Philip A.E. Jonkers <ephilution@attbi.com> suggested:
> Okay, let's brainstorm for a while.
Yes, please, let's do that. The "rules for brainstorming", if I can describe
them that way are to collect ideas without being critical of others, postponing
analysis and criticism until after a large enough collection has been made. A
good approach, I think, though somewhat unlikely for the persons on the
memetics list. Even though I (in theory) want the non-judgemental form of
brainstorming, I cannot resist adding comments to Phl's statements.
> Music arouses emotions and memories.
Is that a general rule, or not? Romantic music (Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, and
endless love songs) does arouse emotions and memories, but does ordinary Bach
and Mozart? Yes, I suppose, but I don't see it as having that purpose. Much
chamber music was written as dinner-table music or to fill up the background
during the renaissance-era equivalent of cocktail parties, and was intended for
a Muzak-like role.
> Usually we prefer music that arouses feelings and memories of pleasure.
I just can't quite agree, unless this is meant almost tautologically, as to
"prefer" is to feel something. I often like music that arouses feelings, but
not always. Something nice to keep the right side of my brain from getting
bored is almost always playing when I am reading and writing at the computer,
but I want that music non-emotional, and non-distracting. Mozart is perfect
for this role -- Bach too, (or instrumental bluegrass, to switch genres).
Vocal music is out (usually, for me), since it involves too much of the brain
(as explained in my "neurophysiology: music and the Dragons of Eden" message).
> Music can also be so powerful and overwhelming that it is often allowed
> by the group of its members to let go their emotions.
Yes, a good thing when that is what they want -- my social life is not full
enough to experience that, much, sad to say.
> As a matter of fact, if I listen to some really cool music I have an almost
> uncontrollable urge to share listening with (an)other person(s), preferably
> (a) trusted friend(s).
Describing the non-emotional background/right-brain-pacifying kind of music I
play while working, I would like to use the word 'cool', but that is used in so
many other senses, often as a synonym for 'hot', i.e. popular, in high demand,
or just excellent, that some other word seems needed.
> This somewhat rare opportunity to overtly express and share ones
> feelings in a group may be the reason why it is so valuable in society.
This seems like the kind of statement that is very true in the 21st century
European or North American context, where singles and couples in isolated homes
go out to socialize and expect to hear and perhaps dance to music, but would
that also apply to poor peasants in India who are never alone in their lives
and rarely free from excessive-and-unwanted opportunities for socialization and
the sharing of feelings?.
> Perhaps one can call this the social function of music.
I would call it "a" social function of music, but not "the" social function of
music.
> To come back to your question why we choose music I would answer it
> does so because it can and its easy accessibility.
Yes, easy for our moderns with radios, TV sets, CD-players and computers, but
for most of our multimillion-year evolution music was much simpler and people
did it for themselves because they had no easy access to anything canned.
> I'm particularly interested in what goes on in the brain.
Me too. I promise we won't neglect the neurophysiology of music.
> why do we like music as it is? Why do notes have to be arranged
> in some particular order for us to like it and when you alter the order we
> suddenly don't like it any longer?
That is a complicated question, but, to oversimplify, start by thinking about
simple chords. Our preference for major and minor chords over tritones and
arbitary sets of neighbouring semitones is not arbitrary at all, as Pythagoras
told the world and Leonard Bernstein has much more recently reiterated. Moving
between chords lowers or raises the tension between the resolved and unresolved
feelings, reminding one of the ups and down of life, perhaps, all of which can
be explained in many ways that make use of the sound-spectrographic role of the
ear and the information-theoretic encoding-densities needed to describe the
resulting power spectra.
For sequences of single notes without harmony there are the similar and
probably related effects of the implied "broken chords" which seems to come
from harmonies between the note being played and the ones most recently played
and depends then on our short-term memory for sounds.
With respect to "music as secondary sexual characteristic", Phil noted:
> A typical masculine kind of music I consider to be Hip Hop. But to say that
> Hip Hop attracts mostly female listeners goes a little too far for me.
Hip Hop is largely male I guess, and I can remark personally that all masculine
Hip Hop alienates me -- the only Hip Hop that I have purchased and listened to
for pleasure has been performed by female singers. But male Hip Hop certainly
does attract a lot of women, and many years ago when young, blonde,
anglo-Canadian relatives of mine were similarly attracted to this music I was
quite annoyed about it. I can't quite justify that feeling, and won't try to,
merely citing myself and those young relatives of mine as examples.
> Thanks for your encouraging words Douglas. I am willing to give it a try as
> I have subscribed to the Function of Music list.
Yes, I noticed that. Thank you very much, Phil, and I look forward to your
future contributions. Until the Function of Music list itself gets going
properly, or someone on the memetics list complains, I will be cross-posting
messages to both groups, and suggest you do the same.
I have rather a large number of other groups, which I have largely neglected.
The only one of certain relevance to the memetics list is the Memetics Flowers
list, (the usual blank e-mail to MemeticsFlowers-subscribe@yahoogroups.com will
subscribe one).
While I have indeed neglected that group like so many of my others, I have not
completely neglected the matching website, www.MemeticsFlowers.Org, (which
should be accessed by clicking on www.SocialTechnology.Org/MemeticsFlowers.html
until I get the MemeticsFlowers.Org domain registration moved from the
loathsome NetworkSolutions to www.GoDaddy.com, the registar of choice, for me
at least).
New on MemeticFlowers.Org is a short and easily understood Python program which
actually does something quite useful -- taking a list of section headings and
generating an html page therefrom with an initial clickable list of those
sections followed by the to-be-clicked-to section heads (as anchors).
A very incomplete table of my groups with group homepage and sign-up links is
at the bottom of my personal homepage (at the link in my signature) below. I
must find time to update it to include all 14 of my mailing lists. I consider
the topics and outlooks of these mailing lists as memes, though they are not
very successful ones, yet. Actually the 14 groups are parts of 14 "packages"
of domain-name-registration, domain-home-page, discussion-group,
group-homepage, etc. that I have put together using various domain-registrars
and mailing list or group providers.
I would very much like some one registrar, group provider or portal service to
offer such packages, and have told the president of GoDaddy.com he should do
it, but with no luck so far. Part of the purpose of MemeticsFlowers.Org is the
creation of such packages -- and more, beyond -- which I mean (in part) by the
MemeticsFlowers subtitle: "Attractive Reproductive Organs for Memetic
Organisms" -- flowers being the reproductive organs of angiosperm plants.
dpw http://www.SocialTechnology.Org/dpwilson.html
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