My Personal Definition of Music

This is my response to Kelsey McCullough’s Question - What is your personal definition of music?

My personal definition of music: Organized sound created by a being, with said music presenting the possibility of a positive co-creative interchange between beings; or, at the very least, expanding the sub-atomic vibration rate of the music maker.

I consider sound to be any sound wave capable of exciting a vibration frequency that influences beings at a sub-atomic level, not limited to their biological auditory components.

Music, for me, must provide a benefit to the music maker and/or the music receiver (if there is any being capable of such reception within theoretical earshot). Music must always be an expansive influence, never a limiting or detrimental influence.

Noise, is what I would call sound waves which negatively disrupt or injure the existing vibration frequency patterns of other beings.

Describing Petrucciani's Performance

Petrucciani begins the piece exercising the rules of pitch, key, scale, timbre, harmony, rhythm, and meter. When he abruptly altered the tempo while maintaining tonal quality and scales, he created interest. Because I could still follow the melody within his expression of the piece, I could still anticipate the key and harmony to come. He also created interest by abruptly using loudness to alter his attack of the piece. I especially enjoyed the shifts that occurred in me when he employed these particular tactics. This created an entirely different experience for me. His changes in key, tempo, and loudness throw me off balance and provide contrast. What I found the most challenging to recoup from were the two occasions I perceived as dissonant. One was a disharmonious note; the other was a discordant run. Both times his “breaking the rules” disrupted my experience of the piece. These “interruptions” caused me to lose the sense of meter and rhythm of the composition. Even though he throws us off balance by his use of contrast in keys, tempo, volume, harmony, and pitch, he does use all those elements to
return us to balance.

When I listen to Michel Petrucciani’s rendition of “My Romance,” it reminds me of Vince Guaraldi's “Christmas Time is Here” from A Charlie Brown Christmas (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6545283), which elicits pleasant memories for me. I am unsure how much this influences my positive experience of Petrucciani’s performance.

My Question: Levitin says that "real music succeeds or fails because of the relationship between the major elements of music - pitch, timbre, key, harmony, loudness, rhythm, meter, and tempo" (Page 75).
Is a relationship between these same elements necessary for music to be successful for other species, or for our interpretation of other species' music as "successful real music"?

Relationships with Music

This is in response to Kyle Innis’ question, “Does anyone have any insight on the negative, positive, and neutral effects to listening to certain genres?”

Like Kyle, there is no genre of music that I would want to exclude from my life. It is the expression of the instrumental music and/or vocal music that creates a positive or negative relationship with me. My personal resonance with, and interpretation of, the vibration of any musical composition creates the effect of my positive, negative, or neutral relationship with it.

I see each being’s body as a unique instrument, with every cell in the body affected by the vibration of sound. The ears act as our primary frequency analyzers, but every cell in the body that is capable of relational experiences with each sound reacts to it. While we may not be consciously aware of the more subtle reactions occurring on the sub-atomic or cellular levels, our body is registering them. The frequencies emanating from a work of music from any genre enter the body, strike a cord/s, creating reverberations, all of which are interpreted by the brain and recorded with the cells. I believe that it is the joint experience between the originating sound with the orchestra of our cells and our conductor brain that interprets this interactive symphonic experience as neutral – imperceptibly dissimilar or vibrationally unaltering; positive – vibrationally expansive; or negative – vibrationally limiting or disruptive.

There are certain pieces of music in every genre that I enjoy, as well as certain pieces of music in every genre that I dislike.

I dislike vulgar lyrics and lyrics which promote the degradation of life.

Musical compositions with considerable discordant melodies create sensations of distress and disease within my core.

Certain expressions of prolonged and overly repetitive high volume percussion and/or electronic instruments hurt my ears and can result in a headache. I do not enjoy the pain resulting from the experience so I say, "I don’t like that music" but in reality, I don't like how the music makes me feel.

I love meditational music, but not when I’m driving on high traffic roads. It is wonderful background for some homework activities, but disruptive for others. Our relationship with music is inconstant, never static, in the moment of every beat.

I see music as a co-creational relationship between individual originator and individual receiver. It is the totality of the experience of vibration/frequency exchange that determines its unique value to the listener.

I do believe that there are certain vibrational building block frequencies that soothe all beings in any genre. Conversely, creating sound patterns that disrupt or dissemble those building block frequencies would be perceived as disharmonious in any genre.

My Question: Do you think all animal life forms and plant forms experience music as positive and/or negative?

When a cat purrs, is it making music?

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to define music. How should we differentiate what constitutes music versus sound – as in what we call noise. The problem as I see it, is that it is all subjective and culturally influenced. How do we contextually structure or frame music to exclude “noise” or “sound” in a way that is inclusive of all cultures and all individuals? Some people would consider the sound produced by a train chugging on its journey as unpleasant noise, others will consider the same sound as rhythmic, comforting, and yes, musical.

I tried looking at purpose as a way to differentiate music from noise. Music, as the sound of our words as language, is meant to communicate something – joy, sadness, patriotism, relaxation – as lyrics in songs, it adds intensity to our stories. Music can be created with the specific intent to elicit a specific response, but so can language and all forms of artistic expression.

Can authorship be used as criteria to distinguish music from sound/noise? Is humankind the only beings capable of creating music? My thoughts immediately flew to birds/ songs, whales’ songs, wolves’ singing – all created beautiful music. Does their purpose for singing make it less musical? This led me to wonder if all living creatures make music. A bee buzzing, a mosquito humming – these are sounds we can hear, and subjectively some people would consider them part of the chorus of nature. So, do worms, clams, or fish produce sounds inaudible to the human ear, or currently beyond our technological ability (or interest) to measure?

What about wind as it rustles the leaves of the trees? What about the cadence of rain falling on a resonating surface? If it falls on an absorbing surface, would we still hear a rhythm? There is the babbling brook, waves crashing against the shore, horses’ hooves on a hard packed surface, a clock ticking.

Is it the created sound that defines it as music, or are the receptors within a being that declare it music?

James Rachels' "Created From Animals"

In his book, Rachels addressed societal key questions of the day. He discussed topics of moral and ethical dilemmas that are still relevant to today’s society, as well as our Environmental Ethics course.
He examines speciesism, racism, anthropomorphism and the relevance of evolution, creationism and human dignity, principle of equality, “subject of a life”, the connection between Darwinism and moral individualism, value of human life, right to life, rethinking the moral status of non-human animals, animal rights, vivisection, vegetarianism, and “subjects of biographical lives.” He references the key philosophical authors of many of these terms and compares and contrasts their theories with his own and Darwin’s.
Rachels examines the relationship between morality and reason, the duty to relieve both human and animal suffering which he offers as an offers an argument for vegetarianism, the independence of morality from religion, the right to life, and the role of ethics in a democratic society.
The first 56 pages of the book are a mini-biography of Darwin's life and work, which I really enjoyed. I found his presentation of Stephen Jay Gould’s speculation on the affect Captain FitzRoy had on Darwin’s character and philosophy deeply provoking.
I was also intrigued with the topic of suicide in relation to value, and Kant’s view of suicide as a “violation of the nobility of human nature… degrading it below the level of animal nature…destroys it.” While I agree with him that euthanasia and suicide are justified in sufficiently dire cases, I fear that in practice, this could lead to a resurgence of eugenics, with dire consequences for all living beings.
According to James Rachels, the idea of human dignity is a relic of pre-Darwinian thought. Before Darwin human elitism was religiously defended with “man is made in the image of God and man is a uniquely rational being.'' Rachels’ thesis expands beyond Darwin’s writing, ''Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a deity. More humble and I believe true to consider him created from animals.''
Rachels’ thesis denies the unique rationality of humans and supports raising the moral status of nonhumans. However, because he believes there are large differences between human and nonhuman animals he supports different treatment of human and nonhuman animals. He believes that if we are going to treat a nonhuman differently from a human, we have to specifically relate the distinctions relevant to that treatment.
This is an area of weakness in Rachels’ theory. His theory does not provide the necessary and sufficient criteria for assigning value, and this interferes with logical determinations on the subject. He left the moral status of nonhuman animals definitely elevated, but he fails to furnish definitive clarity on the moral status of nonhuman and human animals.
Rachels' book is relevant to Environmental Ethics and provided a review of topics from my other philosophy courses. It also seems like a natural foundation for the theory of value incrementalism to naturally evolve into a new view of morality.