Google
 
Web www.ykta.com
HELP
Look At This
Are you looking for good
Articles about....
Try these free to
republish.
You can use them for
your needs or for friends
or your site.

CLICK HERE
make musical instrument with woods
Question Is.....
Copyright ©2003,  part of The YKTA Corporation, and its licensor's. All rights reserved.
the way of simple human dreams
THE WAY not a WAY
you can Ad here
Poet, scientist,
mathematician,
philosopher,
Astronomer........
Hakim
Omar
Khayyam
What is music?

    Almost all of us listen to music daily by using a CD, type, radio, TV, movies,.... They are many
    that even play some kind of musical instrument. Many people live and die with or for it. Some
    thing so power full that no other human qualities could be compared with it. There is no idea,
    philosophy, religions, ideology, social movements, …that have such qualities that music has.  
    But what is the answer of this easy question. WHAT IS MUSIC?

    There are very little study and discussion about this subject. When at the same time it is one
    of the most popular art in this world. It is impossible to live a day without it. We listen to it, we
    use it in our simplest phrases while talking, we get happy, sad or even we cry with it. We
    spend lots of money to buy it. We use it for each social events, we use it to agitate,
    harmonize, redirect social movements. We use it in politics, in religions, in birthday  and for
    our last goodbyes,…some times we just dance with it like a crazy. What it is his origin and
    how he effects our lives, we just love it.
    For making some kind of hypothesis we can say: The music like all other human’s qualities
    was formed  during millions of years. Single and disparate voices found each other from all
    over the caves and farms or mountains.

    Surpassing the borders and blocks, got together creating simple songs. He changed the
    form and became more and more concentrated melody composed of human feelings. It was
    created step by step when our species were trying to survive. The “mother nature” was trying
    her best to eliminate us. Being surrounded with all kind of enemies, with such a weak and
    fragile bodies, we should be distinct millions years ago. The creator as we may call him God,
    nature, Allah,…(I call him LIFE) gave us a unique power of “how to”.  We survived and echo
    we here, talking about those days. Our number one enemy “mother nature” made it harder and
    harder for us, we had to fight her back for surviving. We start to change what she was
    creating. It was cold, we warm it up, no food out there we learn agriculture and start to produce
    foods,.. We created some thing that “mother nature” never wanted us to do so. We had to
    learn her rules for using it in our favor, which is completely different than destroying the nature
    resources for profits.

    We were the subject of changing  each time that we  forced these changes to surrounding
    environments. Hard group works were the only our chances to survive and from there we
    became what we are now. Living as a group forced us to find the ways to transmitted vital
    messages to others. Other than our body, we used our voices for longer distance
    transmissions. First we started with “danger”, “food”, “bad”,  “good” signals. Working together
    for survival was the most important factor for progressing in communication sounds. One
    example can be like: They find out that when ever they want to do some thing together, as a
    group, they have to be in harmony with each other. If no, for raising a heavy piece of stone
    each person could push it in wrong direction or with wrong action timing.

    We started to make some sounds to regulate our movements for doing some work. They
    were very simple sound, but with a certain intensity and time properties. Sounds for starting,
    for stopping, for pushing together, for raising together. As the civilization was growing step by
    step, work was getting more and more complex, we start to add the sounds of pain, patient ,
    anger, enjoyment, ...Actually what we did was codifying a feeling or a message in one sound.
    There are many micro pieces of these codified feeling in any person’s brain. Memorized in
    our genes for our survival. These micro pieces are controlling the power of our speech and
    talking, they are stimulated by music. We transmit our feeling and our wells with these good
    known codified sound.
    The power of any word that we use depends to qualities of these codes mixed with that word.
    We can transmit to some one with same words different feeling, changing these micro pieces.
    There were many other sounds produced during all kind of different stage of the life, but they
    were not a nice, motivated, happy sounds. They couldn’t give us hopes for our hard lives.  The
    pattern of sounds that could give us motivation for living, happiness, survival  powers,..Were
    gathered together to what  we know it as music. Any time that we listen to music, we are
    stimulating these micro coded memory In our brain. For long time in our evolution It was the
    only and most effective anti-depression existed (even today).
    Then we made instrument to produce these codes, the father of all kinds of music that we
    have to day. Then we started to make wealth and accumulate them, so came wars to own
    them .We made war musical instruments,  was used them for agitating people. Many other
    kind of feeling was developed during our progress toward civilization. We start to use these
    instruments for all other scopes also. Specially when every we couldn't talk (because of social
    condition, or ..) we  used them as well. For me a piece of music is sad, when ever it agitate
    my sad micro memories which I have from pass. When we listen to a certain sound, it take us
    back to our millions years of pass experiments and evolution events. It turns on all our basic
    memories, we feel our history by our body, it stimulate all those pass emotions and feeling
    which is accumulated in our basic memories.
    We see that the exact meaning of music is open and refers to variable properties which
    varies from person to person. At the same time they are many properties which are in
    commune between all different kind of music. May be the most important one is that it effects
    and changes the status of the person who is under this energy. It is hard to find another type of
    energy that can produce these kind of effect. Words that we use have the same properties but
    they come after music. First there was sound, sound s got power  with feeling which was
    accumulated with it. They get longer and more complicated, they got the character of basic
    music. The words are the same sounds but normally with out their loaded energy. With word
    we started to make phrase, to transfer  meanings. When it is a musical sound, even single, it
    has meaning. With word to gain a meaning for any word we have to use it in original form, with
    musical tones.

    First Type of Answer: Don't Know

    Because we are all familiar with the experience of music, we are inclined to think that we truly
    know what music is. But having an experience is not the same thing as fully understanding
    how that experience occurs or even what it represents. Seeing is not the same thing as
    understanding the physics of light, and hearing is not the same thing as understand about
    sound and acoustics. Everyone knows what consciousness is, but scientifically no one knows
    what consciousness is. (There are various theories, but no one really knows that any of those
    theories is correct.).
    This comes down to a distinction between objective and subjective. There are some
    phenomena where our knowledge of the objective correlate of our subjective experience is
    quite advanced. For example, we understand that words like “hot” and “cold” are correlated
    with an objective physical measurement of temperature. There is a quite mathematically
    complex theory of temperature and heat. There is also quite a detailed understanding of the
    biology of our perception of hot and cold, of how, for example, our perception of temperature
    is actually a perception of temperature difference between receptors close to the surface and
    receptors further inside our body.
    There is also a very good understanding of why we perceive temperature, and most people
    would not find it not too difficult to understand that we perceive hot and cold because too much
    hot or too much cold is bad for your health.

    Second Type of Answer: Music Theory

    In the case of music, there is a substantial descriptive theory of music, which corresponds to
    a large degree to what is called “music theory” which is almost like a scientific theory, but not
    quite. Anyone who learns to play an instrument or learns to read music notation will learn
    some of this descriptive theory. It includes concepts like frequency and tempo, and all the
    components of music such as melody, scales, chords and rhythm. Although music theory tells
    us something about what music is, there is still quite a lot that it doesn't tell us: Firstly, music
    theory is not complete. Music theory defines what is effectively a set of constraints on what
    music can be, for example the constraint that pitch values in a melody come from a finite set
    of values in a musical scale.
    But the set of constraints is not complete, and to further complicate things, some constraints
    only seem to apply to some kinds of music. This incompleteness implies that music theory is
    not fully predictive, in the sense that it cannot completely predict the musicality or “strength” of
    an item of music from its description. Because music theorists do not traditionally think of
    themselves as doing scientific theory, the incompleteness of music theory is often regarded
    as some kind of ineffable mystery which is intrinsic to the very nature of music. Actually it is
    unable to explain “what is Music” but has certain rules for how to register and how to transfer it
    .
    Music theory does not say anything about what music is for. If you asked most people why
    they listen to music, they would probably answer that they listen to it because they like it. This
    doesn't really explain anything, because most things we do because we like them, or because
    they have some relationship to getting something that we like. The real question is why do we
    like music?
    Music theory does not say anything at all about what is going on inside the human brain when
    we listen to music. What goes on inside the human brain (or any brain for that matter) is quite
    mysterious anyway, so it should perhaps not surprise us that what goes on inside the human
    brain when we listen to music is mysterious. But because music does not have any existence
    independently of its human perception, we cannot consider any theory of music to be
    complete until it does explain the detailed mechanics of how our brains respond to music.
    This is different to, say, temperature, where we can understand what “hot” and “cold” are, even
    if we don't understand the physiology of the perception of hot and cold.

    Third Type of Answer: Subjective

    The incompleteness of any existing formal descriptive theory of music implies that the only
    way that you can explain to another person the meaning of the word “music”; is by example. In
    other words, if you were teaching some person English, and you didn't know any word for
    “music” in their language, you would be forced to play some music to them, and then tell them
    that that's what music is. There is one apparent problem with a subjective answer to the
    question, which is that there is variation in what different people consider to be music,
    especially if they come from different cultural backgrounds. This can lead to an extreme
    relativism, where it is claimed that anything at all is music if someone says that it is.
    For example, according to well-known composer John Cage, his work 4 minutes 33 seconds
    of pure silence is actually music. The problem with phenomena which are only known
    subjectively is that people can support relativist points of view by simply lying about their own
    perceptions. For example, different men disagree about what is “sexy”, and I could pick some
    woman that most other men find not very attractive, and claim that she looks sexy to me.
    Anyone accusing me of lying would be implicitly insulting the woman in question. But most
    people know that there is quite a lot of agreement about what men consider to be sexy or not
    in a woman, and most scientists would presume that this agreement is a function of a
    common genetically determined instinct.
    Similarly, we know that there is quite a lot of agreement about what is musical. Much of the
    music industry is “hit-driven”, which implies that if one person likes a particular musical item a
    lot, probably a lot of other people will also like it a lot. Also, we still recognize an item as
    musical even if it is not our favorite kind of music, and even if it comes from another culture.

    Fourth Type of Answer: Poetic

    Given the difficulty of finding a scientific answer to the question of what music is, and the
    disinclination of many people to think scientifically about human desires and feelings, one way
    to answer the question is to give an answer that doesn't even pretend to be scientific. Instead
    of trying to find an answer that makes specific statements about what is music and what is not
    music, and what is going on inside the human brain of someone enjoying music, and why
    music perception is an evolved adaptation, just say something that doesn't really mean
    anything at all, but it sounds good.  Like: Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul,
    which doesn't know that it is counting.  (Gottfried Leibniz)I copied this from “Definitions of
    Music” in wiki quote, and there's plenty more at that site. Another music quote site that
    includes a few poetic “definitions” is http://home.att.net/~quotations/music.html.

    Fifth Type of Answer: Scientific.

    Although regardless of all attempts done by many experts, there is no widely accepted
    scientific theory of music. There have been plenty of attempts to formulate theories of music,
    and these could be considered possible answers to the question. In most cases the scientists
    who have stated the theories would not themselves claim that their theories can be known with
    certainty to be true, but if you wanted to make a statement about what music was from a
    scientific view, you could quote one of these theories and make it sound more definite than it
    really was. Some popular scientific explanations of music include: It helps members of a
    society bond with each other. Men use it to attract women (or vice versa).It evolved either from
    or into language. Most of these theories have an element of “just so” story about them, and
    you will notice that none of them say very much about why music has exactly the properties
    that it has (i.e. all the properties described by descriptive music theory), and certainly none of
    them explain why particular items of music are regarded as very musical by large numbers of
    people.

    Conclusion:

    A Best Answer : A best possible answer to the question, given our current knowledge and
    ignorance of what music is, must be something as follows: There exist certain patterns of
    sound which people create, which have certain emotional and pleasurable effects on the
    listener. These patterns of sound are subject to certain constraints, some of which can be
    described with some degree of mathematical precision, and these descriptions form the
    content of “music theory” which is traditionally taught to those learning about musical
    composition and performance. However, these descriptions do not fully distinguish between
    what is music and what is not music. Some conclusion may retrieve from discussion that:  
    Given the incompleteness of the descriptions of music provided by music theory, and our
    ignorance about the biological mechanics of the effect that music has on the listener, the only
    satisfactory definition of music is a subjective definition, which means providing a list of
    specific examples, and then saying: “music is anything like that”.
    But we know some starting points for a good start to defined it:
    It is those patterns of sound that people create (not in close, air-conditioned offices, by ….
    headed feminists)
    It will stimulated power of life in listener.
    It will create deeper feeling regard any targeted subject .
    It will make us more unite.
    It will increase human qualities.
    It will motivate us to do positive things.
    It will help us in hard situations.
    It is beautiful.