|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
180.200.141.50
In Reply to: RE: No. posted by rbolaw on August 08, 2012 at 18:52:24
But I can't be certain that it is better for me than those without the training. Because we are all stuck inside ourselves.
Would you expect someone who attends a lot of live classical concerts and is a 'phile to get more out of listening - anywhere, than someone who attends far less concerts. Because I would, on average / all other things being equal.
I still think it's most unlikely that anyone without any training in music can be as exalted by music as I am. I know few people for whom it matters as much.
Do you think you could ever enjoy a piece of excellently made and beautiful furniture you bought, as much as the person who made it always will?
I am aware also that I care about the minutiae and the whole in ways some very good musicians just don't.
Our main organist can't get why I love old or modern tracker-action pipe organs over the much more common electrically operated remote console pipe organs. Our second organist can hear why, though it's not a big issue to him either. I can see why having an electric motor driving the air-box's pump is a good thing, one less slavish job at least, and a constant air pressure.
When listening to recordings I can be bothered by excess microphones, close-miking added to distant miking, .... by the mix, which I do not want to hear, ever.
I do know that a greater in depth understanding of lots of things means that those who have it and where I do, are good at explaining and assessing those things, I get asked to by friends. Viz. Our number two organist is also a tenor in our choir and as the console is right in 'the quire' he usually sings with us, when ever the organ score allows! He is always interested in my comments
I'm sure I enjoy more types of music than for example someone who just hates HIP approaches, and often hates/undervalues anything but white tie and tails classical. My quotient od pleasure is higher that way.
I know I enjoy singing at our annual twinned Christmas Carol services, one in the RC Cathedral and one in our Anglican (Episcopalian) Church of St Pauls, with both choirs and with instruments and organ.
And I can feel that I do get more out of it than my wife who comes to both, she isn't a musician, I am.
When I listen to music just in the audience or at home, I am doing all that any music lover is doing, but I know that my knowledge enhances the feelings, say with a difficult but not obviously difficult section or whole piece. I'm also, at one and the same time, and especially at the end of each movement and each piece, making an instant instinctive assessment of what they made of that structure, the piece as a whole, or even so far.
I am still learning how to do that with paintings and sculpture, where I am a lot further behind than I am with music which also still grows. Yes, I can draw although I need to be fresh and centred to do it remotely well.
LBNL, I used to have a side-line business setting up new home audio systems / enhancing existing set-ups. "I can hear more." etc, etc.
In short, it's giving more of a shit than most can, or want to IME&O.
LBNL I think much of post-modernist thinking is specious crap. By definition some great stuff must happen and does do in the popular genres, but Achey Breakey just ain't greatey. 'Kay?
Note that a post in response is preferred.
Warmest
Timothy Bailey
The Skyptical Mensurer and Audio Scrounger
And gladly would he learn and gladly teach - Chaucer. ;-)!
'Still not saluting.'
Follow Ups:
the power of music as a medium for communication on an emotional and intellectual level across cultural differences and backgrounds. True, my training and experience gives me more technical knowledge about how music is constructed than a non-musician would have. But that's far from the most important thing, IMO.
More importantly, I've studied and listened carefully and repeatedly to a lot of music, and even read up on its historical context. That may give me a significant advantage, but any non-musician could do the same.
You can spend a lifetime reading up on Shakespeare or James Joyce, and get a lot more out of their work, in fact you could become the world's leading expert and scholar, without being a poet, playwright or novelist yourself. And even that is mainly because Shakespeare and James Joyce come from a different time, place and culture than today's readers. Shakespeare certainly expected the crowd in the Globe Theater to understand him. And someone living in Dublin in 1904 would need a lot less background information to understand Ulysses.
What makes you think that you can "feel" music deeper than another just because you can play it on an instrument?
Does an excellent musician get it better than a mediocre one?
Can a classically trained musician "get it" more than a jazz musician?
More than a great rock musician?
More than a self-taught bluegrass musician?
Does a trained chef appreciate food better than a devoted home cook?
Does a lover of art have less feeling for Van Gogh than Warhol or Duchamp?
Art by it's very nature is elusive and open to interpretation.
believe it because I can't get inside anyone else's head. You'd also know my reasons for coming to that surmise. So you wouldn't be asking.Let's look at sport, which IMO is as much a performance as any concert, and has the excitement of an uncertain outcome, and for a supporter of one or other team even more gripping. I was a strong supporter of the Canberra Raiders for a long time, but got busy and expanded my career.
I now love the game of cricket and am continually learning about it, the skills etc. But I have never played it other than in backyards, I was bored by it until I bothered to learn about it, in my twenties, at the level of player skills, teams and leadership. My two nephews both play cricket well enough to compete within the State/territory competition. And I've had sessions in front of the telly watching Australia play England and I KNOW they were more affected, and by more things more often than I was.
I played Rugby (League) at school, I fenced in Summer. Rugby League is a game where Australia is among the top three globally, and in Rugby (Union). I began in yr 10 and captained my team by year 12. No protective gear, no box and no mouth brace, so I lost a tooth.
I am not a 'jock' ? type and don't follow a team, or the national competition closely. I used to but gave it up. Viz. If there's a good concert on FM I'll choose it. But I am never bored watching a game at first class level. Riveting and affecting, because I have done it.
I have watched the American football final several times and find it boring, because I don't understand what is going on, mostly but all the stopping doesn't help. I get baseball a bit more as it is easier to follow, I think.
Also it's not 'just' because I 'can play an instrument' (I sing), nor 'just' that I can also perform with other musicians and respond to them. I 'just' can read music, I 'just' understand form and development, and keys and their mood assignments in music history, etc, etc, etc, not 'just' any of them, but all those things together. And I've performed a lot of music and been to a lot of concerts and operas as a listener.
How do YOU know whether someone really gets some music, or doesn't?
I think it's a given that some people are more musical than others, do you agree? That some people are more intense in their responses to lots of aspects of living. Including how much they value real developed and considered thinking.
If so, why should it be that knowing how a work is written and performed and how that is built by rehearsal and practice, or more about some work's intent and structure, 'just' can't enhance a person's experience of it?
You have given me no cases for believing that it can't, won't, shouldn't and doesn't. 'Just' that you passionately believe it.
I don't 'want' my case to be so, but I do think it is.
In the case of classical music there is a structure and rules, and for each instrument (and groupings) an identifiable set of shifts in performance practice, going back centuries.
I am NOT suggesting that my surmise means to me that a person less educated in music's opinion is less valid for them, nor that the experience of music isn't intense for them. But I doubt it is as complex or as rich as mine and I have good reasons for thinking so.
When I listen to Jazz I realise that KavaKidd knows much more about it and has listened to it a lot more too, and I wish I did / had too, because I suspect reasonably I feel that he enjoys it more than I do, as a result.
I'm sorry that we disagree, and that you seem upset about this matter.
I don't feel superior about it at all, because it is something I was given the opportunity to develop, and almost for free, when my mother was a war widow with 5 kids in 1960. I am instead deeply grateful for it.
Note that a post in response is preferred.
Warmest
Timothy Bailey
The Skyptical Mensurer and Audio Scrounger
And gladly would he learn and gladly teach - Chaucer. ;-)!
'Still not saluting.'
Edits: 08/09/12
just posting.
well said
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
thank you.
And then read them again.
Then think.
Note that a post in response is preferred.
Warmest
Timothy Bailey
The Skyptical Mensurer and Audio Scrounger
And gladly would he learn and gladly teach - Chaucer. ;-)!
'Still not saluting.'
and I did. Sounds more like tiresome breast beating than anything else
"Man is the only animal that blushes - or needs to" Mark Twain
Edits: 08/09/12
nt
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: