DunDunDunpachi
Banned
Our brains are wired to observe and translate patterns. The mathematical spacing of notes in music surely plays some role. Perhaps we all have an innate desire to express worship toward a higher power or higher ideal, to compose something that expresses the inexpressible. Maybe music is just a happenstance phenomenon that humans invented to entertain ourselves.
Even if you are not as easily stirred emotionally, most can listen to a piece of music and give their opinion on what emotions they think the piece conveys.
I often wonder why a piece of music feels a certain way and whether others feel the same way about it. Music has its own language, using pauses and inflection and intensity to speak to the listener without explicitly spelling out what it is trying to convey. What I find strange is this 'language' can be perceived even if you do not necessarily come from the culture / society from which the music came. That's weird and indicates a deeper biological / metaphysical relationship between music and the human species. How can you understand a language a priori to any intellectual knowledge of it? Body language is much the same way.
Does this song make you laugh, or cringe, or bob your head, or get swept up in the romance? Could you spell out the exact lyrics or chord-progressions or percussion that makes you feel that way, or do your emotions come from the inexplicable "wholeness" of the experience?
There is a tremendous range of opinion on this topic -- from the materialist to the spiritualist -- so I wanted to hear the range of GAFer opinions.
Even if you are not as easily stirred emotionally, most can listen to a piece of music and give their opinion on what emotions they think the piece conveys.
I often wonder why a piece of music feels a certain way and whether others feel the same way about it. Music has its own language, using pauses and inflection and intensity to speak to the listener without explicitly spelling out what it is trying to convey. What I find strange is this 'language' can be perceived even if you do not necessarily come from the culture / society from which the music came. That's weird and indicates a deeper biological / metaphysical relationship between music and the human species. How can you understand a language a priori to any intellectual knowledge of it? Body language is much the same way.
Does this song make you laugh, or cringe, or bob your head, or get swept up in the romance? Could you spell out the exact lyrics or chord-progressions or percussion that makes you feel that way, or do your emotions come from the inexplicable "wholeness" of the experience?
There is a tremendous range of opinion on this topic -- from the materialist to the spiritualist -- so I wanted to hear the range of GAFer opinions.
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