What is the difference between music and noise? [years-dead slappyfight revived]

[AudioPhile2]

Composition. As long as you're organizing notes, it's music. Even if it's "ugly" sounding. Monk's piano playing isn't noise just because he uses dissonant chords, for instance.

Noise is, well, noise. Noise Music might make us reexamine traditional ideas of what is musical and what is noisy, but I'm of the opinion that it's just noise in a musical context. Not necessarily music.

[jancivil]

So what do you call a frameless poster of a famous piece of 'art'?

Not quite sure why we need all these definitive statements.

Take things literal much?

Not as much as you I guess when you don't see an extension to the analogy to show it has flaws.

1) "the difference between calling something art or not art is you've put a frame around the former" is another way of putting what every person here did with 'it depends on your frame of reference', 'the artist determines if it's art/music' or the like. I wouldn't insist on a definition for anyone else. I don't care like that. I do find it interesting to compare notes.

2) There may be a work of art that is intended to have no boundary at all, as though it extends on into the rest of physical space. That is conceptual art; yet even Cage 4:33 delimits this type of concept. But, most paintings end at the top, the bottom, the left and right sides. So unless we're bullshitting basically, there's the frame even literally, with no need to add one from Frames R Us.
Taking the thing I said literally in order to ding me, well you were having a bad time with Eddie among other things as well. But it misconstrues what I did.
There was at least one thing I thought was wrong I cared about, too (Birds. I would not care to guess if a bird can has ego as a drive in its musical production, but I think they are made to make music.).
And now it was necro'd some more again.

3) What analogy? This *is* the same thing in music as painting or another form of plastic arts, because I did not mean (and by this time had emphatically said so) literally the frame you buy to stick on a painting.
No analogy needed and you showed no flaw or anything. Even with the above argument: generally here's a truism, things have a boundary, are framed as a composition before it's presented. I could say 'the fadeout (or fade-in) suggests this never ends or never began', but that's basically rhetorical rather than actual.

[jancivil]

(the term 'accidental' here is I think a puny human concept;

as is the term "music" hence birds do not make music.

also, i like the fact you think "birdsong" is free of ego, thats most amusing.

Major fail on both counts.

First one, you contradict yourself as you speak. The definition of music as a human concept is both essential & invalid?
Second, what I said was the bird is "nonplussed" by your attributing 'ego' to considering the listener as active in making the thing she's hearing 'music'; ie., I found 'ego' to be not much of a counter to the point of 'perception can make noise into music'. Not actually my literal reading of the bird's mind, you know.
So you're mocking your own straw man there. Strongly implying 'birds do have ego'. I wouldn't know... seems overconfident.

[jancivil]

My best experience with birds was one day I took a break from the computer room at U of AZ and smoked a joint out on the 'commons'.
There was quite a variety of birdsong. There was this one standout bird, some type of mockingbird, that was doing the other birds' licks. I listened for, had to be a hour or more.
To my way of thinking there was something compositional going on there, ie., I thought I heard connections between motifs. Possibly through my own mind there was form after a time. Perhaps the distinction between my mind and 'form' there isn't too solid a conception... Maybe the fact of the lead bird had some effect on the ensemble.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THE LEAD BIRD WAS THINKING. "Yeah, I'm the king of birdsong here, I got all you suckers SUSSED, check me out!".

[whyterabbyt]

(the term 'accidental' here is I think a puny human concept;

as is the term "music" hence birds do not make music.

also, i like the fact you think "birdsong" is free of ego, thats most amusing.

Major fail on both counts.

First one, you contradict yourself as you speak. The definition of music as a human concept is both essential & invalid?
Second, what I said was the bird is "nonplussed" by your attributing 'ego' to considering the listener as active in making the thing she's hearing 'music'; ie., I found 'ego' to be not much of a counter to the point of 'perception can make noise into music'. Not actually my literal reading of the bird's mind, you know.
So you're mocking your own straw man there. Strongly implying 'birds do have ego'. I wouldn't know... seems overconfident.

so, despite already having replied to that post of vurt's in late 2011, only a mere 18 months after he originally posted that in mid 2010, you thought it was worth having a second stab at it in 2014?

Its like the worst case of l'esprit de l'escalier imaginable. can we expect you giving it another go in 2020 and every decade after that until you get it right?

[whyterabbyt]

wait, you're going back to robojam's 2010 posts as well?

and it was you who necro'd the thread in 2011 to earn it the 'slappyfight' moniker?

sheesh, you must really be invested in proving yourself right.

[hibidy]

It's time warping from every conceivable dimension. Wait........

[aciddose]

There was this one standout bird, some type of mockingbird, that was doing the other birds' licks.

I was playing some keyboard and had a bird outside the window doing my licks.

Works best with snappy envs and high res. Monophonic of course.

[jancivil]

there are birds with such highly developed larynxes they can do some shocking things. For whatever reason I noticed mockingbirds in Tucson a lot.
Doing cellphone rings, car alarms... caught a video about it, birds doing chainsaws.

I've read up on [the 'vocal' mechanism of birds] a little, some or most of it is hard-wired, some aspects of the product actually can be nurtured. Anyway, I believed I was learning from the bird jam session, I was a little high and focused on the rhythm. It seemed like there were cycles, larger and smaller cycles after a time. Whether or not that's human-like intent is not relevant to this exercise for me.

[ZenPunkHippy]

The Lyre bird. This is not very far at all from where I live ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y

[jancivil]

That was the video.

I don't know, but mockingbirds seem to be making noise for the hell of it. There is a function to it such as mating to 'regular' birdsong, I suppose.
But mockingbirds seem to be making noise because they can, which seems like being a musician at least a little...

[ghettosynth]

I can't tell if there's any signal in this thread, oh well, here's some more noise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP-Cihtc0_s

[hibidy]

Wow that bird is just like my mother when she watches fox news.

[hibidy]

I can't tell if there's any signal in this thread

Actually, for a few brief posts, it was getting better (I'm way more interested in birdsong than the bully brigade)

[ZenPunkHippy]

On the subject of birds in music ...

One day I was lying in a field in the English countryside out of my head on ... err ... the fresh air I realised a bird singing near by had a very familiar warble to it's song.

... and if you take a listen to this classic Goa trance track "Fluoro Neuro Sponge" by Hallucinogen, you'll hear it - the Red Breasted Robin, synthesised (using the SH-101, I think).

Cut to around 2m 40s if you don't want the full track.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAAnB15ZD-o