Re: [microsound] music is the ultimate incorruptible

[David Powers <cyborgk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

If you as a listener, listen to something as 'music," it is music within 
that context. The question of communication is irrelevant. Actually, 
"communication" is more properly the realm of car horns and ambulance 
sirens, and not of music. Music is interesting precisely because it 
refuses to communicate. It's ambiguous.

Consider the case of a field recording:

Scenario 1: A train is screeching along over my head. I'm late for work 
and in a hurry. I don't hear any music. Nothing is being communicated. 
It's just random noise that happens to be occurring.

Scenario 2: Someone walks by with their mini-disc player, records the 
very same train, and releases it on a CD-R entitled "the Sublime Sounds 
of Chicago". I buy the CD and listen to it at home. I hear the very same 
train as in Scenario 1, but now I hear it as music. I think to myself, 
"the sounds of Chicago really are sublime."

The sounds in 1 and 2 are the same (ignoring the limitations of 
recording technology for the moment). Only my perception as listener has 
changed. However, at no point did the actual creator of the sound, the 
TRAIN, intend to communicate.

~David

Damian Stewart wrote:

> but there is a tacit assumption that the noises being listened to are 
> communicating something, surely? listening to a foreign tongue being 
> spoken i don't understand the content but i understand that 
> communication is happening.


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