Discuss,Analysing and appreciating

thanks johnh, very interesting. your passion is obviously huge.

I've often wondered what aliens would think of the human species banging things and making noises to dance to. It is truly a strange thing we do, and a mystery why we do it, but it sets us apart. How that filters down to the music we adopt as "our taste" and that we reject as...well...in your case Country, is yet another deepening of the mystery.
Therefore, music appreciation is not "logical" or an instinct necessary for our survival, but something else feeding off our emotional state and must be akin to "love".
So tell me Richyh, what has happened recently to prompt this boiling over passion.
My guess, you are very recently in love, or you have small children and are therefore also very recently in love.
Am I right?
I must also add that my guess is that 98% of forum members here feel the same. Myself included, to the point of feeling a divide between myself and the friends I have that do not share my passion, like they cannot ever really understand me like my "close" friends do.
Know what I mean?

Thanks Rasher, the friends thing is dead right even to the point where some think your a little mad as some dont hear what you do. Iam very interested if anyone plays (or knows someone) an instrument proffesionally for their opinion also.
By coincidence I had my 1st child 15 months ago so very astute of you but I've written/discussed many times trying to put a finger on why there is the passion and fasination, over the last 25 years. Dave Poole from Creative Audio ("a friend") had some interesting thoughts.

You need to ask Fred Simon. He is very passionate about music in general and may have a theory (being on the music creation side), but like us, is a mere mortal and only an instrument of whatever it is that drives this thing.
Not coincidence Richyh, I recognise the symptoms (5 years & 13 months).
Go find Fred.

Is there any research into what actually happens to us when listening to music? I assume like pain/pleasure it releases endorphins etc. Therefore again assumtion that some music must make "bad" chemicals , therefore we dislike that genre/song. Then why do we have different views on each genre or artist etc?
No answers just questions.

Regards

Howard

richyh:

2 years ago, i had a few problems with my system. during the time i had NO system, i realised just how much i rely on it (get a life. etc??? but this IS part of my life...). i also buy a lot of music these days -- most of my recent purchases have been brass music because i am learning to play trumpet.

i would still play my music even if there was something decent on TV.

most of my early van morrison's are on vinyl -- astral weeks and all that. every now and then i treat myself to a van session.

BIG disadvantage: all this gets in the way of work -- SERIOULY.


enjoy it...


ken

Very difficult questions, of course, because, if nothing else, music expresses that which cannot be expressed by words. In music with words, I've always felt that even a great lyric is only a subset of the whole that its partner music conveys. In music without words, it's similar to looking at a clear night sky in a very dark place, contemplating the universe. Or becoming hypnotized by the continuum of the ocean. Or the unspoken feeling I get so often from my four year old daughter.

But just because it's difficult doesn't mean it's impossible. Here are two quotes, one long and one short, that are among the best attempts I know:


Sometimes I almost feel like music is a mistake — like we are not supposed to know about it. We have noses so we can smell, ears to hear, and eyes to see. Music, of course, comes in through our ears, but we all know that it is not just sounds. There is something else included in music that is very difficult to define. To me, it reminds us of where we were before and where we are going after. It is a mysterious vapor that somehow slips in the cracks between this plane of existence and some other one. The people who are good musicians have the ability to conjure up more of that vapor than others. Everyone recognizes it when it's there. It is something universal that goes beyond language and beyond race, country, or nationality. It is unmistakable when that vapor is there, we recognize it as something we all have in common. More and more, I see that it is the same thing you find wherever there is love, intensity, energy or human potential. All those good things include this same mysterious vapor that is the fabric of music. -Pat Metheny, musician and composer


Music was invented to confirm human loneliness. -Lawrence Durrell, novelist and poet

I was in San Francisco a few years back with my wife, before my kids were born, for a two week break. We had a ball and went everywhere, did everything, fell in love with the place to the extent that I consider it to be my favorite place on the planet. I have never been so relaxed.
I had to go back again as I was travelling through, and it was very strange. It was as if I wasn't supposed to be there, like they weren't expecting me, like I had caught the place with it's pants down. It was still SF and the beautiful place, but that time I didn't connect with it like I had before and felt...i dunno...weird - like I'd wandered into somebody else's dream.
I wonder if that is how some people regard music - that they enjoy it, but can't make the emotional leap that we seem to do. If that is the difference - that feeling - then I think I can see what is happening, but not why. There is definitely a Love thing here, and music must make the connection. If there is no Love, then there is nothing to connect to, if you see what I mean. Nice, but empty.
I'm not being clear, so sorry about that, but I'm sure the emotional state exists within us already, and music is only a conduit. There is nothing in the Music itself, the bunch/arrangement of notes itself, but in the composer & musicians performance. It's not what you say, but how you say it.
I'm not making sense, sorry...I'll give up.

Thanks everyone for the replies, alot of what I was thinking/saying and feeling conveyed.
A similar thing has happened to me as Rasher, I saw a band the other week (I can see us now sat in a circle on chairs like some selfhelp group). I wrote about it before, - it was when I went to Ronnie Scotts not knowing who we were going to see and on comes the first act and 3 songs in I looked at my friends and they looked how I felt- bored. Oh no whats wrong with this I couldn't really say, a 6 piece jazz group happily playing, all hitting the right notes but nothing came over to me.
At the interval we discussed going but thought we'd give the next act a chance. Roby Lakatos and his band came on and they started to play. Wow fantastic the thrill is still with me but I don't know why or what they did different. We left 3 hrs later all of us blown away.