Is there a problem or we have reach the maximum level

[pianomankris]

Fist things first - I don't post here to argue with people. I post here to potentially help others with issues they may have with regards to piano, as it's an area i'm versed in. I won't be drawn into an argument. Plus I don't have time for one.

Wittgenstein, that reminds me of the time when I took both the philosophy of language and psycholinguistics classes. The value of the philosophy class to me was making me appreciate how much more sensible and relevant the discussions in psycholinguistics were.

You don't need to impress by demonstrating your prowess in this area. I don't doubt it. Nor was the Wittgenstein comment a quasi-test of your knowledge of such matters.

If you do know Wittgenstein you'll understand what I meant by the comment.

So here we go again,

A comment like that could be seen as rude.

a more wordy and still tentative, hooks are those pitch sequences of which there are probably several clusters that we are now able to better delineate statistically,

Are hooks the only structural feature in music that can release 'pleasure molecules'?

You used the word 'probably'. It isn't very scientifically precise.

that will elicit a much higher release of pleasure molecules in the brain from the general population relative to often perceived and commented by the general population as not nice.

When you say 'general population', do you have any statistical specifics?

Thereis a big problem with the whole mode of thinking shown in the past few threads - 'nice' doesn't mean 'good'.

'Not nice' also isn't necessarily a negative value.

I play some music that sounds 'terrible'. But that doesn't mean it is 'terrible' music (all these words don't carry any fixed meaning i.e. 'nice', 'terrible' etc as they are subjective. Never mind any biological findings. Hence I asked what you specifically meant by them).

We may have moved on since Kant, but that fact alone doesn't devalue the totality of his views on art and aesthetics.

Also, the 'pleasure molecule' principle has a problem. 'Pleasing' and 'nice' aren't synonymous.

Further studies will lead to

'Will lead to' is very specific, and means you are saying the following will be fact. But how can it be fact if the study hasn't taken place yet? Isn't there the possibility for there to be some potentially contradictory findings, and if not, what's the point of the study in the first place?

If there is such a possibility, then how can you surmise about something that hasn't taken place yet, irrspective of what current data may suggest?


The rest of your post regards the specifics of a supposition, so i've chose to ignore it.

[chernz]

It is naturally to compose when you improvise a number of time.

Think I got to improvise more.. and get creative..
else will not reach that stage..

will listening to more songs help in improvisation?

[ATW10C]

Rather than go point for point and let things become more 'confrontative', I will do this instead. I will just present my views from another format and leave it at that.

Previously, studies were done where subjects were exposed to music and at the same time, observations of brain activity were made. In general, music was shown to activate the pleasure centres in the brain. This studies were better than previous ones using self report measurements of preference.

Recently, significant headway has been made into identifying the "deep structure" of music via statistics.
And the interesting thing is, that Beethoven and U2 have deep structure similarities. In sample and out of sample testing continue to demonstrate the algorithms predictive success.

It is expected (and a no brainer one for that matter) that future studies will present music that have been sorted by its deep structure and that hits will show greater activation of the brain pleasure centres/release of pleasure molecules and so on and so forth.

Using the development pathway pioneered by those working on Chess AI we can see envisage future developments proceeding from being able to categorise music by their deep structure.

The most critical thing with Chess AI, besides hardware processor speed, was the development of chessboard position evaluation algorithms. Being able to discern the deep structure of music and differentiate the deep structure of "hits" vs non "hits" offers similar evaluation capabilities.

We can expect music composition software that will mathematically generate note sequences (and not necessarily by means of brute force search, see IPTRA theory), check the deep structure against a catalog of deep structures of historical "hits" and present the results.

For something more current, besides using analysis of deep structure to sift through unpublished music, it is now being used to identify the preference of various groups of people and recommending them newly published music with deep structures they have shown preference for.

A little more on Wittgenstein, a charitable view is that, if we could bring him to the present, he would recant his positions, seeing the flaw of taking a rationalist approach unconstraint by biology. But this said with the awareness of that we have the advantage of having tools and knowledge that those in that time didn't not possessed. Discovering how much interest there is in Wittgenstein's concerns by those involved empirical research in that areas he dwelled on is very edifying. If I could do it again, I wouldn't have bother taking the Philosophy of Language class. While I wouldn't know anything of Wittgenstein as a result (not that I know a lot), it really would not have mattered.

The last statement I do recognise that it will be contentious to some, as does the description of how the development of a machine music composer that rivals human composers will come about.

My last word. As I said with my first post. No hook, no replay. Vulgar? No matter.

[kongwee]

will listening to more songs help in improvisation?

It does help. You will start to pick up something in the song rather than just enjoying the music. You will start to imitate that part that you pick up. Example: you hear a run down of stagger notes, you start to imitate that playing.
It is not easy to figure out, but you will get used to it and enjoy from the fruit.
I alway find it more enjoying than ear training.

This capable will extend to music arrangement too.

[pianomankris]

Rather than go point for point and let things become more 'confrontative', I will do this instead. I will just present my views from another format and leave it at that

I'd rather you answered the issues I raised individually than avoiding them. Answering specifics isn't confrontational.

The more you write, the more i'm doubting you potentialy could answer the questions raised.

If you have studied philosphy of language, you'll know it's a well held view that people say more in what they don't say than in what they do say, i.e. they reveal the gaps in their knowledge no by what they say, but by what they fail to mention.

Previously, studies were done where subjects were exposed to music

Instanty I have an issue with the casual use of your language i.e. 'exposed to music'.

You'd have to define 'music', surely?

Secondly, what is classed as music is a matter of subjectivity, and not of science. John Cage's 4' 33'' is classed by many as music, and i'm sure if the test subjects were to 'hear' that work the results of the test would be different.

My problem is the decision of what constitutes 'music', and what specifically was used as test material.

Irrespective of everything you say, and any actual statistics you may present, people's subjective experiece of music - even of the same piece - will be different. It has to be.

and at the same time, observations of brain activity were made. In general, music was shown to activate the pleasure centres in the brain. This studies were better than previous ones using self report measurements of preference.

Do you have any specific scientific data on this? I don't doubt what you're writing - i'd just like to see more detail than what you have written above.


The rest of your post sounds like a rewording of an article.

No offence, but you haven't said anything of your views on the issue so far. You have just presented information in a very basic and rudimentary manner.

For something more current, besides using analysis of deep structure to sift through unpublished music, it is now being used to identify the preference of various groups of people and recommending them newly published music with deep structures they have shown preference for.

Is this a positive value?

A little more on Wittgenstein, a charitable view is that, if we could bring him to the present, he would recant his positions, seeing the flaw of taking a rationalist approach unconstraint by biology.

Once again you're surmising here. Have you read any Wittgenstein?

If I could do it again, I wouldn't have bother taking the Philosophy of Language class.

Dismissing every view apart from the one you personally consider at this present time to be valid is a very dangerous and narrow approach to take.

Could you tell me which specifcs of Wittgenstein's philosophy you consider run counter to current knowledge of the type which you are vaguely mentioning here?

The last statement I do recognise that it will be contentious to some, as does the description of how the development of a machine music composer that rivals human composers will come about.

I can only speak for myself, but you're completely misinterpreting what it is I have an issue with in your posts.

In regards to your statement - won't humans then learn what the computer can't do, and do that?

You're also missing the issue of intrinsic and extrinsic motivatonal factors with regards to creativity, and the influence they have on the creative process.

Surely an extrinsic motivational force such as a 'computer composer' will prduce an equal intrinsic counter-reaction in the composers contemporary to the theoretical scenario you are presenting?

My last word. As I said with my first post. No hook, no replay. Vulgar? No matter.

Not vulgar. Just lacking in insight.

[kongwee]

[chernz]

It does help. You will start to pick up something in the song rather than just enjoying the music. You will start to imitate that part that you pick up. Example: you hear a run down of stagger notes, you start to imitate that playing.
It is not easy to figure out, but you will get used to it and enjoy from the fruit.
I alway find it more enjoying than ear training.

This capable will extend to music arrangement too.

Imitation of the song...
I tried to listen to the song and play with the song...
for instance, listening to taylor swift's song, "Love story" and tried to play with it.. its quite enjoyable though the playing is not so good as yet..

indeed its not easy to figure.. and probably need guidance from the professionals..

I think it'll take creativity for music arrangement..

[centralcatchment]

Nice lively discussion we have here. I note that some parts of this discussion were probably a little too lively.

One issue that was raised was that music was becoming too plain, or too commoditised. In a way, it is true. Music is becoming much less complex. I think there is a reason for this. You can see this happening in architecture. Older buildings were more solid, more ornate. People put more effort into building them.

This is economics. If you buy a CD, no matter how complex it is, it's 70+ mins of music. It makes more economic sense to just churn out a lot of stuff that's more pleasing on the surface.

The irony is that we, in a way suffer from better means of production. In architecture, it's so easy to build buildings that we put lesser effort into designing them. Compare this with the past where every building erected was a monumental event. And therefore no effort was spared to make that building as grand and ornate as you possibly could.

Classical music is the music of the aristocracy. Never forget that. I have to laugh when people say that it is universal. No, it's rich man's stuff. Now, pop music is music for the masses, and necessarily the character is different.

I'll sound elitist when I say this: when classical music was the exclusive domain of an elite few, people were more demanding about the quality. When it's a free marketplace of music, anything goes.

That being said, sometimes simple music is great music. If you can't listen to, say, the Clash or Wire and understand what's so great about it, you don't understand music. Looking down on pop music is like looking down on hawker food: it's snobbish and stupid.

Thing about music is that half of it is what's coming out of the musician, and the other half is what's going into the listener. So even if I sound vulgar when talking about the market, that's the way it is. Music is not an entity unto itself. It is a relationship between the maker and the audience. So if there was great stuff being produced all the time, and it doesn't quite reach enough people does it count?

Music is a proper subset of noise, ie not all noise is music. I believe that music is finitely generated, that it is a permutation of a finite number of elements, and can be exhausted. Music exists in a metric space, and if 2 pieces of music are near enough in that metric space you would hesitate to say that they are distinct. So if enough music has been produced, that space becomes crowded, and it becomes possible to say that "everything that could be written has been written".

There's a great book about modern classical music, "the rest is noise". The author wrote that there is a lot of contemporary classical music being written but it doesn't get performed because there's no market for it. It's a shame but this is economics.

[pianomankris]

Music is becoming much less complex

This is just wrong. Music is more complex than it has ever been. Just with every other discipline in the world. Chopin didn't have to worry in the slightest about spectralism. And Bach didn't have to worry about serialism. Whereas if you go on any composition course at a conservatoire you'll have to learn about all styles of composition so far.

I think there is a reason for this. You can see this happening in architecture. Older buildings were more solid, more ornate. People put more effort into building them.

This is a poor analogy. What about Gaudi's buildings? What about some of the structures being created in Dubai at present? What about the Petronas Towers? Sears Tower? How far back do you want to take your analogy? Shall we compare the average house of today to a mud hut?

Offshore oil rigs couldn't be built 200 years ago as the physics of resonance wasn't understood. Earthquake-proofing buildings was also impossible. Architecture is more advanced now than it has ever been. If something looks simple it is because it has been designed to look and be simple (whether for economic or aesthetic reasons), and is not a reflection of present skill/knowledge.


It's a simple fact. Music is more complex now than it has ever been. Because you personally haven't heard of Babbitt or Murail doesn't mean that the world only consists of punk bands playing 3 chords.

[pianomankris]

I feel this thread needs a more detailed response.

This is economics. If you buy a CD, no matter how complex it is, it's 70+ mins of music. It makes more economic sense to just churn out a lot of stuff that's more pleasing on the surface.

I'm trying to understand the relevance of this point. What are you meaning by this?

The irony is that we, in a way suffer from better means of production. In architecture, it's so easy to build buildings that we put lesser effort into designing them. Compare this with the past where every building erected was a monumental event. And therefore no effort was spared to make that building as grand and ornate as you possibly could.

Functionalism is a product of a world population boom. You are confusing two sparate issues here. Plus, if you researched the topic you are discussing, you would know that in many early tribal societies the dwelling houses were purely functional rather than being designed with aesthetics in mind.

In saying 'the past', you are commenting on all time eras prior to the one we exist in now.

Classical music is the music of the aristocracy. Never forget that. I have to laugh when people say that it is universal. No, it's rich man's stuff.

When you say classical music, do you specfically mean the classical era i.e. the era that ended roughly in the 1830's?

Once again, you are contradicting yourself. You gave the example of CD's above. Classical music is readily available on CD format - at the same price as other CD's. Not 'rich man's stuff' then, as today it is just as accessible as any other genre of music. If not cheaper, with labels such as Naxos releasing budget CD's of classical music - even contemporary classical music, making the whoe spectrum of classical music available to all who can afford to buy a CD.

Now, pop music is music for the masses, and necessarily the character is different.

Define 'pop'. 'Pop' just means 'popular'. If the majority of the world listened to classical music, then classical music would be pop.

Any and every style is and can be 'pop'.

I'll sound elitist when I say this: when classical music was the exclusive domain of an elite few, people were more demanding about the quality. When it's a free marketplace of music, anything goes.

Do you have any statisctical data to back this claim?

Are you using 'classical' in the generic term?

That being said, sometimes simple music is great music.

No-one is disputing this.

Also, define 'simple'. Neurologically, any process of creating music is vastly complex, so in this respect there is no such thing as 'simple' music.

You should state whether you mean harmonically/melodically simple etc etc. And if you do mean this, then aren't these very terms relativistic?

If you can't listen to, say, the Clash or Wire and understand what's so great about it, you don't understand music.

This is, logically, a fallacious statement.

Looking down on pop music is like looking down on hawker food: it's snobbish and stupid.

Who is looking down on pop music?

Aren't you showing your own bias against classical music in this comment?

Thing about music is that half of it is what's coming out of the musician, and the other half is what's going into the listener. So even if I sound vulgar when talking about the market, that's the way it is.

The muiscian can also be the listener. Both processes can be part of the same individual.

Music is not an entity unto itself. It is a relationship between the maker and the audience.

Not necessarily. The maker isn't necessarily the performer. Also, same problem as before. You'll surely have to say what music is before saying what it isn't.

So if there was great stuff being produced all the time, and it doesn't quite reach enough people does it count?

Count for/as what?

Music is a proper subset of noise, ie not all noise is music. I believe that music is finitely generated, that it is a permutation of a finite number of elements, and can be exhausted. Music exists in a metric space, and if 2 pieces of music are near enough in that metric space you would hesitate to say that they are distinct. So if enough music has been produced, that space becomes crowded, and it becomes possible to say that "everything that could be written has been written".

You are confused in your reasoning.

What is a piece of music?

Is it the score? Apparently not, as someone can be familiar with the work without knowing the score.

Is it the performance? Apparently not, as the work can exist without having ever been performed.

Is it a performance? Apparently not, as the work can be performed numerous times, and if it was a specific performance, then it couldn't be performed again, or any future performance wouldn't be the same work.


I could write a piece of music that asks for a note to be played once a year ad infinitum. The possibilities could then never be exhausted, as my piece of music isn't finished yet. And never will be.

There's a great book about modern classical music, "the rest is noise". The author wrote that there is a lot of contemporary classical music being written but it doesn't get performed because there's no market for it. It's a shame but this is economics.

Does not having a market devalue it?




To everyone else who is seeing that music is alive and well and not running out of ideas, here's a great piece of Hyper-Spectral music by Dumitrescu - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKuCxRjT1uI (PS it's not electronic - the 'electronic' sounds are a prepared piano)

Enjoy (or not )