h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Recumbentman

As someone who attempts to read musical notation for singing I found this entry both illuminating and encouraging.

Pimms

Thank you Pimms! Thank you!

There are some curious attitudes around notation; Pavarotti apparently never learnt to read music -- why should he? Does a painter need to know the names of the pigments?

Paul McCartney, whom I admire very highly, went into the "classical" style with (for me) not great results; it was like taking on a handicap, not a liberation.

Yehudi Menuhin busked along with Stephane Grapelli for a while, and came a very poor second. He handicapped himself, I gather, by refusing to practise riffs, on the grounds that Grapelli had never practised other than in public. The underlying belief has to have been, that Menuhin regarded himself as having come from a musically advantaged position, and that for him, playing jazz was slumming. Of course Menuhin had had a lot of teaching and intensive study -- but not of jazz! Grapelli was on home ground! The idea that classical musicians can play jazz simply by relaxing was slipped into Disney's 'Fantasia', and also Leonard Bernstein's TV programmes . . . but it never was true. Did Meryl Streep acquire an impeccable Donegal accent by relaxing?

I could go on . . .

I'd like to add my appreciative voice to the mix. This is a lovely entry, the first I've seen to apply McLuhan's theories to music in quite this way. I wish all young musicians could read this and learn.

I'd like to add some thoughts about the digitization of music. Not covered in this entry are the ways that digitization allows for new forms of "notation." This started with MIDI, a computer system for marking notes that was the equivalent of the first printing press. MIDI connected musicians to computers, and recorded their playing as a series of pitches - then translated those pitches into notated scores. In most MIDI programs, the pre-scored pitches can be seen and modified.

More recently, it has become popular for digital music producers to use computers to modify recorded pieces by manipulating graphical displays of the soundwaves themselves. This started as a way to eliminate background noise and edit songs for length, but increasingly the music is manipulated for aesthetic effect through these programs.

Mixer programs like ACID, meanwhile, allow composers to place sound clips onto a digital page in a spreadsheet fashion and have the computer play the combined result much like a player piano plays the notes indicated on a roll of paper. Combined together, these tools allow people to take any recorded sound - whether inherently musical or not - and combine it with others and/or modify it into legitimate music.

In the same way modern art now has "found art" objects, music is learning to appreciate "found music" samples from outside music studios. And like modern sculpture, these found objects are often manupipulated into recognizable forms. Sounds can act as notes or beats.

Most fascinating to me are the DJs who manipulate records on turntables to produce performances that vary each time, and which bear little or no resemblance to the original recordings. Looking forward, the turntable itself is doomed. It's now possible to DJ tunes directly on iPods and some other portable MP3 players. The medium is still evolving.

What will this mean for music? I can only imagine it will be freeing. However, the drawback may be that anything that isn't easily recorded and played back will have zero value. Could our grandchildren, for instance, be unable to recognize or appreciate silence? Hmm.

As an engineer, I've always had a sort of "analytical" interest in music, even auditing a year long course in music theory. This interesting entry reminds me of a number of anecdotes ...

Elvis Presly is quoted as saying that he didn't know much about music, in his business he didn't have to.

Ronnie Dawson, a Texas rockabilly singer/guitarist (he said it was ROCK), had a cult following in London who flocked to a concert. But he said they listened politely, then went off to play his CD's which to them were the real "stars".

At a lecture by a university musicologist, I asked if a piece of music could be completely defined for playback by, say, a computer. She said no, it is not possible.

I could go on ...

Thank you Fragilis -- what you say is fascinating. The use of digital means whereby "This started as a way to eliminate background noise and edit songs for length, but increasingly the music is manipulated for aesthetic effect through these programs" absolutely parallels the use writing was put to when its strengths were found. Digitisers "manipulating graphical displays of the soundwaves themselves" and writers manipulating "the notes themselves" -- though of course both are (unwittingly?) newly-defining what the sounds/notes "really" are.

"What will this mean for music? I can only imagine it will be freeing" -- I am a little more cynical, perhaps. Exciting, yes; but it is freeing people only in a new place, and the excitement is in exploring the new place. And yet you're right, I could only make these observations because the third age has arrived.

I'd say you betray your third-age faith by saying "anything that isn't easily recorded and played back will have zero value". Hmmm. But I am in agreement with your points and I am glad you go along with the drift of my entry.

Thank you Steve K!

Elvis not knowing much about music is a little like Jesus not knowing much about religion (though he did know his scriptures; still you can imagine him saying something like that). Better analogy: Wittgenstein not knowing a whole lot about philosophy when he wrote the Tractatus.

"I asked if a piece of music could be completely defined for playback by, say, a computer" -- fascinating crossed-wires situation. What did the lecturer have in mind as "a piece of music"? Because scores can take on a life of their own. Conductors sometimes worship a score more than they admire the composer! In that view the score becomes a Platonic Ideal, of which no earthly rendering is perfect or final. Cart before horse?

Perhaps I should clarify, Recumbentman. I should have said, "anything that isn't easily recorded and played back will [be perceived to have] zero value." I'm not saying this is a good thing, but I think it may be an inevitable result. I tend to be optimistic about progress, but guardedly so. While it is inevitable that technology will change the way we perceive things, we must also remember that it's within our power to manipulate technology if we feel it has gone too far astray.

Right Fragilis, I'm with you. Technology is a potent drug though!

"Elvis not knowing much about music is a little like Jesus not knowing much about religion (though he did know his scriptures; still you can imagine him saying something like that). Better analogy: Wittgenstein not knowing a whole lot about philosophy when he wrote the Tractatus."

Or Musorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", one of my favorites. " ... in many ways, Musorgsky's music looked beyond the theory of his time. He had little respect for the conventions of musical grammar ... the castigation of much of Musorgsky's music for its lack of sound harmonic technique is one of the great injustices perpetrated upon him by his contemporaries. It is true that Musorgsky lacked polish in handling one particular type of compositional technique: the sophisticated major-minor tonal system of the 19th century German composers ..." (Michael Russ, "Musorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition", 1992).