Music - a blessing to the soul or maths you can hear?

[rabid_fox]

Now, I enjoy music. I thoroughly and honestly do. I play a couple of instruments and I've written a bundle of songs of...dubious...quality. I'm constantly on the prowl for new tunes to listen to and go through headphones like nobody's business from the amount of listening I do. I tried, just as an experiment, to go off music one Lent and I didn't stand a chance - I'm a complete addict.

Yet I have a friend who dismisses music as "maths you can hear" and despairs of people who take an interest in it. I mean, yes, I can see his point, music is highly mathematical...

So, music. Generally. Not as in "I like such and such" - "OMG! How can you like such and such?" Such and such sucks." "Well that's your opinion but..." "BUT NOTHING! Such and such is SO GAAAAYYY". Generally. As an overarching idea. Your thoughts? Opinions? Answers on a postcard.

[Zedd]

Music is good when it has plenty of catchy tune to it..So you make others listen to it and it will forever increpted into their heads! 

[Roureem Egas]

That math comparison isn't something I hear of, so I'm kinda wondering about your friend. Must be a bland fogey.

Well anyways, yeah I believe music to be one of the most awesome things on this planet. Except opera, metal, and anything similar because those grate on my ears. It's fascinating to me how evocative it can be of just about any sort of feeling. One other thing I've thought about it is how much it speaks about its origins and people.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Hmm. Have you guys heard Pi? The ultimate mathematical music... :-]

... my problem is, I was linked it at work, and I can't listen to stuff there. So...

[Fuyudenki]

if I tried to give up music for Lent, I'd fail spectacularly, because there's always a tune running through my head.  Sometimes, it leaks out, and I start singing... badly.(sometimes not so badly.  I'm in the choir at church, so I must not be too horrible at it.)

So about your friend who dismisses music as "maths you can hear."  Does he still listen to it, or does he shun music entirely?

I can't imagine trying to cut music out of life.  It's very mathematical, yes, but it's also very emotional.  There's a reason music is so prevalent in the world today, and it has nothing to do with linearization of point fields.

[bill]

Music is the only reason that I'm sane.

[nikename2]

 

[bill]

Actually, on retrospect, it isn't so much the music, as arguing about it.

[nikename2]

Well for me it can sometimes provide motivation. Most of the time though on the radio it just sucks. I can't stand the radio half the time they always play the same garbage...... 

[superluser]

Yet I have a friend who dismisses music as "maths you can hear" and despairs of people who take an interest in it.

Yes, I can see that (well, not the despair).  Johann Sebastian Bach set out very precise mathematical rules for his music.  I think the number of notes in a work was always divisible by some number, or something.  I prefer PDQ Bach, myself.

There are also other very intricately crafted pieces, such as those by Penderecki or Ligeti, which are beautiful and rich, but which would be musical atrocities if they were not composed perfectly.  Listen to Lux Aeterna, for example.

The mathematical component is part of what draws me to music.

[Fuyudenki]

I believe it was Bach who first set up the mathematical rules for music which allow one to transpose between musical keys, and to define "new" chords.  Before that, you couldn't really split music into parts the way you can now.  Is it any small wonder that a lot of Bach's music is as beautiful as it is?

My dad knows better than I do what I'm talking about.  He's the one who told me, and a lot may have been lost in translation.

Apparently, Bach was just recently discovered in Japan, and caught on like wildfire.

[bill]

Bach's music is ridiculously easy to play, but beautiful to listen to. Love his Cello suites.

[superluser]

Bach's music is ridiculously easy to play, but beautiful to listen to. Love his Cello suites.

Which Bach?  J.S. Bach might be easy, but I think J.C. Bach is probably even easier.  Of course, I can't play anything that requires two hands, so I'm pretty much excluded from ever doing Bach.

[bill]

J.S. Bach. As it's been said 500000 times, simple, but elegant.

[Valynth]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM

He's very, very right.....  Where's my "I love the 1790's!?"

This proves that music is a math that can be applied to everything.

[RJ]

I listen to J-rock/pop because I can't understand the music, thus treating the voice as another instrument instead of getting caught in the lyrics like what I do with western stuff.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM

He's very, very right.....  Where's my "I love the 1790's!?"

This proves that music is a math that can be applied to everything.

That, my friend, is hysterical. :-] Thank you -so- much. :-]

[bill]

Trust me, the cello parts to Symphony For the New World are worse.

[Tapewolf]

Bach's music is ridiculously easy to play, but beautiful to listen to. Love his Cello suites.

I dunno about simple - I certainly don't have the manual dexterity to play the little twirls on Adagio 564 in C Major - in fact I can't even sequence it convincingly

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

J.S. Bach. As it's been said 500000 times, simple, but elegant.

Personally, I prefer P D Q Bach, myself....

[superluser]

J.S. Bach. As it's been said 500000 times, simple, but elegant.

Personally, I prefer P D Q Bach, myself....

Needlessly complex, yet inelegant? And that's what makes it great.

P.S.  I think there's an echo in here.

I prefer PDQ Bach, myself.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

P.S.  I think there's an echo in here.

You would appear to be correct. Ewps. :-]

[Miaka]

I listen to J-rock/pop because I can't understand the music, thus treating the voice as another instrument instead of getting caught in the lyrics like what I do with western stuff.

Same here, though mainly when I have to get work done. >>
need backround music, don't want to understand the words so it won't distract me.

I listen mainly to hard rock and metal, though I have a lot of other stuff(possibly too much Beatles, for instance), I seriously cannot stand most hip hop, rap, or country. Opera, either, really, though I love broadway.
I have strange musical tastes.

[bill]

Needlessly complex, yet inelegant? And that's what makes it great.

Oh, you're a Rachmaninoff fan, I take it. 

[Knight]

Even as an atheist, I can say reducing music to math you can hear is just demystifying life for everyone else because you don't enjoy it yourself.

Yes, I just put my shoe in my mouth.

[Tapewolf]

Even as an atheist, I can say reducing music to math you can hear is just demystifying life for everyone else because you don't enjoy it yourself.

This is one of the reasons I've tried to avoid music theory 

[bill]

I'm not getting a 3 GPA this year because of Music Theory/Comp!  (And despite the name, we did no actual composition in that class, save a few "write a blues scale based on G-Sharp" exercises."