Category and Chronological Challenges

In answering Q&A #4, I researched "Inna-Gadda-Da-Vida" by Iron Butterfly on Wikipedia. I was surprised to learn that some of my favorite bands (Iron Butterfly, Black Sabbath, Cream, Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin, Steppenwolf, and Queen) are considered “heavy metal” bands.
Apparently, I have not categorized music that I like into the appropriate “musical genres”. I have filed them all into the single category of “music I like”. Does this make me a category-impaired person? Given what the cognitive psychological studies have shown, how would we predict category-deficiency would manifest globally in a person’s perceptual and cognitive systems integration?

Related to ease of integration of music we are exposed to in our younger years versus exposure in our “mature” years: I remember most of the names of bands and songs, and some albums that I enjoyed listening to during the sixties, seventies, and early eighties. These were my high-growth emotional years. Now I struggle, usually in vain, to recall music titles and artists of recent and current music that I like. When someone helpfully gives me some names to choose from, I often can then remember it.

One hypothesis to explain my difficulty remembering new songs and artists that I like post-1980s is:

The music that is alive during important emotional growth times in our lives becomes an inseparable part of the flow of our lives.
Therefore, greater degrees of emotional maturity are accompanied by greater limitations in facility with musical experience.
I think this is a restatement of Levitin’s work. However, I am uncomfortable with the consequential nature attending such a reality were it to be true.

A second, also unpleasant to contemplate hypothesis is:

Emotional maturity accumulates with biological maturity in a chronological fashion. The components of biological systems have been shown to become less flexible, deteriorate, and some even die out as we age chronogically.
Therefore, this rigidity, deterioration, or die off has impaired my brain and perceptual systems integration of new musical information into memory.

MY QUESTIONS ARE:

Do you know other people of chronological maturity who also have difficulty associating names with recent music and artists they enjoy? Do you find either or both of these hypotheses to be potentially valid explanations of this phenomenon?

Do you think it is possible for a person to be category-challenged? How would category-deficiency affect a person’s world view? How do you think it would affect interpersonal relationships?

The Conundrum of Music - Its Universal and Subjective Nature

I believe that we all started this course with the knowledge that there is universality in the nature of music, yet is experienced in a uniquely subjective manner. Whether we are born with that knowledge or we acquire it experientially through osmosis, I believe any open-minded individual reflecting on the topic would agree with us. Levitin provides us with the neurobiological and cultural reasons for music’s uniquely subjective and universal nature, yesterday’s class provided a wonderful illustration of it. Groups of us enjoyed some of the same pieces of music – but it appeared that the scale of enjoyment or appreciation of the same work varied between us. The same is true for pieces that we didn’t enjoy – from it doesn’t do anything for me to dislike. The common denominator seems to be that we all have a reaction to music, an emotional response to it. We have some immediate response when exposed to new music. We can find a musical piece tolerable, likeable, fun, rapturous, distasteful, disturbing, or execrable.

My questions are: Can human beings with sufficient functioning aural and neurobiological systems be “indifferent” to music? Can we be totally non-responsive to music, or do our neurobiological systems require an autonomic response?

Could our natural responses to music, whether culturally influenced, or introduced post-maturity, be a biological recognition system, programmed to predispose us for openness with culturally-like Others? Could it be an elastic recognition system – allowing for the evolutionary possibilities of potential future allies in recognizing some acceptableness in culturally new, never exposed to, extremely different music?

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?