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Are Certain Genres Not "Music"?
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Fantastic idea but it's clearly not prog and wouldn't get passed any of the sub team panels. Not even the avant panheads, home off all things prog not prog.
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If indeed nature sounds are music, as many here believe, I encourage the genre teams and admins to be leaders and include a PA genre for "Nature Sounds"? I would love to read the reviews on such music... "Well its seems on "Birds Chirping - Volume 7" the songs are starting to sound the same. The magic heard on Volume 2, when Bluebird 5 was lead chirper, is long long gone. Did anyone hear the woodpecker off time in the background? That really ruined my enjoyment of this album...." Wink
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Originally posted by Easy Money Easy Money wrote:

^ Correct. There have been a lot of studies about what bird songs are about and what they are communicating. Composer Oliver Messian was an avid student of bird songs and utilized them in his many compositions.
The 'bird songs' are communicating, but are they making music? If any animal or human communicates, is that music? I don't agree with that. 

Edited by Grumpyprogfan - March 16 2021 at 11:00
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^ Correct. There have been a lot of studies about what bird songs are about and what they are communicating. Composer Oliver Messian was an avid student of bird songs and utilized them in his many compositions.

Edited by Easy Money - March 16 2021 at 10:33
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Originally posted by siLLy puPPy siLLy puPPy wrote:

Originally posted by Easy Money Easy Money wrote:

Bird songs have rhythm, pitch, repeating melodic motifs with variations and are used for specific communications.
Sounds like music to me. They are very intelligent and do not babble a bunch of nonsense with no purpose.


Not a genre though. At least not yet. A washing machine could be considered music too. In fact there are guitarists who play with them as the percussive backing but as far as i know, still not a genre of music.

As far as birds go, we really don't know what they are conveying so whether its nonsense or not is undetermined however i tend to agree with you that they are conveying a purposeful message. It's just that the evidence is elusive in an absolute confirmation. I would guess that it's a combination of meaning and non-meaning just like a piano roll doesn't have any meaning beyond an emotional reaction.

in some cases we actually do know. I remember reading about a bird (I think it was a warbler) that combined four different calls to a kind of "song with lyrics": a call for attention, a call that announces he is in the mood for love, a call for the female and a call for being lonely. so this actually was a song with the "lyrics": "attention, I am in the mood for love. lover, come here! because I am so lonely"


Edited by BaldJean - March 16 2021 at 10:24


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Originally posted by BaldJean BaldJean wrote:

Originally posted by Easy Money Easy Money wrote:

Bird songs have rhythm, pitch, repeating melodic motifs with variations and are used for specific communications.
Sounds like music to me. They are very intelligent and do not babble a bunch of nonsense with no purpose.

on the cover of the Guru Guru album "Mani und seine Freunde" Mani Neumeier thanks "my friends the birds who I consider to be the true professional musicians"


Yeah, i agree with that. Nature is a form of music above and beyond human comprehension. All of our inspiration is derived from natural forces so in effect, we are just imitators of patterns of reality already established. When defining musical genres though, i think that's what limits the spectrum to what humans find pleasing enough to define as genres Smile

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Originally posted by Easy Money Easy Money wrote:

Bird songs have rhythm, pitch, repeating melodic motifs with variations and are used for specific communications.
Sounds like music to me. They are very intelligent and do not babble a bunch of nonsense with no purpose.


Not a genre though. At least not yet. A washing machine could be considered music too. In fact there are guitarists who play with them as the percussive backing but as far as i know, still not a genre of music.

As far as birds go, we really don't know what they are conveying so whether its nonsense or not is undetermined however i tend to agree with you that they are conveying a purposeful message. It's just that the evidence is elusive in an absolute confirmation. I would guess that it's a combination of meaning and non-meaning just like a piano roll doesn't have any meaning beyond an emotional reaction.

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Originally posted by Easy Money Easy Money wrote:

Bird songs have rhythm, pitch, repeating melodic motifs with variations and are used for specific communications.
Sounds like music to me. They are very intelligent and do not babble a bunch of nonsense with no purpose.

on the cover of the Guru Guru album "Mani und seine Freunde" Mani Neumeier thanks "my friends the birds who I consider to be the true professional musicians"


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Bird songs have rhythm, pitch, repeating melodic motifs with variations and are used for specific communications.
Sounds like music to me. They are very intelligent and do not babble a bunch of nonsense with no purpose.

Edited by Easy Money - March 16 2021 at 10:01
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Originally posted by Lewian Lewian wrote:

Originally posted by siLLy puPPy siLLy puPPy wrote:


Birds singing may be musical but i think music is defined as being composed by humans.

Definitions are made by humans and can be made in a different manner by different humans. Who has the power to define such a term in a binding way?


Definitions exist by consensus. If i call a banana a moojiecankaflan, it doesn't mean someone else will understand it. Since we have no friggin idea what birds are conveying then should we call it music? It could be just bird speech. Spoken words have a rhythmic musicality as well. While vocal sound arrangements can indeed be music as heard in countless genre across the millennia, the term music usually is associated with some sort of musical composition. I would vote that we need a richer nomenclature to describe musical utterances from our little avian relatives. It's similar to biology and science. No term is iron clad perfect but it pretty much delivers a relevant methodology of managing complex systems. 

Of course, not everyone will agree and not everything will fit neatly into every category. Just look at the period table of elements for example. Mercury is a liquid at room temperature despite being a metal. Neon and Helium just don't like dating other elements and oxygen is usually the slut of any solution. Patterns emerge but then some wiley compound defies all expectations. Same with music i guess.

According to some dictionary definitions, music can also refer to an aesthetically pleasing or harmonious sounds or combination of sounds even in reference to nature so when i stated that i was referring to how i personally distinguish music composition from pleasing combinations of sound clusters. In other words, i was referring simply to  marketing strategies not the more subtle distinctions of how one could define music.

The word genre connotes a commercial aspect of music which is what this thread is about. At least i thought so!

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Originally posted by SteveG SteveG wrote:

If a piece of symphonic music devolved into randem orchestral sounds and then further devolved into randem accoustic sounds before resuming back to full symphonic music, is all of it considered to be music?


yes
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Originally posted by siLLy puPPy siLLy puPPy wrote:


Birds singing may be musical but i think music is defined as being composed by humans.

Definitions are made by humans and can be made in a different manner by different humans. Who has the power to define such a term in a binding way?
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Originally posted by JD JD wrote:

'Music' comes from the Greek mousa (muse),
The Muses were the Greek poets' divinized conceptions of the faculties that help them to create and recite poetry.
So, the simple answer to your question is, NO, certain genres (whatever they are) are ALWAYS music.
Next question?

the muses were actually Goddesses of the arts, literature and science. there were nine of them:

Καλλιοπη (Calliope), the muse of epic poetry
Κλειω (Clio), the muse of history
Ευτερπη (Euterpe), the muse of lyric poetry
Θαλεια (Thalia), the muse of comedy
Μελπομενη (Melpomene), the muse of tragedy
Τερψιχορη (Terpsichore), the muse of dance
Ερατω (Erato), the muse of love poetry
Πολυμνια (Polymnia, also Polyhymnia), the muse of sacred poetry
Ουρανιη (Ourania, commonly spelled Urania), the muse of astronomy

sorry for the rant, but as a High Priestess of Gaia, the ancient Greek Goddess of the Earth, Greek mythology is something I excel in Smile


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I'll sum it all up.

Yes, it's music (whatever it is) and it's OK if you don't comprehend it or like it.

Even random noise can be considered music by some so whatever.

Spoken word albums are not music and neither are sound samples from nature.

Birds singing may be musical but i think music is defined as being composed by humans.

So let's not take away the one thing our species has gotten right LOL

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I’d also add, that I rather like gc / nc’s album from this year, Deprecated, which challenges how music is made and sounds to a certain degree.

“Through the use of magnets, reed switches and arduino's (microcontrollers) in conjunction with audio coding environment SuperCollider, gc / nc turn bicycles into electroacoustic instruments. The wheels of the bicycle are controlling the sound of their instruments – a guitar and a synthesizer. The musicians have to spin the wheels to produce sound. The bicycle wheels open up new sound possibilities for the musicians, but function also as disruptive elements, a voluntary self-sabotage, since they are not able to play their instruments in the conventional manner. Piezo discs enable them to use the bicycle as a percussive instrument and to create tones with the spokes. A radio is used to record small fragments of radio channels which are directly used in the performances. When on tour, gc / nc always borrow a bicycle from a local, which they then prepare for the concert.”
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Originally posted by Lewian Lewian wrote:

Originally posted by JD JD wrote:

This should blow your mind.



The thing about this is that it illustrates the potential of the "what is music and where does it stop" discussion. I'm pretty sure Cage had such discussions, surely he was thinking about the limitations of the "music" concept and how to extend them. I saw this once live performed by G. Ligeti, who also introduced and discussed it. It serves as drawing people's attention to what else can be heard, it surely isn't "nothing". It did a lot paving the way for introducing all kinds of noises and sounds into western music, be it the "high brow" academic variety, or be it later the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Can...

Understanding "what's in it" requires to listen properly, but a major quality of it is also "extra-musical" and intellectual, if you want, in its provocative but also its educating quality. Now is that music? Requiring a straight yes or no answer misses the point.  

For me listening to all kinds of noises consciously as "musical" is something of a familiar habit, but it probably wouldn't be without pioneers like Cage. The magnificent fart thing probably wouldn't have existed either, surely not on youtube.

Funnily enough, someone just posted this article about the Cage piece on FB. I found it interesting, as though I was aware of some of the history surrounding the piece, I definitely didn’t know it all. Others may too find it an interesting read. Or not. 😜

“Music, noise. Sound, silence. There’s no difference. It’s just perception. The croak of a frog can be just as musical as the purr of a cello if you choose to hear it that way.”
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Originally posted by Frenetic Zetetic Frenetic Zetetic wrote:

I'm going to be honest AF: the fact that this thread exists, and the very idea has been entertained either directly or indirectly, is further proof this forum is probably done.

Whoops. Sorry. We turned it around by the end though!

But yeah. Again, this thread name refers to an opinion I do not hold, though I probably could have named it or explained it better. It was a rushed job.
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If a piece of symphonic music devolved into randem orchestral sounds and then further devolved into randem accoustic sounds before resuming back to full symphonic music, is all of it considered to be music?

Edited by SteveG - March 14 2021 at 11:11
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Originally posted by Lewian Lewian wrote:

Originally posted by Easy Money Easy Money wrote:

Re '4:33': Cage was trying to get people to increase their awareness, to listen to the sounds around them as if they were composed music.
It takes a bit of concentration and mental discipline, it is similar to meditation. I often use this sort of mental discipline to shut off extraneous thoughts and get some sleep. It works, but it takes effort.

True. I also once saw Cage in a video commenting on it, and he seemed far more interested in meditation than provocation, although I find it hard to believe that he wasn't aware of the provocative side of it.
I'm sure he was very aware of both sides. He was a bit of a prankster. I got to meet Cage when one of my friends performed one of his pieces.
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