Conference napalm::commusic_v1

    Sure. Using time compression, a well known digital technique, to
    cause all the notes in a composition to sound at once. Or in the
    case of dance: if the dancer were to feign a sudden epileptic attack,
    thus performing all the motions inherent in the work in the space
    of three seconds.
    
    Sorry, Ruben. It's difficult for me to understand the meaning behind
    your question. It's true that music happens over time, but I still
    VISUALIZE my compositions and those of of others which I know well.
    
    It's just that the music lies along a horizontal timeline rather
    than being immediately (vertically) perceptible. That's the way
    it is.
    
    karl moeller sws tucson arizona usa 

     Funny; there's a piece by Gyorgy Ligeti (Lux Aeterna) that
    consistently sounds to me as if it's being heard along the
    imaginary time axis, orthogonal to the real time axis - heard
    in cross section, if you will. Not what you asked for, but maybe
    related.
    
    -John

    
    	I've been waiting for others to tackle this before I tried.
    
    	The best way I know of to visualize music is a musical score
    (whether traditional or otherwise);  it's all there, laid out
    in front of you; frozen for you to contemplate.
    
    	Otherwise, Alvin Lucier has a piece ('Queen of the South',
    I think) which has oscillators connected to transducers connected
    to a large metal plate.  Sand (actually, 'Tang' - a powdered
    breakfast drink) is poured on it.  As the music progresses, patterns
    (first discovered, I think, by Chladni) come and go.
    
    	Is that the sort of thing you are looking for?  Something which
    maps sounds on visuals?  You've mentioned being concerned with
    your own internal visualizations; are you trying to find some way
    to externalize them?
    						- Karl

    O.K., I know my statement is certainly criptographic in some way.
    .4 is quite right: "Lux Aeterna" is really the most likely to express
    what I mean. Karl, the experience you tell it's also a first step
    that I think is worth to try.
    
    What I am looking for is what I call "full sensorial experience":
    a total experience (music, sculpture, painting...); I am just asking
    to those of you, composers, a question coming from me: a listener.
    
    Do YOU think you make compositions to express feelings you get thru
    music or do YOU make music to GET feelings you want to feel? And
    then, it comes the listener. Am I, as a listener, to share your
    feelings thru your music or am I to share your music regardless
    of the message inherent to the music you play?
    
    I have always tried to define where does the listener come in the
    musician/listener equation. I can imagine landscapes and sensorial
    waves while listening, say, a Webern or Slavnik composition; but
    can you describe a given landscape in terms of music?
    
    When you sit in front of your keyboard: do you get your mind free
    and begins to play or do you have an image in your mind you want
    to express musically by means of keystrokes?
    
    I'm not sure if I am making it clear or not. I want you to consider
    me a pure listener of your work. So, when I was asking you to tell
    me (from the composer's view) if there are any possibilities to
    make "spatially aprehensible" music, I was just asking you how about
    extending the sensorial power of music further to embrace spatial
    and visual dimension.
    
    Additionally, I was posting my "Fairlight" note because, when first
    faced to the machine, I thought this could help a lot in expanding
    the "acoustic world" beyond WHAT YOU CAN'T HEAR.
     So, I hope this refines my question. Waiting eagerly for your answers!

    
    I think in your terms that the dimensional experience you are seeking
    is actually called composition and or improvisation. As i see it
    the only way to really be inside the music is to play it, feel it
    and hear it all at the same time. I think most of us commusic noters
    actually experience this a great amount of the time we are working
    in our personal studios.
    
                               Paul.

    I think you are right provided you are giving me a way to approach
    music and enjoy it the best. But that doesn't really answer the
    more in-depth question about "why does the man make music?". I mean:
    if by means of music you are trying to express yourself (your inner
    feelings) and what you have experienced, that means you are
    "theoretically" unable to express that that you do not experience.
    
    Then, it follows, you only make music based on experience. And I
    like it that way. But, you agree, I DO EXPERIENCE also spatial
    dimensions, visual sensations and other kind of reality representations
    (color, smell, size...), so, I ask, HOW COULD A GIVEN COMPOSER EXPRESS
    TOO THESE REALITIES THAT HE EXPERIENCES?
    
    And, what's more, how do you think a listener integrate into his
    self-experienced realities those of the composer?
    
    I think technology can help (Fairlight, for example, plus videoacoustic
    devices and image generators). So, I think music must go beyond
    its mere acoustic constraints and integrate spatial parameters
    (realities). 
    
    I agree with you: play it, feel it and hear it. Now: play for me,
    feel with me and hear with me the full spectrum of reality
    representations. Don't know how... and you?

    The Muse crooks her finger and I follow... nah, that's not it.
    
    There's a book by the Persian Sufi, Rumi, titled 'Fihi ma Fihi',
    which means 'in it which is in it', a cryptic phrase meaning that
    the reader will only get out of the book what the reader brings
    TO the reading of the book.
    
    So as an erstwhile composer I can only initially create what I need
    to hear; then there is an evaluation process about A) is this something
    I need to hear more than once, B) is this something someone ELSE
    would 'resonate' with. I've talked with people who had the most
    amazing insights and visions/visuals and actual movie scripts while
    hearing my music.. few of which corresponded either to my intention
    or to my perceptions while listening.
    
    RE the 'visual apperception' of music.. I agree with Karl_I, that
    a method for this has already been invented, an X-Y axis
    representation, X being pitch, Y being duration and placement in
    time... the musical notation system. Which, by the way, I relate
    to LESS AND LESS as I get older. I never score my own pieces, and,
    if I wish to play another's composition, I learn it BY EAR. That
    way, I can only play it if I've INTERNALIZED the music, making those
    melodic/harmonic/rhythmic motifs my own - that is, available to
    me for my own music. As you might imagine I'm somewhat careful
    regarding whose music I work out.. garbage in garbage out.
    
    karl moeller sws tucson arizona

    
    Im sad in a way. I can not listen to music and see colors,
    visions, movie scripts, naked dancing girls, or whatever...
    
    As a listenner I am *still* composer. Wrapped up in the *music*
    .......for itself. On musical terms: Performance. Composition.
    Modulation. Chops. clarity. etc.
    
    I dont know how to *PLAY* the color red unambigously from 
    *PLAYING* the color purple, such that everyone that closed
    their eyes and listenned to "red" and "purple" compositions
    would SEE those colors. You know?
    
    Music is ambiguous. That's its strength. And weakness.
        
    It *may* be possible to stimulate the brain in such a way as
    to cause the vision of color AND the sensation of sound (but what?
    what pitches? what timbres? much less a sequence of both!).
    I do not see how this could happen from air-waves of any sort
    hitting your ear. You have that now....but a given tune can put
    some people to sleep yet make others cry with happiness. Amibiguity.
    

    And if the composer/improviser gets wrapped up as a listenner (beyond
    the amount necessary to guide the 'piece') the structure of the
    music degrades to randomness.

    Hmmm, I could change my mind on all this. We are in philosophical
    space here....
    
    Listen to Keith Jarrett live improv pieces. 

    

    And still you hold that "music is ambigous". I think its "message"
    is ambiguous, not music. I think the meaning in a phrase can be
    ambiguous, not the language. I think ART meaning is ambiguous, not
    ART. I think artists can be ambiguous, not their works.
    
    And, finally, it is the way you internalize sounds what makes you
    eager for listening music (that music that reminds you of something
    particular to you). I agree the composer intention could be far
    from trying to compose a particular passage just to remind someone
    of something, but I am still on my kick: music can represent features
    of reality... that's why WE listen to compositions... although that
    is not why YOU compose them.
    
    And I can see naked dancing girls under a tangram solarized sky
    riding on purple sunrays when I listen "Nightriders" or "Desert
    Dream": kinda oniric music.
    
    O.K., let's put it in this way: you *can not* listen to music and
    see colors, but you *can not* make an abstraction and forget them
    either. I mean, putting my thesis side up: can you compose regardless
    of the reality that surrounds you? regardless of the colors you
    see (but that you can not describe in musical terms)? can you compose
    a passage independently of time and space? can you?

    
    Hmmm. interesting concepts. I can compose outside
    of space and time if you can listen outside space 
    and time.......
    
    We are not in much disagreement. My only intention
    here is to say I have not found in music a medium
    that allows unambigous communication of ideas, thoughts,
    scenes, colors, whatever. 
    
    But then, what medium can? 

    As long as we all internalize perceptions even slightly
    differently, as you agree, then there is ambiguity.
    I dont expect the composer to be able to produce the 
    image of (insert choice here) in all listeners. And 
    with the exception of *cliches* that have been associated
    with moods or visual images (chase scenes, 'scary' music, etc.) 
    I dont thing the composer *intends* to produce a 'tangram
    sky with pink flowing rivers of......", in the listenner.
    
    Which is not to say that he/she cant compose while visualizing
    such things. And music results. But to then say its gonna
    produce the same image in a or all listener(s)? 
    Sorry, try another medium.
    
    ron
    
        

    
    	Sounds to me like your visualizations are more important
    to you than the music.  The music is simply a means to an
    end.
    
    	Is this true?
    
    							- Karl

    "Is this true?" No. Music is not "simply" a means to an end. ART
    is not a means. You don't need music to reach to an end (be it
    happiness, self-realization or whatever you name it).
    
    The synthies and midis and computers are means. Not music. The wall
    where you paint is a means. Your final painting not. Techniques,
    methodologies and technologies are means: ART is an end. Music is
    ART, so, you see, MUSIC IS AN END in itself. If you derive from
    it delight and hapiness, that's your problem, your *use* of music.
    But that feelings are not an end.
    
    This thesis agrees with .10: he doesn't care what the listener
    internalize because feelings the listener gets are not an end.
    
    .10 compose music, he plays it and he doesn't want to go further
    discussing what the listener gets from his music: he sees music
    as an end in itself. So do I, but what makes the difference is that
    I consider the full sensorial experience as an end (visual, sculptural,
    musical) not only music.
    
    Not only music...

>< Note 666.11 by STAR::MALIK "Karl Malik" >
>                               -< Magic Theater >-
>
>    
>    	Sounds to me like your visualizations are more important
>    to you than the music.  The music is simply a means to an
>    end.
>    
>    	Is this true?
>    
>    							- Karl

Karl, you hit what Ruben was trying to say in .0 on the head (my
interpretation).  One of my favorite kinds of music is that which
interacts with the listener's creativity, spawning images of 
imagination, rather than bringing to mind the images of the actual 
artists/instruments that created the music.  This type of music offers
listeners a whole new world (for some, a 3 dimensional world) in which the
listener can set out and explore, using the imaginative traits of the 
subconscious mind.

This is actually the music I like best (this can be noted by accessing
my entry into the registry of noters for the MUSIC conference where I state
an interest in music that communicates with the subconscious mind).  Many of
my compositions of 3 or 4 years ago concentrated on this style of music
[not too many people besides myself has heard this music, however, generally
because most don't understand it and think I'm weird].

Specific electronic music happens to be that perfect vehicle...

Todd.

    RE.:.13 <SPECIFIC ELECTRONIC MUSIC HAPPENS TO BE THAT PERFECT VEHICLE>
    
    And I agree completely and I like it that way. Please, play it for
    me there in such a way that I can forget this world and image that
    wonderful 2001: a space odissey thru metamorphic rocks trip beyond
    the infinite! (and play it soon for me, 'cos I need to dream..)

    
    	1) Ruben, what *is* your first name?  You never sign your
    notes!
    
    	2) As I mentioned, I do not visualize as you do.  However, 
    concentrating intently on the music (abstact patterns, relationships,
    etc.) is also a very effective way to 'forget this world'.
    
	Perhaps any task involving a high degree of concentration
    offers this type of 'escape' from one's personal concerns and
    problems.  Creative people of all kinds (artists, musicians,
    mathematicians, etc.) have spoken of the creative act as being
    a kind of 'trace'.
    
    	So, to get back to computers, perhaps what you are looking
    for is some sort of computer-controlled bio-feedback system;
    where your state(s) of mind are modulated in an aesthetically
    pleasing manner.
    
    	Have you played with bio-feedback devices?
    
    							- Karl

    Hi, Karl!
    
    My first name is Ruben (Rub�n Cerd�n, Hebrew origin meaning "first
    son" in opposition to Benjamin, "last son", where "ben" means "son").
    
    I have never heard of bio-feedback devices and I am quite interesting
    in those devices. I would like you to explain me a little more about
    them and which musicians play with them (if any).
    
    My node (MDR01) is located in Madrid, Spain. 24 years old working
    for DEC Espa�a Languages Engineering (CAT, AI, LISP and the like).
    
    When I first met this conference I got quickly interested as music
    plays a great role within my daily life. Psichedelic sensations
    thru music is what I pursue strongly and that's why I am close
    interested in your experience. I am interested too in musictherapy
    for mental isolated people ("autists" we call them, but do not know
    the proper word in your language).
    
    About computer and synthies I love technology as a third hand
    new-dimension reaching tool. ART makes me feel really good. My sad:
    I am very poor playing instruments at all and I have never felt
    the Artist conception of the world that surrounds me except as a
    pure listener. I think I can agree with you all in most of your
    approaches and rationales and the differences I point out are minimal
    as we all love music (some of you play it, some of us listen to
    it... but, in fact, we all like computer-generated music).
    
    I love breaking my work from time to time and reading this conference.
    I realize there more people out there playing my game: and I like
    it.
    
    Tell me more on bio-feedback, Karl. Have you ever experienced with
    it?

    
    Ruben, I have a theory that knowledge (to a certain extent)
    precludes wonder. In this subject, that means that because
    composers and musicians ARE SO CLOSE to the music technically
    (the knowledge), it affects their perception of music (the wonder).
    
    Their perspectives, and even their ability AS A LISTENNER would
    therefor be AT LEAST basically 'different' than non-musician listeners.
        
    If true, dont you DARE learn to play an instrument. It will
    affect your ability to percieve what you now percieve. Grow
    THAT ability instead. Its quite a talent. Have you heard of
    the "100th Monkey" syndrome?
    
	ron.    
    

    Ruben, It sounds to me a little bit that you want to experience
    music in some (possibly physical) spatial sense, but merely in the
    role of a listener.  That is fairly hard to do.  You gotta participate
    in some way, I think.  At least go to a showing of 2001 in a theatre
    with those big speakers on all sides, rather than just listening
    to the sound track in your comfy living room.
    
    I get a spatial sense of music when I play in on the (accoustic
    Baldwin) piano, because I gotta move my bod!  At a minimum, the
    hands and arms move up and down the keyboard, but it is a lot better
    if I indulge in a little body English.
    
    Singing in a chorus, especially a large one, gives a spatial feeling
    because the different parts are scattered around and you are in
    the middle, so you feel space.  The Berlioz Requiem really gets
    into the spatial stuff -- the Tuba Mirum part has 4 brass choirs
    that are supposed to be scatterd to the 4 corners of the concert
    hall.  Now, do that in the shed at Tanglewood, and put yourself
    in the chorus, and you will really get spatial!
    
    By the way, no need to remove the time element to get spatial -
    remember that time is but the 4th dimension.  The way I see it is
    that we get 2 or 3 dimensions of physical space, as the first 3
    paragraphs of this note infer.  But we also get dimensions of pitch,
    of timbre, and of course time.  So we music freaks have at least
    6 dimensions just to start with.  Ain't we lucky.
    
    And all this without any reference at all to the extra-musical images
    that might come into play if you have a little imagination, and
    if the composer helps you with some hints, which is really what
    "programmatic" music means to do.
    
    All of which probably has nothing to do with what you had in mind
    in your original note, but then no two people will ever experience
    music in quite the same way.
    
    John
    

    
    I was going to stay out of this discussion (it's a little too abstarct
    for me), but the last two replies prompt the following comments.
    
    re .18 - see also the Mahler 8th symphony, with its multiple offstage
    brass choirs.  I have heard this both at Tanglewood and in Symphony
    Hall and the effect is always staggering.
    
    re. 17 - we had a discussion about this issue some time ago - whether
    knowledge or understanding interferes with a sense of wonder.  I
    just want to weigh in on the other side - for me, understanding
    has always enhanced my sense of wonder.  Knowing what's actually
    going on just gives me that much more to be dazzled by.  I almost
    feel sorry for people who feel they have to remain ignorant or naive
    in order to be moved emotionally.
    
    len.
    

 How does it go? "Ignorance is like a delicate fruit; touch it
and the bloom is gone." Oscar Wilde.
 I don't know that this will add a lot of substance to the discussion,
but I gotta agree with Len on this one. I've never found that understanding
diminished my sense of wonder; quite the contrary. If a work of art
depends on the ignorance of its audience for its effect, if its
wonderfulness vanishes once it's understood, that would indicate to me
that it's not worth much in the first place. Good art withstands
scrutiny. More than "withstands", it rewards scrutiny.

 I envision already the legions of "it's all subjective" replies.
So I'll say this: I've been on both sides. I've heard music without
understanding how it works, and I've heard it with understanding.
Understanding is better. To imagine that a trained musician gets
less pleasure from Beethoven than the average Evening-at-Pops-er,
or that a painter gets less pleasure from Vermeer than my grandmother
gets from Norman Rockwell, or that a physicist or astronomer can't
comprehend the wonder of the universe as well as a flat-Earther,
just doesn't match up with any experience I ever had. I've always
found the people who get most excited by anything to be the people
who know the most about it.

-John

    Hey John, I'll bet we agree about a lot - it's just the stuff that
    we disagree about that's fun to talk (shout?) about.
    
    len.
     

I belong to the "ignorance is bliss" school when it comes to music.  If
I listen to a piece repeatedly, the emotional beauty diminishes once I analyze
it and figure out what's going on.  That's when a form of "rational beauty"
sets in, but it is inferior to emotional beauty.


And then there's "Beauty in the Beast!"  ;-)

John M.

    
	'A work of art wears out in direct proportion to its being understood'.

    						- Marcel Duchamp
    
    Marcel not withstanding, I agree with Len & John.  I wonder if the
    'wearing out' phenomenon might be explained in terms of 'surface'
    beauty.  Possibly, that's what is destroyed by understanding.
    
    What's left is a much deeper beauty/understanding - but one that
    requires a greater commitment on our part.
    
    People often talk about 'loving music'.  Perhaps it's a question
    of whether you are looking for a lasting relationship or a one-night
    stand. ;-)
    
    							- Karl

    
    Cute. But you've fallen into the logical trap that was set,
    which is to conclude that the educated listenner percieves
    differently than the novice. THAT was the point. "Loss of
    wonder" was used for controversy (read: to drag you in).
    
    AND so, it also follows that our listenner with 'special'
    abilities to visualize will have those abilities change
    if he has a music education. He percieved one way. He is now
    listenning differently, and will percieve differently. Ok.
    We *cant* say if his visualization will be 'improved' or
    'removed', but either way....see what I mean? There *is* 
    the chance that he could 'lose' that skill.
    
    ron

     Mmmm, no. (Gawd, I LOVE these pointless arguments. I should
    have been Peter Abelard or John Duns Scotus, duking it out in
    Latin with the Occamite Nominalists...). Perhaps the educated
    listener perceives differently. It doesn't follow that he/she
    associates or visualizes differently. Hearing music QUA music
    is not the same as associating other things with music. It just
    doesn't follow.
     The music is not the same thing as the response it elicits,
    however strong and certain and unvarying that response may be.
    Music is organized sound. That's all, that's enough. Music is not
    colors or emotions or politics or religion or pictures in the mind
    of standing on a hill on a warm windy day. Sound touches the ear,
    organization touches the intellect. The senses and the intellect
    touch in turn the memory and the imagination, but that's your
    business and not something that music does, or ought to do, directly.
    
    -John

    .24:
    
    
    << AND so, it also follows that our listenner with 'special'
    << abilities to visualize will have those abilities change
    << if he has a music education. He percieved one way. He is now
    << listenning differently, and will percieve differently.
                                                             
    Agreed.  You lose one mode of perception as you gain another.  Some
    people don't want to risk that -- they might lose more than they
    will gain!  I don't believe that will actually happen;  I'll take
    the chance.
    
    John

    O.K., I have read all of your replies to my note and how discussion
    was led to an end in which musician/listener armies crash each other.
    I don't wanna put the question out on WHAT MAKES YOU COMPOSER COMPOSE
    and WHAT MAKES US LISTENER TO ENJOY YOUR COMPOSITIONS.
    
    But I have drawn some interesting conclusions and will never forget.
    I must agree I don't get the same feelings when being lying on my
    bed listening an electronic passage than when driving on the fast
    lane at 140 Km/h in the night while listening that same passage.
    
    It is also true that being by the sea in a winter evening while
    listening "Rubycon" it is not the same that listening to it while
    in my dark room... and so, I suposse it is not the same to compose
    the same tunes while in a different mood.
    
    So both listeners and musicians are affected by SPATIAL and SENSORIAL
    constraints. We move on a same plane, but with different speeds.
    
    So, I can't think of a real abstract ART: no abstraction possible
    when man must learn to cope with his own sensorial limited world.
    
    They say social events and perceptions imply a certain kind of music.
    WHICH IS THE MUSIC YOU FEEL RIGHT NOW? AREN'T THERE AN IMPLIED
    LIMITATION TO THE MUSIC YOU MAKE DUE TO TECHNOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS
    (SYBTHIES, COMPUTERS, MIDIs AND THE LIKE)?
    
    In other words: ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH THE ACOUSTIC REPRESENTATION
    OF YOUR FEELINGS AND EMOTIONS YOU GET?

Ah ha, now you seem to be asking what we hear in our heads as composers.
I can only speak for myself, but I usually hear music with incredible 
dynamics (loud and soft, wild and conservative).  Usually I hear in terms
of unique percussive sounds and rhythms (no surprise here), pianos,
synthesized sounds, and of course screamin' guitar licks with lots of
echo and reverb.  Of course what I hear is very different depending on
the particular mood I'm in (mood is the key) and how much sleep I've
had (the less sleep you get, the closer to the subconscious mind you are).

I tend to be more imaginative/creative on less sleep, and thus compose
differently on less sleep.

Todd.

    re -1..'the less sleep you get the closer to the unconscious mind
    you are'..
    
    AHA ! so THAT's why I've been plagued with insomnia ! It's all this
    music struggling to get out ! Actually I DO go into my studio and
    play through headphones at such times... and, since I'm more prolific
    than ever, something must be working right.
    
    regarding Ruben's latest question, I hear music in my head that
    ranges from vast symphonic/choral productions to stupid, cheesy
    garage-band rock. So watch out..
    
    karl

 The Pythagoreans and the early Indian theorists held that there
are two essentially different types of music, heard and unheard.
You've heard perhaps of the "music of the spheres"? Pythagorean
concept. Music created by the movement of the spheres of the
planets and stars, pervading the universe as water pervades the
universe of the fish, unheard and unhearable. The Indian theory
included the idea that the unheard music COULD be heard with
sufficient work, and hearing it was an attainment equivalent to
union with God (however you want to express the goal of yoga -
I don't want to get into word quibbles about Hindu cosmology).

 Unheard music is also the stuff of some fine poetry.
 "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
  Are sweeter still..."
	-Keats, I think, but it may be Shelley

 "These dull notes we sing
  Discords need for helps to grace them.
  Only Beauty, purely loving, knows no discord."
	-Thomas Campion

 If there is any sort of music that can be imagined "free of 
technical constraints", it must, I think, be some sort of
unheard music such as these theories describe. And unheard music
is clearly the stuff of mystical experience, not the sort of
thing you're going to find on the radio. Heard music of whatever
sort is always going to be dependent on technical constraints.
Because it has to sound. That limitation doesn't bother me.

 And I continue to be puzzled about all the emphasis here on
emotion. I make music from a state of intense concentration, not
from emotion. Emotion would only get in the way. I don't deny that
I get an emotional charge from listening to music, but the music is
not "about" the emotion, the music is "about" itself. Music is
connected to emotion, but the connection is not the thing itself.

 The closest thing I can find to a good argument for identifying
music with emotion is the Indian doctrine of the rasas, and if you
look at it closely it's not the argument you <straw-men Emotionalists>
want.

-John

    re-2:  I often wake up in the morning with a tune I'll be humming.
     After a while it dawns on me that I've never heard it before. 
    So, I usually commence to humming it into a recorder or working
    it out on a keyboard.  But, I'm usually hurried and can't get all
    of it down.  Then, when I come back to it I don't remember all the
    background stuff that sounded so good while I was dreaming/first-
    humming it.  I need a computer, and synths, and a voice-tracker,
    and (you know how it goes)...just so I won't lose it.  I'm sure
    there are lots of other bums out there with the same malady.  When
    you have the time you can write a whole tune in a day or even just
    a few hours (I'm talking *creative* stuff).  What I dread now is
    that I don't have much in the way of equipment, so it takes a long
    time to get the thoughts out, and by the time I'm half way through
    I'm already bored with it and thinking about the next tune, but
    I gotta' finish this one or I'll never get anywhere, etc.

    Ok. Well, this is the (or, a,) problem:

    Your consciousness and musical abilities are a FILTER.
    
    (pause. think about it..............)
    
    As a composer, you are constrained. By what? By your
    ability to TRANSLATE what you internally hear,dream,or
    intellectually(music_training_wise) scheme into a representation
    that others can perceive.
    
    This translation is a direct function of your ability to 
    master translation tools, and the *quality* of those tools.
    
    In any case (so far,until the direct brain_wave_to_midi(?) interface)
    the tool limitations, AND/or your level of mastery of the tool(s)...
    effect a change between what the composer hears, and others hear.
    
    I cant believe any composer can disagree, but have at it guys....
    It's a little different if you record a composition as you play
    it, but, gee, now what youre playing is a function of your limited
    abilities as a performer....
    
    ron
        

    
    re;-1
    
    	You assume that composers are concerned with communication;
    that it is important that the listener experience what the composer
    feels.
    
    	It simply isn't true.  Or, at least, everything I have read
    leads me to believe that composers write (artists create) for
    themselves.  If the public understands, fine.
    
    	How could one possibly create with 20 million people hanging
    over their shoulder?  Pleasing yourself is difficult enough.
    
    						- Karl_1

    Musicians compose *first* without thinking of the other guys around.
    But, at the end, they are aware music it's also a group linking
    tool (tribal songs, rastas, the modern concerts outdoors, festivals,
    contests... auditoriums, musical palaces and the like). So want
    it or not, musician plays for the rest of the guys.
    
    And now come a handful of scientifics telling us they have devised
    a device that can pick up unheard sounds (grass growing, water falling
    on a window, waves over an iced surface) and process them while
    amplifying them. 
    
    Then, they make it available to the composer by stating "we have
    designed a device that will make your guitar to cry and your drum
    to talk".
    
    At a later stage, we've got some guys composing aided by computers,
    synthies and that stuff, provided with hardware and software enuf,
    tape recorders, you name it.
    
    And then they feel, dream, imagine and tie together all that to
    produce a work (music, you see) and then we have the tribe again
    meeting together to listen to what the composer has made.
    
    More or less, fine...
    
    But then it comes a guy like me wondering NOT ABOUT COMPOSER FEELING
    OR LISTENER EMOTIONS.... but wondering on what the hell is music
    about. So, a last question:
    
    What leads you all to compose? and, what's more interesting for
    me: WHAT LEAD US ALL TO LISTEN TO MUSIC?
    
    I would like you to brainstorm and remember the first time you felt
    the need or natural instinc pulse prompting you to compose. When
    was it? How evolved thru the years?.....WHY???

    Hello.  I can't honestly say I read all these reponses.  I cannot
    identify with people that speak of spatial music and playing
    landscapes.  To me music (this may be the "why") is the ultimate
    mantra.  I have found that music often puts me into a very dreamy
    state that I find very enjoyable.  I don't need to know the words
    or concentrate to be lulled (or the tune for that matter).  Even
    animals are lulled by noises that repeat.  I theorize that it is
    from the sounds of the ocean/nature/universe from which we all evolved.
    
    Secondly, as a maker of music I don't try to "send" or "create"
    or anything like that.  When playing alone I find that I am
    in much the same mental state as my music listening "mode".  The music
    just flows, no visions, no concepts.   What I think is really neat is
    that when playing music with a close friend, the music is just a medium
    for "tuning in" and making some kind of (but very discernable)
    person to person link.
    
    Tim

>   < Note 666.17 by GNERIC::ROSS "no time like the present" >
>                          -< were right behind you >-
>
>   
>   Ruben, I have a theory that knowledge (to a certain extent)
>   precludes wonder. In this subject, that means that because
>   composers and musicians ARE SO CLOSE to the music technically
>   (the knowledge), it affects their perception of music (the wonder).
 
    This happens to be _physiologically_ exactly correct -- CAT scans
    of brain activity reveal that:
    
    For non-musicians:
    	The right-brain hemisphere is stimulated while listening to
    	music. The right-brain is the "artistic", "non-procedural" half
    	of the brain, and is usually associated with inituition and
    	creative power.
    
    For a musician:
    	BOTH halves of the brain are stimulated, but to a lesser extent:
    	That is to say, he appreciates the art less, but is busy
    	"analyzing" the composition. (The left-brain is associated with
    	"logical", "analytical" thought).
    
    				- HBM

    why thank you. 
    
    My left-brain loves quantified proof.
    
    My right-brain says: "see? I told you so."
    
    {satified}
    
    rr