On Thu, November 3, 2005 9:45 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > There seems to be some confusion regarding "emotion" - are we talking > about the listener's emotion, or the creator's emotion??? Both Larry Heard > and Armando seem to think that the producer's of the music need to feel > certain emotions to create good work.
thats how it goes. otherwise, you could have machines write random lines of code that would be as emotionally satisfying as any soul music tune. > I don't buy it. Neither one have any idea what the creators of this music > were feeling, they just take THEIR emotional response as LISTENERS and > project it back onto the creators - ie. this piece doesn't move me, so the > creator of it must have lacked emotion when he made it. do you think it doesnt work that way? have you ever watched a live band play multiple shows? they can play the same songs, but not with the same feeling. and one time that song (when played with feeling) can crush you with its greatness. and another time, that song (when played with less feeling) just sounds ordinairy and uninspired. everything that is intrinsically part of the music was put there by the creator. any misinterpretations of it after that are the fault of the listener. > I argue that what matters is the creator's skill. Listeners will tend to > have an emotional response to a well constructed piece, but not > necessarily a response that is unvarying or easy to describe. Autechre, > for instance, makes me feel "something" but I'm not sure I could pin it > into some simple emotional category. But it's not like I'm contemplating > equations or something when I hear it, by any means. The music seems as > emotional to my as anything else. thats odd. for me, the intention and emotion of instrumental songs is much more easy to pinpoint than the emotions that sometimes become tangled in music with specific lyrics. the emotions conveyed might not be something that you can even name, which is why instrumental music is so much better for conveying those emotions. > I believe that much, even most, of the response to is rooted in the > listener's mood, their environment, their cultural background, their own > prejudices and their previous encounters with music. All these things are > external to the music itself. Even for one individual, music might provoke > different responses when sober as opposed to intoxicated, in different > settings, etc. thats mostly true for anything. and i would still argue that any misinterpretations are on the side of the listener or interpreter as opposed to the artist who had something to convey in the first place. > As for myself, I like interesting timbres, and I like interesting rhythms, > and to me that is the definition of music: rhythm + timbre (pitch and > harmony are, for me, subcategories of timbre). I'd hardly call this being > "moved by novelty", but I don't believe there is emotion "in" the music. interesting sounds are only as interesting as the sounds are novel. hearing the same sound over and over again gets on peoples nerves if there's no feeling behind it. this is why people are feeling the older tracks now, the lack of "newness" of the sounds is completely unimportant. its the feeling they care about. and when the feeling is good, the sounds dont matter. > Usually abstract music does produce emotional responses in me, but I don't > project them back onto the music itself. The emotions belong to ME, not to > the music. thats funny. i find abstract stuff to be the most specific in emotional territory because it has no other goal than to convey emotions. there's no dancefloor ideal that people try to appeal to that could mess up those emotions. > As a final example, I like Mozart now, whereas in the past I really had no > taste for that type of music, though I did intellectually "appreciate" it. > Now, I enjoy Mozart's music, and I feel something when I hear it - but the > music never changed. It was my ability to listen that changed. thats a separate argument. all different genres of music require different listening styles. learning how to appreciate a new genre of music doesnt mean anything except that you are now open to experience the emotions that are within that music. tom
