Offtopic Conveying with Music (was some other subject

[Guest guest]

Why do you speak? I suppose there are times when people speak without

wanting to convey anything, but those are fairly strange cases, aren't they?

If music is a " language " of emotion, that is, a vehicle for creating

specific internal experiences in the listening, then the purpose of music is

to convey. It's part of the definition of what music is. I can say that

all people who write music mean to convey something because it's already

been established that they are doing something that necessarily *must*

convey something.

You say that maybe you write music just to enjoy it, but *how* do you enjoy

it? You enjoy it because by hearing it, a recognizable emotional state is

recreated in your brain. This is analagous to someone saying, " Cat " and

having the image of a cat appear in your mind. A string of sounds (or in

the case of writing, a string of marks) triggers (conveys) an internal

experience (an emotional state, an image, an idea) across space from the

musician/speaker to the listener.

Now if you really want to get into something interesting from here, we

should go listen to Ella Fitzgerald do some scat.

YR

RE: Re: Setting the record straight / How we kill what we eat

Well, the linguistic part is quibbling, but on the other hand I think that

it is interesting (well, maybe to some). What I strongly disagree with is

your generalization that 'the need to write music is ALWAYS to convey ... "

..

How do you know this? How can you possibly speak for all musicians? That

part is not a quibble.

And I just think that the rest of it is, well, wrong. I may simply write

the

music, or play the music, because I enjoy it. Anything beyond that is an

intellectualisation (sp?) of the process, and fills a need to 'explain'

the

process or justify it. IN some cases, sure, people may need such a

justification, and assign this purpose to the process ('I'm writing this

piece to convey or describe how I felt about x, or I'm writing this piece

about they way that cows actually understand people and resent the fact

that

they thank us that they're going to eat them').