Value of Music

[Fanfic_warper]

If you took the music of Shadow of the Colossus and played it for your doting old grand parents, they'd likely ask you for the composer's name instead of telling you "to shut that J-pop garbage off!"

Ironic considering I liked next to nothing about that game, even the music, but I kinda see what you're saying.

also...

86 songs is practically nothing.

It's actually upgraded to 88 now after watching Gundam 00: Awakening of the Trailblazer. The opening and credits music were pretty awesome.

Also, it may be small, but I've heard over several hundred songs just driving around some friends and I rarely liked anything of theirs. In fact, 2 of the english songs on my list came from my friends, everything else I found on my own.

Whenever they start to play metal I have to threaten to tear out the radio player or just get out of the car at the next stop light.

When they play orchestral music without lyrics, it's not as bad, but I can't stand music without lyrics.

My friends have tried to shove their music down my throat, but now whenever they're in my truck, the law is My truck, my music.

 

[Saelune]

Artistic Expression and emotion. Thats why. Its also why I hate most popular stuff now, since it lacks that.

 

[Kintobor92]

I'm convinced that the enjoyment of some music is in some way related to intelligence. People-understandably-always hesitate to talk about that. It also has to do with patience, familiarity with the music in question, and I'm. Sure there are more factors. What matters in the end is that we do enjoy it.

On another note, does anybody else sometimes feel kinda euphoric just from listening to the right music?I think the feeling's akin to a kind of religious experience-y feeling. I really feel almost silly to admit I get that way, but surely I'm not the only one. I've always wondered how common it is and what kind of music is most likely to trigger it.

 

[spartan231490]

I've been told before that I have horrible taste in music, that my collection is so small that I'm comparable to a caveman.

I've never understood music. I like some music but I don't go crazy for it.

I thought my library of 86 was pretty big, but apparently all of my friends have music libraries in the triple digits and a few acquaintences of mine have libraries in the 4 digits.

What exaclty is so great about music that people collect so much of it?

My own collection is a mixture of genres. some rock, some pop, some j-pop, j-rock, one jazz (Sweet L.A. courtesy of Miracle of sound), some country, two raps, and some soft music I can't quite classify.

The one genre I absolutely hate is Metal and that's just my own taste.

I want to know what is the value of music and why does it have that value with people.

Music is the ultimate language. It conveys not only thought, but also emotion, and it allows people to connect with each other across space and time. It helps people understand that other people have felt the same emotions that they have. Yeah, other than it simply being awesome to listen to, I would say those are the big reasons.

 

[Nickolai77]

I like music because it sounds nice....


Well, it's a little more complicated than that. The human brain likes some sounds, some human brain's like different sounds, and all human brains like hearing patterns in the sounds that they like. That's the mathematical aspect that Jeffers was talking about- a lot of maths is about number patterns, which is probably why mathematically minded people tend to excel at music. I am comprehensively rubbish at maths, which is perhaps why i don't play an instrument.

But yeah, many people do enjoy listening to certain "sound patterns" with certain preferences to typical types of "sound-patterns", or genres of music. These sound patterns, depending on how they are composed, can elicit certain emotions like happiness and sadness, and even nostalgia for the sound pattern itself. Like how sight and smell can draw emotive responses, so can sound, and as music shows, sound can probably create one of the strongest emotional responses to human listeners.

Then there are vocals and lyrics, which adds a whole new layer to these sound patterns. Lyrics give a song a specific subject and/or message and can reinforce the emotive aspect of the sound patterns. Personally for me, i generally prefer songs with a vocalist- the sound of a human voice makes the song more compelling for me, and i quite enjoy thinking about the songs specific subject. As a humanities student, i'm also fairly well trained in evaluating wherever such lyrics are any good or not.

So yeah, there you have it. Music is a series of sound-patterns which create emotive responses in the human brain and sometimes with some vocals on top to give the sound patterns a specific meaning and to reinforce the emotive response.

 

[Hagi]

My music collection has exactly 0 digits.

I do not own a single musical album. I don't pirate either.

Sometimes I youtube playlists from bands I enjoy but more often then not I forget the names of whatever music I like, because honestly I don't care that much.

I like music, but there's just so much music out there I'm capable of enjoying that I don't bother in any way selecting what I hear. But I can't say I have a real connection to the musical art-form.

I personally much prefer another art-form from our cavemen days: story-telling (I don't know which is older and seeing as I don't think there's any fossilized sounds I think that answer is lost to the ages).

And I realize songs can tell stories but, having no musical talent whatsoever, adding music and rhythm just doesn't add much for me personally and often even detracts from the story (repeated passages for the chorus etc.)

 

[Fanfic_warper]

I personally much prefer another art-form from our cavemen days: story-telling (I don't know which is older and seeing as I don't think there's any fossilized sounds I think that answer is lost to the ages).

And I realize songs can tell stories but, having no musical talent whatsoever, adding music and rhythm just doesn't add much for me personally and often even detracts from the story (repeated passages for the chorus etc.)

I resepect and agree with this. (In another forum of mine, I said that I value story so much that I'd forgive everything about a game, book, comic, manga, movie or tv show, so long as it had a good story).

However I think storytelling IS the oldest art. Music only exists so long as you can process the idea of a collection of sounds having a meaning behind a practical sound. Cavemne told or painted stories, but neverteheless, the idea was to tell a story in some way.

Music wouldn't come along until they not only found communication in sound, but entertainment in it as well.

 

[Nickolai77]

Ah shit, I need to back up on my statement. I certainly didn't want to give the impression that music is for maths nerds, and anyone who can't do maths shouldn't bother. I, for instance, am absolutely terrible at conventional maths. Anything beyond basic multiplications and subtractions, and I need a calculator to help me out.

Now, because I've studied and practised music for a while, I've managed to overcome my numbers dyslexia and understand a few of the more complicated ideas in music- things like polyrhythms and rhythmic displacements. But music is just as much about feeling as it is about counting. The way I managed to learn to play in 5/4 wasn't by counting it, but by feeling it. By learning to feel it, I learned to play it, and thus learned to count it too.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that you don't have to be a numbers whizz to be an awesome musician. Maths lies at the heart of music, but you don't have to study maths in order to get a handle on music. The important thing is the feeling that goes into it. Music without feel is like a whiskey-and-coke without the whiskey.

Thanks for the clarification, although i should have emphasised the word "tend" when writing how mathematically minded people excel at music. I knew when writing that post that you meant this was only a tendency, and not a rule. I thought what you said about "feeling" music was pretty interesting and insightful though.

I love the euphoric feeling you can get from some songs that we really enjoy. I understand when someone describes such experiences as "spiritual", although i'm somewhat less romantic and have described music euphoria as "like being on drugs". I too like pretty "grand" music with plenty of depth, which may explain why i quite like symphonic metal, and also practically anything sung by Bruce Dickinson. Indeed, a vocalist and a good, clean one at that, is a must for me, it gives the song a subject and further depth. Plus, i like the sound of human voices.

It's songs such as this, a song about Celtic spirituality, which give me "the rush".

 

[similar.squirrel]

Desmond Morris reckons its appeal has something to do with the feelings of safety evoked by rhythm. Of course, it probably goes far beyond that. I don't know. I guess anything that can amplify or change your feelings is attractive to our species. Maybe.

Interesting question.