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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: You bring up interesting--even important--concepts, yet your understanding is incomplete, therefore misleading posted by willkayakforfood on July 4, 2012 at 10:11:18:
"Even the idea of 'perfect pitch', as it is usually discussed, is something we can well do without. 'Perfect relative pitch' is much more useful (and much more in line with reality in general)."
I mentioned perfect pitch not because it's essential to perform, appreciate, or compose music, but because we understand (as a few years ago we didn't) that there is a window in early childhood for its natural acquisition. This fits well with what we know of the development of perceptual and cognitive skills: some are better, more easily, or more completely acquired at certain ages. (In fact, perfect pitch can be acquired by an adult, with a year of systematic practice, so it may not be the best example. But it requires conscious effort and exercises to do so.)
'Sure, [most] musicians must "master" (a term that opens up its own massive can of worms) both intellectual concepts and physical techniques, but it isn't until they transcend all that in some very essential ways that they become what I call "real musicians". In most cases, this thing I call "transcendence" in this context must pass through this clumsily termed "mastery", but not necessarily always. More semantics: There are many self and otherwise described "musicians" I don't consider "artists", and here again is where this "transcendence of the intellectual/technical" comes into play - or doesn't.'
This reminds me of something that Einstein wrote: "After a certain high level of technical skill is achieved, science and art tend to coalesce in aesthetics, plasticity, and form. The greatest scientists are artists as well."
I have heard similar sentiments expressed by virtuosi: that once technique has been honed to a certain level, the artist is free to interpret or create as he will.
Actually, I don't think this is alien to everyday experience. An example familiar to all might be reading. When we are small, we have to "sound things out," struggle with unfamiliar words. Our brains, occupied with these things, can't focus on matters of interpretation. As adults, we are so familiar with the words that we need see only part of them to read proficiently. Those who are sufficiently gifted can read ahead, interpret, and adjust their pacing and intonation for dramatic effect -- in short, create a performance in real time. The process is essentially automatic, and yet left hemisphere processing is still involved. The rules of character recognition, spelling, and pronunciation have left their mark on the neural network, and the processes becomes automatic. The manner in which this happens is I think now pretty well understood.
But -- as with music -- a literate person still uses very different brain areas than an illiterate one. This, I think, is why different brain areas light up in trained musicians than in other listeners when listening to music. It isn't because they're necessarily analyzing the music consciously. It's because those areas have been programmed in the process of their training. They are identifying time signatures, note pitches and duration, vertical chords, harmonic progressions, and so forth, even though the musician is no longer consciously aware of the process. And that's what shows up on the brain scan.
'More irony of course, as at least some limited form of "audiophile speak"--at times, in appropriately tiny doses--is also helpful to me as I put together electronic reproduction systems through which I might enjoy listening to--and again, semantically speaking, "hearing/feeling/understanding/appreciating"--recorded music.'
But that's the point of audiophile speak, isn't it? We use words because we can't do Vulcan mind melds. They can't describe what we experience when we listen -- if they could, we wouldn't have to spend money on recordings and gear! -- but they're useful in characterizing it so we can make more informed choices.
I find it interesting in this context that Bach, the most learned of composers, apparently had little patience for dry theoretical tomes. He taught by example.
It seems too that he was still studying and learning relatively late in life. As you say, mastery is never complete, in music, anyway. Mathematicians may do their best work in their 20's, but the great composers seem to have increased their mastery until they retired or died. Still, I think the concept is still useful, even if it is never entirely achieved. Otherwise, how describe a great musician? It isn't so much that he's reached the peak of Parnassus as that he's gotten much further than the rest of us.
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Follow Ups
- RE: You bring up interesting--even important--concepts, yet your understanding is incomplete, therefore misleading - josh358 12:18:27 07/04/12 (5)
- Perfect pitch is a nonsense in the context of equalised temperament - Timbo in Oz 16:12:23 07/05/12 (1)
- RE: Perfect pitch is a nonsense in the context of equalised temperament - josh358 17:02:14 07/05/12 (0)
- RE: You bring up interesting--even important--concepts, yet your understanding is incomplete, therefore misleading - Raymond Leggs 15:55:04 07/04/12 (2)
- Graet work happens in all genres, but the =se are almost universally multimple close mono-miked recordings - Timbo in Oz 16:40:08 07/04/12 (0)
- RE: You bring up interesting--even important--concepts, yet your understanding is incomplete, therefore misleading - josh358 16:27:11 07/04/12 (0)
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