I don't post to the list much, so I'm sorry if this is redundant.

When I teach composition I usually have my students read the really
famous bit of Wittgenstein's "Philosophical Investigations" where he
discusses problems defining broad categories of behavior reductively.
His example is "game," noting that while there is not some thing that
all games have in common (there's no Platonic game -- there is no
"essence of gameness"), there are lots of similarities among things we
want to call games, but none of them need apply universally -- he
compares it to "resemblances among family members." I think the same
kind of argument applies mutatis mutandis to music.

There are theories in cognitive linguistics that point out that we
might organize knowledge categorically based on typical examples
rather than explicit definitions. This adds another wrinkle because if
you ask someone to think of, say, a bird, they're more likely to come
up with "robin" than "penguin" or "ostrich." It's a bit like Platonic
categories but with fuzzy boundaries -- I don't think this kind of
thing says much about questions like "what is music" except to point
out things which are unexceptional and uncontroversial. I suspect most
of anyone here is a lot more interested in those fuzzy boundaries, but
it can make for some awfully difficult discussions with students who
already know everything. =o)

Matt



>
> A colleague pointed me to this link:
> http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3507527/MusicTh.html
>
> It should be of interest regarding earlier discussions in this list.
> It appears to hold a lot of certainties, but basing assumptions on
> shaky sources and really closing the scope of
> music into a narrow range of possibilities. But maybe some ideas can
> be salvaged from the prejudiced views....
>
> Victor
>
>


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I fully agree. The fact that we have and use a given word does not 
necessarily mean that there is a definite object out there to be found 
that *is* what the word describes; what "music" refers to is probably 
nowhere to be found, not even in our brains. It is definitely not an 
objective entity, nor a subjective one that would be univocally shared 
by all.


Stef




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The word "objective" is old, busy, and loaded but it is indispensible.
It may be helpful to unpack several meanings of objective.

One meaning is that the object really exists whether or not anyone
knows about it. Does a falling tree in the woods make a sound if
nobody is around to hear it? Does a record player in an empty city
make a sound, or is playing music?

Another meaning is that the object exists over against us, and is the
same in some important ways for everyone. Another term for this kind
of "objective" is intersubjective.

Take mathematics. Numbers. Before there were any human beings, or
indeed any living things, on Earth, was there 1 sun in the sky of
Earth? If there was then numbers are objects and exist with or without
us. But even if that is not the case, all mathematicians assume that
mathematics is AT LEAST intersubjectively objective. Mathematicians
WILL agree on proofs. And the content of the other sciences utterly
depends on the objectivity, in at least this sense, of mathematics.

I believe that music is AT LEAST intersubjectively objective. Some
people may prefer the number 7, others may prefer the number 8, but
that does not mean that numbers are not real and that 8 is not greater
than 7. All societies have music instruments, all societies sing,
play, and dance, all societies have people called "musicians." Music
historians, ethnomusicologists, and most philosophers don't have
problems telling what is music and what is not, and I don't see why
you should.

Furthermore, just as the sciences use and depend on mathematics, so
does music! This suggests that in some deep way, music has the same
kind of objectivity as science.

Finally, we all know that some music and some musicians are more
esteemed, and have more influence, than others. This kind of influence
exerts itself across the boundaries of societies, cultures, and
epochs. That kind of trans-historical influence very strongly suggests
not only that music as a phenomenon is at least intersubjectively an
object, but that even the quality of music is to some degree
intersubjectively objective. Yes, taste is a huge factor. Yes,
different cultures are mostly deaf to the music of other cultures. But
it does not make much of a consistent difference in influence across
persons, cultures, and times to imply that there is something really
good about some music. The signal may be obscured by many factors, the
signal may be intermittent, and the signal may not be heard by
everybody, but there are multiple converging lines of evidence to show
that there is a signal and not just noise.

2011/2/14 Stéphane Rollandin :
> I fully agree. The fact that we have and use a given word does not
> necessarily mean that there is a definite object out there to be found that
> *is* what the word describes; what "music" refers to is probably nowhere to
> be found, not even in our brains. It is definitely not an objective entity,
> nor a subjective one that would be univocally shared by all.
>
>
> Stef
>
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
> csound"
>
>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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> All societies have music instruments, all societies sing,
> play, and dance, all societies have people called "musicians." Music
> historians, ethnomusicologists, and most philosophers don't have
> problems telling what is music and what is not, and I don't see why
> you should.

Knowing what music is and telling what music is are two different 
things. Sure, a lot of people can tell what is music, but do they all 
agree ? If that was the case we would not discuss it here.

As for me, I have no interest in an answer for that question; in that 
sense I do not have problems with it: it is simply not an issue.

In the same way that I live with people I love without bothering to 
answer "what is love ?", or that I enjoy many beautiful things without 
possibly define "what is beauty", I have a life full of music but don't 
really care about telling "what is music". I don't need an intellectual 
analysis for everything; direct perception and feelings are enough.

The map is not the territory. The definition is not the thing. Darwinism 
is no explanation for life; there is no explanation for life. There is 
no limit to discourse, either. One just have to stop somewhere, and here 
is where I stop :)


Stef



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I have already written my thoughts on this general question, so will not 
repeat them in detail. It has however become something of a political 
issue, given that scientists such as Pinker assert music is comparable 
to pornography and no more significant in evolutionary terms than 
"auditory cheesecake". So, even if only in the UK, I feel we do not have 
the luxury of "stopping" our investigations, merely because we already 
have as many reasons to be dedicated to music as we could wish and are 
thus busy "getting on with it". These scientists have the ear of 
government, and we are already seeing the ease with which funding for 
the humanities in general, and music in particular, is (again) being 
squeezed  (with the usual government Orwellian sophistry of claiming 
their reduced budget is somehow "more"). So any means we can find to 
persuade Pinker et al to admit they are wrong needs to be explored and 
(crucially) presented as briefly and clearly as possible in a way that 
cannot be ignored. That web page meets neither criterion, though its 
intentions are noble and it makes many useful points.

I believe, in the writings of McGilchrist and a few others, the means 
are at last available to produce just that brief and clear explanation 
of how fundamental the arts are in general, and music in particular, for 
the health (intellectual, emotional, psychological etc]  and development 
of societies (including scientists!), and thus for humanity at large; 
all fully supported by accumulated scientific evidence (since that is 
seemingly the only kind of evidence that carries any weight in the 
West). I further believe it is possible to present the key points of 
that argument both clearly and concisely; certainly in no more than a 
couple of pages. It takes work to do this of course. I  echo directly 
here the words of the author who apologised for writing a long letter 
because he did not have the time to write a short one. But I can already 
compress the basic argument into two paragraphs:

Humans have evolved so succesfully on account of their unique ability to 
combine two modes of thinking - the literalist and the symbolical. A 
healthy mind employs both in a balanced fluent complementarity. The 
symbolical mode especially is crucial to a sense of the "big picture" 
and of the "meaning" recognised as somehow arising from phenomena that 
are not in a literalist sense causally connected. It also gives humans 
the capacity to make intuitive decisions, with confidence, in the 
absence of anything that could be called complete information on a 
situation or phenomenon, and further, to trust others making those kinds 
of decisions. It is this ability that has enabled humans to form 
sophisticated multi-dimensional bonds with others, to be the least tied 
to a particular kind of environment, thence to acquire a spirit of 
exploration, and to seek to craft or adapt the environment according to 
their will and vision.

Now music (the association of sounds, and combinations of sounds, not 
known to be causally connected) is not indispensable for this, but it is 
easily the best training for it ever devised. Not least because it is 
mostly un-conscious - the training just happens. This has consequential 
effects, some not always considered desirable (at least in the view of 
overly literalist scientists) - a tendency towards superstition and 
megalomania at worst, a predisposition towards story-telling and 
myth-making, and towards a certain sense of the numinous in nature and, 
by extension, within human consciousness itself. Music acts both to 
cultivate this capacity, and to give it discipline, coherence and power. 
Musics are culturally specific; but "musicality" is demonstrably 
universal. These two modes of thinking may broadly be associated with 
the specialised functioning of the left and right hemispheres of the 
brain, but, I propose, are not fully synonymous with these. Each 
hemisphere tends to specialise in one mode or the other, but each to 
varying degrees employs both. This is the area of inquiry in which 
particular work is needed.


Or, the most concisely possible:

it is not so much a case of "the Mozart effect" as "the Music effect".


Richard Dobson



On 14/02/2011 14:24, Stéphane Rollandin wrote:
..
> Knowing what music is and telling what music is are two different
> things. Sure, a lot of people can tell what is music, but do they all
> agree ? If that was the case we would not discuss it here.
>
> As for me, I have no interest in an answer for that question; in that
> sense I do not have problems with it: it is simply not an issue.
>
..
>
> The map is not the territory. The definition is not the thing. Darwinism
> is no explanation for life; there is no explanation for life. There is
> no limit to discourse, either. One just have to stop somewhere, and here
> is where I stop :)
>



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I refuse to see music as a means to some other means.

I do not idolize music, but I believe that like science, it is
something of an end in itself and not easily reduced to the status of
an instrument. It is a glory. This whole business of appealing to
science (or evolution, or even survival) as some sort of moral
authority is completely confused and can only lead to major problems.

If you think survival is an end in itself, think whether it is worth
the life of someone you love. The only thing that is an end in itself
is love, and it's impossible to imagine human love without music --
not as instrument of it, but as part of it.

For that matter, it's impossible to imagine divine love without music.

As I said, music is a glory.

Regards,
Mike



On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Richard Dobson
 wrote:
> I have already written my thoughts on this general question, so will not
> repeat them in detail. It has however become something of a political issue,
> given that scientists such as Pinker assert music is comparable to
> pornography and no more significant in evolutionary terms than "auditory
> cheesecake". So, even if only in the UK, I feel we do not have the luxury of
> "stopping" our investigations, merely because we already have as many
> reasons to be dedicated to music as we could wish and are thus busy "getting
> on with it". These scientists have the ear of government, and we are already
> seeing the ease with which funding for the humanities in general, and music
> in particular, is (again) being squeezed  (with the usual government
> Orwellian sophistry of claiming their reduced budget is somehow "more"). So
> any means we can find to persuade Pinker et al to admit they are wrong needs
> to be explored and (crucially) presented as briefly and clearly as possible
> in a way that cannot be ignored. That web page meets neither criterion,
> though its intentions are noble and it makes many useful points.
>
> I believe, in the writings of McGilchrist and a few others, the means are at
> last available to produce just that brief and clear explanation of how
> fundamental the arts are in general, and music in particular, for the health
> (intellectual, emotional, psychological etc]  and development of societies
> (including scientists!), and thus for humanity at large; all fully supported
> by accumulated scientific evidence (since that is seemingly the only kind of
> evidence that carries any weight in the West). I further believe it is
> possible to present the key points of that argument both clearly and
> concisely; certainly in no more than a couple of pages. It takes work to do
> this of course. I  echo directly here the words of the author who apologised
> for writing a long letter because he did not have the time to write a short
> one. But I can already compress the basic argument into two paragraphs:
>
> Humans have evolved so succesfully on account of their unique ability to
> combine two modes of thinking - the literalist and the symbolical. A healthy
> mind employs both in a balanced fluent complementarity. The symbolical mode
> especially is crucial to a sense of the "big picture" and of the "meaning"
> recognised as somehow arising from phenomena that are not in a literalist
> sense causally connected. It also gives humans the capacity to make
> intuitive decisions, with confidence, in the absence of anything that could
> be called complete information on a situation or phenomenon, and further, to
> trust others making those kinds of decisions. It is this ability that has
> enabled humans to form sophisticated multi-dimensional bonds with others, to
> be the least tied to a particular kind of environment, thence to acquire a
> spirit of exploration, and to seek to craft or adapt the environment
> according to their will and vision.
>
> Now music (the association of sounds, and combinations of sounds, not known
> to be causally connected) is not indispensable for this, but it is easily
> the best training for it ever devised. Not least because it is mostly
> un-conscious - the training just happens. This has consequential effects,
> some not always considered desirable (at least in the view of overly
> literalist scientists) - a tendency towards superstition and megalomania at
> worst, a predisposition towards story-telling and myth-making, and towards a
> certain sense of the numinous in nature and, by extension, within human
> consciousness itself. Music acts both to cultivate this capacity, and to
> give it discipline, coherence and power. Musics are culturally specific; but
> "musicality" is demonstrably universal. These two modes of thinking may
> broadly be associated with the specialised functioning of the left and right
> hemispheres of the brain, but, I propose, are not fully synonymous with
> these. Each hemisphere tends to specialise in one mode or the other, but
> each to varying degrees employs both. This is the area of inquiry in which
> particular work is needed.
>
>
> Or, the most concisely possible:
>
> it is not so much a case of "the Mozart effect" as "the Music effect".
>
>
> Richard Dobson
>
>
>
> On 14/02/2011 14:24, Stéphane Rollandin wrote:
> ..
>>
>> Knowing what music is and telling what music is are two different
>> things. Sure, a lot of people can tell what is music, but do they all
>> agree ? If that was the case we would not discuss it here.
>>
>> As for me, I have no interest in an answer for that question; in that
>> sense I do not have problems with it: it is simply not an issue.
>>
> ..
>>
>> The map is not the territory. The definition is not the thing. Darwinism
>> is no explanation for life; there is no explanation for life. There is
>> no limit to discourse, either. One just have to stop somewhere, and here
>> is where I stop :)
>>
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
> csound"
>
>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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W. Shakespeare wrote:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.


If I needed to know the "why" of it I'd go to WS first.

Best,

dp





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That's great!

Thanks,
MIke

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 6:50 PM, Dave Phillips  wrote:
> W. Shakespeare wrote:
>
> The man that hath no music in himself,
> Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
> Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
> The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
> And his affections dark as Erebus:
> Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
>
>
> If I needed to know the "why" of it I'd go to WS first.
>
> Best,
>
> dp
>
>
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
> csound"
>
>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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I might well agree with you. But the problem is that here in the UK, as 
as I indicated right at the top of my post,  the government doesn't. Or 
rather, it takes your position as justifying placing the arts and music 
at the mercy of "the market". Nowhere do you indicate that music has any 
global social or (most important of all) economic value. Musicians 
generally are not used to having to make such cases, and they generally 
do a very poor job of it. Thanks to the intense lobbying of the science 
community, the UK government has assured them that the science research 
budget is substantially "protected" (that is the very phrase that has 
been used), as the primary avatar of economic revival and prosperity, 
while everything else is fair game for draconian reductions in funding, 
where not completely removed.

I have no more need than you to find a scientific justification for 
music and the arts; but somehow we need to persuade the economic and 
political decision-makers that music is not merely "an end in itself". 
Something that is an end in itself needs no government support. Science 
has a clear and special economic and educational value, so is a priority 
for funding at all levels. In other words, in what I write I am not 
directly addressing you or indeed anyone on this list, with any notion 
that I think it is something you (collectively) need to know.  But it is 
something the government needs to know. We are in an alarming situation 
here; and  we are forced to argue the case for music (and the humanities 
in general) from as persuasive a ~scientific~ and economic position as 
possible, whatever our personal beliefs about it may be.

Richard Dobson


On 14/02/2011 22:35, Michael Gogins wrote:
> I refuse to see music as a means to some other means.
>
> I do not idolize music, but I believe that like science, it is
> something of an end in itself and not easily reduced to the status of
> an instrument. It is a glory. This whole business of appealing to
> science (or evolution, or even survival) as some sort of moral
> authority is completely confused and can only lead to major problems.
>
> If you think survival is an end in itself, think whether it is worth
> the life of someone you love. The only thing that is an end in itself
> is love, and it's impossible to imagine human love without music --
> not as instrument of it, but as part of it.
>
> For that matter, it's impossible to imagine divine love without music.
>
> As I said, music is a glory.
>
> Regards,
> Mike
>



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On 15/02/2011 00:17, Richard Dobson wrote:
.. Thanks to the intense lobbying of the science
> community, the UK government has assured them that the science research
> budget is substantially "protected" (that is the very phrase that has
> been used), as the primary avatar of economic revival and prosperity,


I meant to add that, ironically, the UK government is also, much to the 
alarm of the research community, pressing universities to concentrate on 
research of clear and preferably short-term economic value. The notion 
that science is "and end in itself" would not be received warmly. 
Research applications are required to demonstrate "impact" measured 
pretty well entirely in economic terms (or putting it another way, the 
research outcomes must be known in advance). Universities are 
increasingly being treated not as centres of learning [for its own sake] 
but as sources of industrial R&D. So "Blue-sky" research is under threat 
along with so much else. Knowledge for its own sake is as economically 
unproductive as art for arts sake. Too risky, too expensive, too 
useless. It's all gotta go!


Richard Dobson



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Thanks for your thoughts.

Your point of making our point in terms understandable to the powers
that be, and of appeal to them, is well taken.

There is something very wrong here. It is transparent to any historian
that the unprecedented material power and wealth that industrial and
post-industrial economies enjoy today, with extended lifespan, heating
and plumbing for all and cars for almost all, is a side effect of
doing science as an end in itself. "To him who has, much shall be
given; from him who has little, even that shall be taken away." It is
a commonplace of history that republics in their beginning, and
virtuous religious minorities, prosper because they value things that
are good in themselves, such as public trustworthiness, industry, and
probity. If you love nature and wish to understand her, it shall be
given to you to understand her, if you understand her, you will enjoy
her bounties in ways that the past could never understand.

For example, computers. Computers were not invented to do accounting,
or even to calculate nuclear detonator implosions, or even to compute
artillery tables. They were invented out of a love of knowledge, as a
side effect of trying to understand what can proven and computed, and
what cannot be proven and computed. Out of the desire to understand
what can be formally decided, we can do accounting on a vast scale, or
simulate fusion explosions, or make Toy Story 3 or have the Internet.
Or do computer music.

This is reality, and the "realistic" majority of corporate and
political "decision makers" just, don't, get, it.

I think we urgently need to inform the public of this reality, and not
adapt our taste too much to theirs. But you are quite correct that
this needs to be communicated in ways that will penetrate. I wish I
knew what those ways are.

I do think the sense of play that still attaches to computing will help, though.

I wish to insist on truth and beauty for their own sakes, because to
concede too much to rhetoric concedes the debate.

Regards,
Mike

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 7:36 PM, Richard Dobson
 wrote:
> On 15/02/2011 00:17, Richard Dobson wrote:
> .. Thanks to the intense lobbying of the science
>>
>> community, the UK government has assured them that the science research
>> budget is substantially "protected" (that is the very phrase that has
>> been used), as the primary avatar of economic revival and prosperity,
>
>
> I meant to add that, ironically, the UK government is also, much to the
> alarm of the research community, pressing universities to concentrate on
> research of clear and preferably short-term economic value. The notion that
> science is "and end in itself" would not be received warmly. Research
> applications are required to demonstrate "impact" measured pretty well
> entirely in economic terms (or putting it another way, the research outcomes
> must be known in advance). Universities are increasingly being treated not
> as centres of learning [for its own sake] but as sources of industrial R&D.
> So "Blue-sky" research is under threat along with so much else. Knowledge
> for its own sake is as economically unproductive as art for arts sake. Too
> risky, too expensive, too useless. It's all gotta go!
>
>
> Richard Dobson
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
> csound"
>
>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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On 2011-02-14 19:36, Richard Dobson wrote:
> On 15/02/2011 00:17, Richard Dobson wrote:
> .. Thanks to the intense lobbying of the science
>> community, the UK government has assured them that the science research
>> budget is substantially "protected" (that is the very phrase that has
>> been used), as the primary avatar of economic revival and prosperity,
>
>
> I meant to add that, ironically, the UK government is also, much to the
> alarm of the research community, pressing universities to concentrate on
> research of clear and preferably short-term economic value. The notion
> that science is "and end in itself" would not be received warmly.
> Research applications are required to demonstrate "impact" measured
> pretty well entirely in economic terms (or putting it another way, the
> research outcomes must be known in advance). Universities are
> increasingly being treated not as centres of learning [for its own sake]
> but as sources of industrial R&D. So "Blue-sky" research is under threat
> along with so much else. Knowledge for its own sake is as economically
> unproductive as art for arts sake. Too risky, too expensive, too
> useless. It's all gotta go!
>


Well, with regard to your earlier reference to Pinker's 
music-as-cheesecake idea, I take it to be about the Darwinian concept of 
sexual selection, that music is something that humans do to advertise 
their potency to reproduce. Birdsong has inspired human music and 
plumage has inspired painting, and both are dangerous to produce as the 
singer is performing for predators as well as to potential mates.

The peacock's tail is a huge liability to its owner but the peahens 
won't pay attention if he hides it.

The idea is that the artist is so healthy that they can afford to take 
the risk in order to reproduce.
Music isn't very dangerous these days but it has been, although maybe 
more visual artists have been killed than musicians simply because the 
image is there to study while the music is transient.

So if arts (and science, because it has no immediate survival value) are 
cheesecake, I think the implication is that an entire country or 
civilization that can't afford to promote itself and take risks for the 
hell of it is unhealthy and potentially unable to reproduce itself.

I think the whole liberal arts and science renaissance of the sixties 
was really a huge show to intimidate the so-called communists, to show 
how superior capitalism and democracy are, but now it can't go on 
because it's just too damned expensive and the enemy is perceived to 
have disappeared, but that's just my opinion...

Economics is also an ideology. Like music there exist rules for 
composition and scales, but there is no science of the economy. You can 
take a horse to water but you can't make them buy a drink.

Martin


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"Nowhere do you indicate that music has any global social or (most
important of all) economic value. Musicians generally are not used to
having to make such cases, and they generally do a very poor job of
it."

Perhaps one reason why contemporary visual art is more successful.
Visual artists are more used to the idea of the work as an actual
object that can be traded. This seems almost offensive to most
musicians, and it will unfortunately also be the end of us!!

Best,

Peiman

On 15 February 2011 00:17, Richard Dobson
 wrote:
> I might well agree with you. But the problem is that here in the UK, as as I
> indicated right at the top of my post,  the government doesn't. Or rather,
> it takes your position as justifying placing the arts and music at the mercy
> of "the market". Nowhere do you indicate that music has any global social or
> (most important of all) economic value. Musicians generally are not used to
> having to make such cases, and they generally do a very poor job of it.
> Thanks to the intense lobbying of the science community, the UK government
> has assured them that the science research budget is substantially
> "protected" (that is the very phrase that has been used), as the primary
> avatar of economic revival and prosperity, while everything else is fair
> game for draconian reductions in funding, where not completely removed.
>
> I have no more need than you to find a scientific justification for music
> and the arts; but somehow we need to persuade the economic and political
> decision-makers that music is not merely "an end in itself". Something that
> is an end in itself needs no government support. Science has a clear and
> special economic and educational value, so is a priority for funding at all
> levels. In other words, in what I write I am not directly addressing you or
> indeed anyone on this list, with any notion that I think it is something you
> (collectively) need to know.  But it is something the government needs to
> know. We are in an alarming situation here; and  we are forced to argue the
> case for music (and the humanities in general) from as persuasive a
> ~scientific~ and economic position as possible, whatever our personal
> beliefs about it may be.
>
> Richard Dobson
>
>
> On 14/02/2011 22:35, Michael Gogins wrote:
>>
>> I refuse to see music as a means to some other means.
>>
>> I do not idolize music, but I believe that like science, it is
>> something of an end in itself and not easily reduced to the status of
>> an instrument. It is a glory. This whole business of appealing to
>> science (or evolution, or even survival) as some sort of moral
>> authority is completely confused and can only lead to major problems.
>>
>> If you think survival is an end in itself, think whether it is worth
>> the life of someone you love. The only thing that is an end in itself
>> is love, and it's impossible to imagine human love without music --
>> not as instrument of it, but as part of it.
>>
>> For that matter, it's impossible to imagine divine love without music.
>>
>> As I said, music is a glory.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Mike
>>
>
>
>
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>
>


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This is also true of much of Mathematics. Stuff discovered long ago is  
then found to have applications that no-one envisaged then. One  
example I always like to cite is the bilinear transformation: when the  
tjeory was elaborated in the nineteenth century no one could possibly  
think it would one day be used to map continuous systems into discrete  
ones and give us digital versions of analogue filters.

Victor

On 15 Feb 2011, at 01:58, Michael Gogins wrote:

>
> For example, computers. Computers were not invented to do accounting,
> or even to calculate nuclear detonator implosions, or even to compute
> artillery tables. They were invented out of a love of knowledge, as a
> side effect of trying to understand what can proven and computed, and
> what cannot be proven and computed. Out of the desire to understand
> what can be formally decided, we can do accounting on a vast scale, or
> simulate fusion explosions, or make Toy Story 3 or have the Internet.
> Or do computer music.



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On 15/02/2011 01:58, Michael Gogins wrote:
> Thanks for your thoughts.
..
>
> For example, computers. Computers were not invented to do accounting,
> or even to calculate nuclear detonator implosions, or even to compute
> artillery tables. They were invented out of a love of knowledge


This is not to contradict you, but there is an interesting story here 
nevertheless. The computer now regarded as the first at least in the  UK 
was "Colossus", built at Bletchley Park  specifically to help decode 
Enigma messages during the 2nd world war. The  system it replaced was 
electro-mechanical using relays, and was both cumbersome and slow (but 
faster than human "computers" could work).

It was of course a closely guarded secret, remaining so for 30 years 
afterwards; and at the end of the war the computer was dismantled and 
the parts recycled or just put out to "army surplus stores". There was 
certainly no thought that it could have other civilian uses.  While the 
theory of it was clearly down to Alan Turing, who would be the last to 
disagree with the view of working out of a love of knowledge, the 
computer itself was designed and built by a telephone engineer, Tommy 
Flowers; basically because he knew that valves [tubes] could work faster 
than relays.

He proposed it to the military, and said it would cost £1000 and take a 
year to build - they laughed and said the war would be over in a year 
(this was something like 1940), and also that a machine using over 1000 
valves would be forever breaking down as valves failed. Flowers pointed 
out that they would not so long as you never turned them off, but this 
did not impress the authorities either. So he built one anyway using his 
own money. It worked, sped up decryption enormously, and the valves did 
not fail. As the presenter of the TV program describing this said - "the 
authorities were so impressed they ordered six".

Needless to say, neither Flowers himself (nor anyone else involved) 
could not reveal his design to anyone after the war, so to the world at 
large it never existed. Flowers was eventually given a discreet award by 
the government - of £1000.

Musicians do music out of a love of music; mathematicians do maths out 
of a love of maths; and maybe engineers do engineering out of a love of 
valves. But governments may love none of these things, and have to 
justify both to themselves and to the anxious public at large how and 
why they should pay for it using taxpayer's money. To paraphrase an old 
English saying of the time: "love of art butters no parsnips".


Richard Dobson











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> I have already written my thoughts on this general question, so will not
> repeat them in detail. It has however become something of a political
> issue, given that scientists such as Pinker assert music is comparable
> to pornography and no more significant in evolutionary terms than
> "auditory cheesecake". So, even if only in the UK, I feel we do not have
> the luxury of "stopping" our investigations, merely because we already
> have as many reasons to be dedicated to music as we could wish and are
> thus busy "getting on with it". These scientists have the ear of
> government, and we are already seeing the ease with which funding for
> the humanities in general, and music in particular, is (again) being
> squeezed  (with the usual government Orwellian sophistry of claiming
> their reduced budget is somehow "more"). So any means we can find to
> persuade Pinker et al to admit they are wrong needs to be explored and
> (crucially) presented as briefly and clearly as possible in a way that
> cannot be ignored. That web page meets neither criterion, though its
> intentions are noble and it makes many useful points.

If this is the current state of affairs, I feel really sorry about it. 
Having to scientifically demonstrate the value of music in order to get 
someone's ears reveals an incredibly poor state of support for 
humanities by your (and possibly our) government(s). These are dark ages.

Stef


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If the government is going to fund music, or any art, it has to do one
of two things: 1) decide which music should be funded and which should
not, or 2) fund all of it, which means a huge percentage of the
population.
Sure society needs music, but does it really need special people whose
only work is making music? Any group of cowboys in the old west might
have a guitar with them and someone who can strum it, but that doesn't
mean they bring along someone who sits while the rest work corralling
cattle, joins them for meals, and plays for them from time to time.
As a musician, I'd be thrilled to have the government give me a bunch
of money for creating something important, but as a citizen, I'd
resent being told what kind of art or music is good and healthy for me
to have access to (and pay for).

-Chuckk


On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 2:17 AM, Richard Dobson
 wrote:
> I might well agree with you. But the problem is that here in the UK, as as I
> indicated right at the top of my post,  the government doesn't. Or rather,
> it takes your position as justifying placing the arts and music at the mercy
> of "the market". Nowhere do you indicate that music has any global social or
> (most important of all) economic value. Musicians generally are not used to
> having to make such cases, and they generally do a very poor job of it.
> Thanks to the intense lobbying of the science community, the UK government
> has assured them that the science research budget is substantially
> "protected" (that is the very phrase that has been used), as the primary
> avatar of economic revival and prosperity, while everything else is fair
> game for draconian reductions in funding, where not completely removed.
>
> I have no more need than you to find a scientific justification for music
> and the arts; but somehow we need to persuade the economic and political
> decision-makers that music is not merely "an end in itself". Something that
> is an end in itself needs no government support. Science has a clear and
> special economic and educational value, so is a priority for funding at all
> levels. In other words, in what I write I am not directly addressing you or
> indeed anyone on this list, with any notion that I think it is something you
> (collectively) need to know.  But it is something the government needs to
> know. We are in an alarming situation here; and  we are forced to argue the
> case for music (and the humanities in general) from as persuasive a
> ~scientific~ and economic position as possible, whatever our personal
> beliefs about it may be.
>
> Richard Dobson
>
>
> On 14/02/2011 22:35, Michael Gogins wrote:
>>
>> I refuse to see music as a means to some other means.
>>
>> I do not idolize music, but I believe that like science, it is
>> something of an end in itself and not easily reduced to the status of
>> an instrument. It is a glory. This whole business of appealing to
>> science (or evolution, or even survival) as some sort of moral
>> authority is completely confused and can only lead to major problems.
>>
>> If you think survival is an end in itself, think whether it is worth
>> the life of someone you love. The only thing that is an end in itself
>> is love, and it's impossible to imagine human love without music --
>> not as instrument of it, but as part of it.
>>
>> For that matter, it's impossible to imagine divine love without music.
>>
>> As I said, music is a glory.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Mike
>>
>
>
>
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> csound"
>
>



-- 
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2011/2/14 Stéphane Rollandin :
>
> Knowing what music is and telling what music is are two different things.
> Sure, a lot of people can tell what is music, but do they all agree ? If
> that was the case we would not discuss it here.
>
> As for me, I have no interest in an answer for that question; in that sense
> I do not have problems with it: it is simply not an issue.

This is part of why I've never found Cage very interesting. There's
plenty of music I can't stand, don't find interesting, don't want to
waste my time with; and I wouldn't say it's not music. So whether or
not any particular thing is music doesn't really affect my enjoyment
of it all that much. It's not even necessary to decide what's good or
bad, or better or worse, music. All I have to decide is whether to
keep listening or hit the button, and that's a much simpler decision.

-Chuckk

-- 
http://www.badmuthahubbard.com


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On 15/02/2011 1:17, Richard Dobson wrote:
> I have no more need than you to find a scientific justification for
> music and the arts; but somehow we need to persuade the economic and
> political decision-makers that music is not merely "an end in itself".

I love music. I like, within my limited abilities, composing or
interpreting it, singing, and, needless to say, listening to it. I love
variety in music. However, I think it would be worth being realistic:
the corpus of existing music (written and recorded) is so large that a
human lifetime wouldn't suffice to exhaust the tiniest portion of it.
If, and note this is a sort of maximalist, absurdist thought experiment,
today were the last day new music got produced, I'd wager that no-one
would go without music: not even without the sort of music one likes,
particular as one's tastes may be. There is so much music in existence
that discovery has inevitably wider extent than invention.

I would find the end of musical creation rather sad, not that anything
like it is about to happen, of course (especially since tools become
increasingly cheaper, and software like Csound or DAO stuff can run in
normal workstations, etc). However, even if such an end came to be, it
would be extremely difficult to justify subsidising new creation, when
the existing stock is practically inexhaustible. I believe all attempts
to justify music on utilitarian grounds, as means to other ends, are
doomed to inevitable failure, given the fact such ends can be perfectly
well realised without a constant stream of new music. If there must be
utilitarian arguments, at best these may relate to interpretation and
teaching, but not to composition, in my view.

Regards,
--David.


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Well, 'amusia' is a reported condition, so there are people who either  
go completely without
music or even despise it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusia

On 15 Feb 2011, at 13:45, David Picón Álvarez wrote:

>  I'd wager that no-one
> would go without music: not even without the sort of music one likes,
> particular as one's tastes may be. There is so much music in existence
> that discovery has inevitably wider extent than invention.



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On 15/02/2011 15:00, Victor Lazzarini wrote:
> Well, 'amusia' is a reported condition, so there are people who either
> go completely without
> music or even despise it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusia

Sorry, I didn't express myself clearly. What I meant is that even in
that case there would be no lack of music for anyone. My point was that
music supply is so abundant at this point that anyone's tastes can be
satisfied by the existing stock of music.

--David.


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I believe that music cannot be static, and that if people quite
producing new music, people would eventually lose interest in old
music and start doing something other than music to fulfill its
purposes.

This is because although music is quite abstract, it does definitely
express something -- many things -- that often are intimately wound up
with the spirit of the times and the issues of the times. The marching
tunes of one war do not suit the next war, it requires new ones. The
dance music of one era do not suit the courtships of the next era,
they require new music.

Surely this is obvious.

Regards,
Mike

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 9:12 AM, David Picón Álvarez
 wrote:
> On 15/02/2011 15:00, Victor Lazzarini wrote:
>> Well, 'amusia' is a reported condition, so there are people who either
>> go completely without
>> music or even despise it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusia
>
> Sorry, I didn't express myself clearly. What I meant is that even in
> that case there would be no lack of music for anyone. My point was that
> music supply is so abundant at this point that anyone's tastes can be
> satisfied by the existing stock of music.
>
> --David.
>
>
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>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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> My point was that
> music supply is so abundant at this point that anyone's tastes can be
> satisfied by the existing stock of music.

I can't help but understand this a bit like "We have enough footage of 
elephants; elephants can disappear today, we will not loose them". To me 
music, being a part of what we collectively are, is alive; a stock of 
music, and no more musicians, does not make any sense to me.

As for the government in that matter, I am not worried that loss of 
funding may harm music much; I am worried by what it means that the 
people governing our societies can not reckon music without some dumb 
utilitarist measurements. It tells a lot about how ugly and meaningless 
our political driving forces have become.


Stef


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On 15/02/2011 12:59, Chuckk Hubbard wrote:
> If the government is going to fund music, or any art, it has to do one
> of two things: 1) decide which music should be funded and which should
> not, or 2) fund all of it, which means a huge percentage of the
> population.
> Sure society needs music, but does it really need special people whose
> only work is making music?



Sure, society needs doctors, but does it really need special people 
whose only work is medicine? For what subject areas is that question 
~not~ equally reasonable?


While I inevitably have concern, as we all do, always, about the broader 
funding of music and the arts, my current focus is on education - how 
and by whom music is taught in schools and beyond. Where music is taught 
by specialist musicians, the results, as you might expect, are 
excellent. But more often than not, they are not taught by specialists. 
And the curriculum can further constrain what is taught.

I have over the years got used to meeting new first-year undergraduates 
who have been taught the flute by (more often than not) saxophone 
players - the wrong fingerings and little or no vibrato (or worse, 
faulty vibrato) being something of a give-away. the majority of new 
students have at best weak theory and aural training (can't reliably 
recognise major and minor triads by ear, don't know the construction of 
key signatures), and know basically nothing of the music repertoire 
outside the handful of works stipulated in their heavily dumbed-down 
A-level syllabus. This describes 75% of my new student list. Some 
students arrive, discover that for the first time they actually have to 
work, and drop out. I lost one student this way after just four weeks, 
this year. And of course they "hate scales". Note "hate", not even "I 
find them difficult". This is equivalent to  a student arriving to study 
maths at degree level who says "I hate logs".

So ask yourself, if you have children with an interest in and some 
aptitude for music, would you prefer they are taught by a specialist, or 
not? Would your children benefit by being taught by musicians whose 
primary work (I would never insist on "only") is making music?

And above all, would people in general benefit by having a 
well-developed and cultivated listening faculty for music, not least the 
music you yourself make? And some awareness of the context in which that 
music is presented? Context is the most likely aspect to be lost in a 
non-specialist environment. Each musick is a learned art-form (including 
the "popular" ones), and without that cultivated faculty, what ~is~ 
heard likely remains a very small fraction of what ~could~ be heard. If 
someone says they really like your music, can you have any confidence 
that they are conscious, in their appreciation, of the special things 
you have done, and the special skills you have employed; or are they 
merely being polite?

Richard Dobson



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100% agreement here. Or maybe 500%.

Regards,
Mike

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Richard Dobson
 wrote:
> On 15/02/2011 12:59, Chuckk Hubbard wrote:
>>
>> If the government is going to fund music, or any art, it has to do one
>> of two things: 1) decide which music should be funded and which should
>> not, or 2) fund all of it, which means a huge percentage of the
>> population.
>> Sure society needs music, but does it really need special people whose
>> only work is making music?
>
>
>
> Sure, society needs doctors, but does it really need special people whose
> only work is medicine? For what subject areas is that question ~not~ equally
> reasonable?
>
>
> While I inevitably have concern, as we all do, always, about the broader
> funding of music and the arts, my current focus is on education - how and by
> whom music is taught in schools and beyond. Where music is taught by
> specialist musicians, the results, as you might expect, are excellent. But
> more often than not, they are not taught by specialists. And the curriculum
> can further constrain what is taught.
>
> I have over the years got used to meeting new first-year undergraduates who
> have been taught the flute by (more often than not) saxophone players - the
> wrong fingerings and little or no vibrato (or worse, faulty vibrato) being
> something of a give-away. the majority of new students have at best weak
> theory and aural training (can't reliably recognise major and minor triads
> by ear, don't know the construction of key signatures), and know basically
> nothing of the music repertoire outside the handful of works stipulated in
> their heavily dumbed-down A-level syllabus. This describes 75% of my new
> student list. Some students arrive, discover that for the first time they
> actually have to work, and drop out. I lost one student this way after just
> four weeks, this year. And of course they "hate scales". Note "hate", not
> even "I find them difficult". This is equivalent to  a student arriving to
> study maths at degree level who says "I hate logs".
>
> So ask yourself, if you have children with an interest in and some aptitude
> for music, would you prefer they are taught by a specialist, or not? Would
> your children benefit by being taught by musicians whose primary work (I
> would never insist on "only") is making music?
>
> And above all, would people in general benefit by having a well-developed
> and cultivated listening faculty for music, not least the music you yourself
> make? And some awareness of the context in which that music is presented?
> Context is the most likely aspect to be lost in a non-specialist
> environment. Each musick is a learned art-form (including the "popular"
> ones), and without that cultivated faculty, what ~is~ heard likely remains a
> very small fraction of what ~could~ be heard. If someone says they really
> like your music, can you have any confidence that they are conscious, in
> their appreciation, of the special things you have done, and the special
> skills you have employed; or are they merely being polite?
>
> Richard Dobson
>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
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> csound"
>
>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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Music can actually heal, didn't Plato use music as medicine? In the US
the only music that makes money is total garbage. I can play rings
around many instrumentalists, whether on bass, guitar, or oud, but
can't even get a coffee shop show in Los Angeles because everything is
either taken by pop rock or by well established experimental artists
who "bogart" venues like the Walt Disney Hall. I'm a CalArts alumn,
but the school offers no help in getting gigs or grants.

Back in the 1990s things were different, I played in an experimental
jazz/rock band that still opened up for the Stone Temple Pilots. The
whole rise of throw away rave music and culture has also been hard on
artists, in that in clubs in LA only very simple and cheesy music gets
play from DJs.

We do have a good jazz scene, but its focussed on what Miles Davis
called "museum music."

I was born in the city and lack the resources to ever be able to leave
here, so its like I was born here to die as an artist and never
connect with any audience besides the internet. All right thank the
gods for the internet or I would be 100% obscure.

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 7:56 AM, Michael Gogins
 wrote:
> 100% agreement here. Or maybe 500%.
>
> Regards,
> Mike
>
> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Richard Dobson
>  wrote:
>> On 15/02/2011 12:59, Chuckk Hubbard wrote:
>>>
>>> If the government is going to fund music, or any art, it has to do one
>>> of two things: 1) decide which music should be funded and which should
>>> not, or 2) fund all of it, which means a huge percentage of the
>>> population.
>>> Sure society needs music, but does it really need special people whose
>>> only work is making music?
>>
>>
>>
>> Sure, society needs doctors, but does it really need special people whose
>> only work is medicine? For what subject areas is that question ~not~ equally
>> reasonable?
>>
>>
>> While I inevitably have concern, as we all do, always, about the broader
>> funding of music and the arts, my current focus is on education - how and by
>> whom music is taught in schools and beyond. Where music is taught by
>> specialist musicians, the results, as you might expect, are excellent. But
>> more often than not, they are not taught by specialists. And the curriculum
>> can further constrain what is taught.
>>
>> I have over the years got used to meeting new first-year undergraduates who
>> have been taught the flute by (more often than not) saxophone players - the
>> wrong fingerings and little or no vibrato (or worse, faulty vibrato) being
>> something of a give-away. the majority of new students have at best weak
>> theory and aural training (can't reliably recognise major and minor triads
>> by ear, don't know the construction of key signatures), and know basically
>> nothing of the music repertoire outside the handful of works stipulated in
>> their heavily dumbed-down A-level syllabus. This describes 75% of my new
>> student list. Some students arrive, discover that for the first time they
>> actually have to work, and drop out. I lost one student this way after just
>> four weeks, this year. And of course they "hate scales". Note "hate", not
>> even "I find them difficult". This is equivalent to  a student arriving to
>> study maths at degree level who says "I hate logs".
>>
>> So ask yourself, if you have children with an interest in and some aptitude
>> for music, would you prefer they are taught by a specialist, or not? Would
>> your children benefit by being taught by musicians whose primary work (I
>> would never insist on "only") is making music?
>>
>> And above all, would people in general benefit by having a well-developed
>> and cultivated listening faculty for music, not least the music you yourself
>> make? And some awareness of the context in which that music is presented?
>> Context is the most likely aspect to be lost in a non-specialist
>> environment. Each musick is a learned art-form (including the "popular"
>> ones), and without that cultivated faculty, what ~is~ heard likely remains a
>> very small fraction of what ~could~ be heard. If someone says they really
>> like your music, can you have any confidence that they are conscious, in
>> their appreciation, of the special things you have done, and the special
>> skills you have employed; or are they merely being polite?
>>
>> Richard Dobson
>>
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>> csound"
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Michael Gogins
> Irreducible Productions
> http://www.michael-gogins.com
> Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>


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"Music can actually heal, didn't Plato use music as medicine?"

I think Plato would have been the first to cut all funding for musical
institutions.

Best,

Peiman

On 15 February 2011 16:36, Brian Redfern  wrote:
> Music can actually heal, didn't Plato use music as medicine? In the US
> the only music that makes money is total garbage. I can play rings
> around many instrumentalists, whether on bass, guitar, or oud, but
> can't even get a coffee shop show in Los Angeles because everything is
> either taken by pop rock or by well established experimental artists
> who "bogart" venues like the Walt Disney Hall. I'm a CalArts alumn,
> but the school offers no help in getting gigs or grants.
>
> Back in the 1990s things were different, I played in an experimental
> jazz/rock band that still opened up for the Stone Temple Pilots. The
> whole rise of throw away rave music and culture has also been hard on
> artists, in that in clubs in LA only very simple and cheesy music gets
> play from DJs.
>
> We do have a good jazz scene, but its focussed on what Miles Davis
> called "museum music."
>
> I was born in the city and lack the resources to ever be able to leave
> here, so its like I was born here to die as an artist and never
> connect with any audience besides the internet. All right thank the
> gods for the internet or I would be 100% obscure.
>
> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 7:56 AM, Michael Gogins
>  wrote:
>> 100% agreement here. Or maybe 500%.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Mike
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Richard Dobson
>>  wrote:
>>> On 15/02/2011 12:59, Chuckk Hubbard wrote:
>>>>
>>>> If the government is going to fund music, or any art, it has to do one
>>>> of two things: 1) decide which music should be funded and which should
>>>> not, or 2) fund all of it, which means a huge percentage of the
>>>> population.
>>>> Sure society needs music, but does it really need special people whose
>>>> only work is making music?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Sure, society needs doctors, but does it really need special people whose
>>> only work is medicine? For what subject areas is that question ~not~ equally
>>> reasonable?
>>>
>>>
>>> While I inevitably have concern, as we all do, always, about the broader
>>> funding of music and the arts, my current focus is on education - how and by
>>> whom music is taught in schools and beyond. Where music is taught by
>>> specialist musicians, the results, as you might expect, are excellent. But
>>> more often than not, they are not taught by specialists. And the curriculum
>>> can further constrain what is taught.
>>>
>>> I have over the years got used to meeting new first-year undergraduates who
>>> have been taught the flute by (more often than not) saxophone players - the
>>> wrong fingerings and little or no vibrato (or worse, faulty vibrato) being
>>> something of a give-away. the majority of new students have at best weak
>>> theory and aural training (can't reliably recognise major and minor triads
>>> by ear, don't know the construction of key signatures), and know basically
>>> nothing of the music repertoire outside the handful of works stipulated in
>>> their heavily dumbed-down A-level syllabus. This describes 75% of my new
>>> student list. Some students arrive, discover that for the first time they
>>> actually have to work, and drop out. I lost one student this way after just
>>> four weeks, this year. And of course they "hate scales". Note "hate", not
>>> even "I find them difficult". This is equivalent to  a student arriving to
>>> study maths at degree level who says "I hate logs".
>>>
>>> So ask yourself, if you have children with an interest in and some aptitude
>>> for music, would you prefer they are taught by a specialist, or not? Would
>>> your children benefit by being taught by musicians whose primary work (I
>>> would never insist on "only") is making music?
>>>
>>> And above all, would people in general benefit by having a well-developed
>>> and cultivated listening faculty for music, not least the music you yourself
>>> make? And some awareness of the context in which that music is presented?
>>> Context is the most likely aspect to be lost in a non-specialist
>>> environment. Each musick is a learned art-form (including the "popular"
>>> ones), and without that cultivated faculty, what ~is~ heard likely remains a
>>> very small fraction of what ~could~ be heard. If someone says they really
>>> like your music, can you have any confidence that they are conscious, in
>>> their appreciation, of the special things you have done, and the special
>>> skills you have employed; or are they merely being polite?
>>>
>>> Richard Dobson
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>>> csound"
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Michael Gogins
>> Irreducible Productions
>> http://www.michael-gogins.com
>> Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>>
>>
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>


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"The overseers must be watchful against its insensible corruption.
They must throughout be watchful against innovations in music and
gymnastics counter to the established order, and to the best of their
power guard against them, fearing when anyone says that that song is
most regarded among men “which hovers newest on the singer’s lips”
[Odyssey  i. 351], lest it be supposed that the poet means not new
songs but a new way of song and is commending this.  But we must not
praise that sort of thing nor conceive it to be the poet’s meaning.
For a change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a
hazard of all our fortunes.  For the modes of music are never
disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and
social conventions."

Republic  424b-c.

http://www.euphoniousmonks.com/platomus.htm

On 16 February 2011 09:21, peiman khosravi  wrote:
> "Music can actually heal, didn't Plato use music as medicine?"
>
> I think Plato would have been the first to cut all funding for musical
> institutions.
>
> Best,
>
> Peiman
>
> On 15 February 2011 16:36, Brian Redfern  wrote:
>> Music can actually heal, didn't Plato use music as medicine? In the US
>> the only music that makes money is total garbage. I can play rings
>> around many instrumentalists, whether on bass, guitar, or oud, but
>> can't even get a coffee shop show in Los Angeles because everything is
>> either taken by pop rock or by well established experimental artists
>> who "bogart" venues like the Walt Disney Hall. I'm a CalArts alumn,
>> but the school offers no help in getting gigs or grants.
>>
>> Back in the 1990s things were different, I played in an experimental
>> jazz/rock band that still opened up for the Stone Temple Pilots. The
>> whole rise of throw away rave music and culture has also been hard on
>> artists, in that in clubs in LA only very simple and cheesy music gets
>> play from DJs.
>>
>> We do have a good jazz scene, but its focussed on what Miles Davis
>> called "museum music."
>>
>> I was born in the city and lack the resources to ever be able to leave
>> here, so its like I was born here to die as an artist and never
>> connect with any audience besides the internet. All right thank the
>> gods for the internet or I would be 100% obscure.
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 7:56 AM, Michael Gogins
>>  wrote:
>>> 100% agreement here. Or maybe 500%.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Mike
>>>
>>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Richard Dobson
>>>  wrote:
>>>> On 15/02/2011 12:59, Chuckk Hubbard wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> If the government is going to fund music, or any art, it has to do one
>>>>> of two things: 1) decide which music should be funded and which should
>>>>> not, or 2) fund all of it, which means a huge percentage of the
>>>>> population.
>>>>> Sure society needs music, but does it really need special people whose
>>>>> only work is making music?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Sure, society needs doctors, but does it really need special people whose
>>>> only work is medicine? For what subject areas is that question ~not~ equally
>>>> reasonable?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> While I inevitably have concern, as we all do, always, about the broader
>>>> funding of music and the arts, my current focus is on education - how and by
>>>> whom music is taught in schools and beyond. Where music is taught by
>>>> specialist musicians, the results, as you might expect, are excellent. But
>>>> more often than not, they are not taught by specialists. And the curriculum
>>>> can further constrain what is taught.
>>>>
>>>> I have over the years got used to meeting new first-year undergraduates who
>>>> have been taught the flute by (more often than not) saxophone players - the
>>>> wrong fingerings and little or no vibrato (or worse, faulty vibrato) being
>>>> something of a give-away. the majority of new students have at best weak
>>>> theory and aural training (can't reliably recognise major and minor triads
>>>> by ear, don't know the construction of key signatures), and know basically
>>>> nothing of the music repertoire outside the handful of works stipulated in
>>>> their heavily dumbed-down A-level syllabus. This describes 75% of my new
>>>> student list. Some students arrive, discover that for the first time they
>>>> actually have to work, and drop out. I lost one student this way after just
>>>> four weeks, this year. And of course they "hate scales". Note "hate", not
>>>> even "I find them difficult". This is equivalent to  a student arriving to
>>>> study maths at degree level who says "I hate logs".
>>>>
>>>> So ask yourself, if you have children with an interest in and some aptitude
>>>> for music, would you prefer they are taught by a specialist, or not? Would
>>>> your children benefit by being taught by musicians whose primary work (I
>>>> would never insist on "only") is making music?
>>>>
>>>> And above all, would people in general benefit by having a well-developed
>>>> and cultivated listening faculty for music, not least the music you yourself
>>>> make? And some awareness of the context in which that music is presented?
>>>> Context is the most likely aspect to be lost in a non-specialist
>>>> environment. Each musick is a learned art-form (including the "popular"
>>>> ones), and without that cultivated faculty, what ~is~ heard likely remains a
>>>> very small fraction of what ~could~ be heard. If someone says they really
>>>> like your music, can you have any confidence that they are conscious, in
>>>> their appreciation, of the special things you have done, and the special
>>>> skills you have employed; or are they merely being polite?
>>>>
>>>> Richard Dobson
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>>>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>>>> csound"
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Michael Gogins
>>> Irreducible Productions
>>> http://www.michael-gogins.com
>>> Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com
>>>
>>>
>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>>
>>
>


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Plato wanted music, but he wanted music in exactly the same way that
Stalin wanted symphonies and paintings -- as propaganda for the ruling
order. And just like Stalin, Plato was advising the rulers to prevent
the dissemination of art that did not conform. Stalin killed and
imprisoned some artists who wouldn't conform, and possibly Plato would
have done the same if he had actually held the power he obviously
wanted. Same story with Hitler of course, who actually WAS an artist.
(For that matter, Stalin wrote a pretty good poem or two).

When influential people in our society say things that people on this
list interpret as downgrading the arts, they actually are saying much
the same kind of thing, only in business-speak. They want art -- as
long as it is part of the ruling order and serves the interests of the
ruling order. Art like that is what we here tend to call
"entertainment" or "popular" although, in fact, some of it is actually
art of a pretty high order. Some outright ads are in fact art of
pretty high order, and will be seen as such in the future. But of
course it serves the same functions as socialist realism or the
official modes Plato wanted.

I must insist, just became a work of art is in one of Plato's approved
modes, or is a Socialist Realist poster, or a Nazi festival display,
or a SuperBowl ad, this has nothing to do with whether it is good, or
bad, as art. And there is definitely such a thing as good, or bad, in
art.

To get back on topic, the people of influence that we are discussing
here are happy to fund the arts, but not in the way that some on this
list would like to seem them funded. They prefer the funding to be
private -- and it is quite substantial and the production facilities
and salaries can be lavish -- whereas some here would prefer the
funding to be public.

Personally, I am ambivalent about public funding for the arts. On the
one hand, I want more of it because I think it is necessary to
adequately fund some kinds of art that I both like personally and
think important for our society, most notably orchestral music. On the
other hand, I find that the actual funding process for publicly
supported art is liable to be problematic in terms of cronyism,
conservativism, bowing to all kinds of irrelevant political pressure
from both the right and left, and so on.

I think the real solution here is political and economic: require
absolutely every user of a work of art to pay SOMETHING to the actual
author.l

Regards,
Mike

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 9:20 AM, thorin kerr  wrote:
> Remember
> this? http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/part/V/crossheading/powers-in-relation-to-raves
> Plato would be proud. At least music holds a really important (if dangerous)
> place in Plato's republic. Whereas the dilemma a lot of music institutions
> today face is being seen as completely irrelevant.
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 7:24 PM, peiman khosravi 
> wrote:
>>
>> "The overseers must be watchful against its insensible corruption.
>> They must throughout be watchful against innovations in music and
>> gymnastics counter to the established order, and to the best of their
>> power guard against them, fearing when anyone says that that song is
>> most regarded among men “which hovers newest on the singer’s lips”
>> [Odyssey  i. 351], lest it be supposed that the poet means not new
>> songs but a new way of song and is commending this.  But we must not
>> praise that sort of thing nor conceive it to be the poet’s meaning.
>> For a change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a
>> hazard of all our fortunes.  For the modes of music are never
>> disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and
>> social conventions."
>>
>> Republic  424b-c.
>>
>> http://www.euphoniousmonks.com/platomus.htm
>>
>> On 16 February 2011 09:21, peiman khosravi 
>> wrote:
>> > "Music can actually heal, didn't Plato use music as medicine?"
>> >
>> > I think Plato would have been the first to cut all funding for musical
>> > institutions.
>> >
>> > Best,
>> >
>> > Peiman
>> >
>> > On 15 February 2011 16:36, Brian Redfern 
>> > wrote:
>> >> Music can actually heal, didn't Plato use music as medicine? In the US
>> >> the only music that makes money is total garbage. I can play rings
>> >> around many instrumentalists, whether on bass, guitar, or oud, but
>> >> can't even get a coffee shop show in Los Angeles because everything is
>> >> either taken by pop rock or by well established experimental artists
>> >> who "bogart" venues like the Walt Disney Hall. I'm a CalArts alumn,
>> >> but the school offers no help in getting gigs or grants.
>> >>
>> >> Back in the 1990s things were different, I played in an experimental
>> >> jazz/rock band that still opened up for the Stone Temple Pilots. The
>> >> whole rise of throw away rave music and culture has also been hard on
>> >> artists, in that in clubs in LA only very simple and cheesy music gets
>> >> play from DJs.
>> >>
>> >> We do have a good jazz scene, but its focussed on what Miles Davis
>> >> called "museum music."
>> >>
>> >> I was born in the city and lack the resources to ever be able to leave
>> >> here, so its like I was born here to die as an artist and never
>> >> connect with any audience besides the internet. All right thank the
>> >> gods for the internet or I would be 100% obscure.
>> >>
>> >> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 7:56 AM, Michael Gogins
>> >>  wrote:
>> >>> 100% agreement here. Or maybe 500%.
>> >>>
>> >>> Regards,
>> >>> Mike
>> >>>
>> >>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Richard Dobson
>> >>>  wrote:
>> >>>> On 15/02/2011 12:59, Chuckk Hubbard wrote:
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> If the government is going to fund music, or any art, it has to do
>> >>>>> one
>> >>>>> of two things: 1) decide which music should be funded and which
>> >>>>> should
>> >>>>> not, or 2) fund all of it, which means a huge percentage of the
>> >>>>> population.
>> >>>>> Sure society needs music, but does it really need special people
>> >>>>> whose
>> >>>>> only work is making music?
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Sure, society needs doctors, but does it really need special people
>> >>>> whose
>> >>>> only work is medicine? For what subject areas is that question ~not~
>> >>>> equally
>> >>>> reasonable?
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> While I inevitably have concern, as we all do, always, about the
>> >>>> broader
>> >>>> funding of music and the arts, my current focus is on education - how
>> >>>> and by
>> >>>> whom music is taught in schools and beyond. Where music is taught by
>> >>>> specialist musicians, the results, as you might expect, are
>> >>>> excellent. But
>> >>>> more often than not, they are not taught by specialists. And the
>> >>>> curriculum
>> >>>> can further constrain what is taught.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> I have over the years got used to meeting new first-year
>> >>>> undergraduates who
>> >>>> have been taught the flute by (more often than not) saxophone players
>> >>>> - the
>> >>>> wrong fingerings and little or no vibrato (or worse, faulty vibrato)
>> >>>> being
>> >>>> something of a give-away. the majority of new students have at best
>> >>>> weak
>> >>>> theory and aural training (can't reliably recognise major and minor
>> >>>> triads
>> >>>> by ear, don't know the construction of key signatures), and know
>> >>>> basically
>> >>>> nothing of the music repertoire outside the handful of works
>> >>>> stipulated in
>> >>>> their heavily dumbed-down A-level syllabus. This describes 75% of my
>> >>>> new
>> >>>> student list. Some students arrive, discover that for the first time
>> >>>> they
>> >>>> actually have to work, and drop out. I lost one student this way
>> >>>> after just
>> >>>> four weeks, this year. And of course they "hate scales". Note "hate",
>> >>>> not
>> >>>> even "I find them difficult". This is equivalent to  a student
>> >>>> arriving to
>> >>>> study maths at degree level who says "I hate logs".
>> >>>>
>> >>>> So ask yourself, if you have children with an interest in and some
>> >>>> aptitude
>> >>>> for music, would you prefer they are taught by a specialist, or not?
>> >>>> Would
>> >>>> your children benefit by being taught by musicians whose primary work
>> >>>> (I
>> >>>> would never insist on "only") is making music?
>> >>>>
>> >>>> And above all, would people in general benefit by having a
>> >>>> well-developed
>> >>>> and cultivated listening faculty for music, not least the music you
>> >>>> yourself
>> >>>> make? And some awareness of the context in which that music is
>> >>>> presented?
>> >>>> Context is the most likely aspect to be lost in a non-specialist
>> >>>> environment. Each musick is a learned art-form (including the
>> >>>> "popular"
>> >>>> ones), and without that cultivated faculty, what ~is~ heard likely
>> >>>> remains a
>> >>>> very small fraction of what ~could~ be heard. If someone says they
>> >>>> really
>> >>>> like your music, can you have any confidence that they are conscious,
>> >>>> in
>> >>>> their appreciation, of the special things you have done, and the
>> >>>> special
>> >>>> skills you have employed; or are they merely being polite?
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Richard Dobson
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>> >>>>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> >>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> >>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body
>> >>>> "unsubscribe
>> >>>> csound"
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> --
>> >>> Michael Gogins
>> >>> Irreducible Productions
>> >>> http://www.michael-gogins.com
>> >>> Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>> >>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> >>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> >>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body
>> >>> "unsubscribe csound"
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>> >>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> >> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> >> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body
>> >> "unsubscribe csound"
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>>
>>
>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>> csound"
>>
>
>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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To amplify this a bit, I think it should be illegal for anyone or
anything to buy ALL of an author's copyright. Some, yes, all, no.

Then too, it should be illegal to transmit a copyrighted work without
paying a royalty on the copyright. This obviously requires major
changes in the regulation and technology of the Internet, but what a
boon it would be. It doesn't have to be a big percentage. Something
like the payments cassette tape makers used to have to make to
performance rights organizations.

And copyright term should be reduced so that more of what is actually
under copyright is current, contemporary, author-owned content.

What we have now is publicly sanctioned theft on a major scale, and it
is corrupting our society.

Regards,
Mike

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 9:51 AM, Michael Gogins
 wrote:
> Plato wanted music, but he wanted music in exactly the same way that
> Stalin wanted symphonies and paintings -- as propaganda for the ruling
> order. And just like Stalin, Plato was advising the rulers to prevent
> the dissemination of art that did not conform. Stalin killed and
> imprisoned some artists who wouldn't conform, and possibly Plato would
> have done the same if he had actually held the power he obviously
> wanted. Same story with Hitler of course, who actually WAS an artist.
> (For that matter, Stalin wrote a pretty good poem or two).
>
> When influential people in our society say things that people on this
> list interpret as downgrading the arts, they actually are saying much
> the same kind of thing, only in business-speak. They want art -- as
> long as it is part of the ruling order and serves the interests of the
> ruling order. Art like that is what we here tend to call
> "entertainment" or "popular" although, in fact, some of it is actually
> art of a pretty high order. Some outright ads are in fact art of
> pretty high order, and will be seen as such in the future. But of
> course it serves the same functions as socialist realism or the
> official modes Plato wanted.
>
> I must insist, just became a work of art is in one of Plato's approved
> modes, or is a Socialist Realist poster, or a Nazi festival display,
> or a SuperBowl ad, this has nothing to do with whether it is good, or
> bad, as art. And there is definitely such a thing as good, or bad, in
> art.
>
> To get back on topic, the people of influence that we are discussing
> here are happy to fund the arts, but not in the way that some on this
> list would like to seem them funded. They prefer the funding to be
> private -- and it is quite substantial and the production facilities
> and salaries can be lavish -- whereas some here would prefer the
> funding to be public.
>
> Personally, I am ambivalent about public funding for the arts. On the
> one hand, I want more of it because I think it is necessary to
> adequately fund some kinds of art that I both like personally and
> think important for our society, most notably orchestral music. On the
> other hand, I find that the actual funding process for publicly
> supported art is liable to be problematic in terms of cronyism,
> conservativism, bowing to all kinds of irrelevant political pressure
> from both the right and left, and so on.
>
> I think the real solution here is political and economic: require
> absolutely every user of a work of art to pay SOMETHING to the actual
> author.l
>
> Regards,
> Mike
>
> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 9:20 AM, thorin kerr  wrote:
>> Remember
>> this? http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/part/V/crossheading/powers-in-relation-to-raves
>> Plato would be proud. At least music holds a really important (if dangerous)
>> place in Plato's republic. Whereas the dilemma a lot of music institutions
>> today face is being seen as completely irrelevant.
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 7:24 PM, peiman khosravi 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> "The overseers must be watchful against its insensible corruption.
>>> They must throughout be watchful against innovations in music and
>>> gymnastics counter to the established order, and to the best of their
>>> power guard against them, fearing when anyone says that that song is
>>> most regarded among men “which hovers newest on the singer’s lips”
>>> [Odyssey  i. 351], lest it be supposed that the poet means not new
>>> songs but a new way of song and is commending this.  But we must not
>>> praise that sort of thing nor conceive it to be the poet’s meaning.
>>> For a change to a new type of music is something to beware of as a
>>> hazard of all our fortunes.  For the modes of music are never
>>> disturbed without unsettling of the most fundamental political and
>>> social conventions."
>>>
>>> Republic  424b-c.
>>>
>>> http://www.euphoniousmonks.com/platomus.htm
>>>
>>> On 16 February 2011 09:21, peiman khosravi 
>>> wrote:
>>> > "Music can actually heal, didn't Plato use music as medicine?"
>>> >
>>> > I think Plato would have been the first to cut all funding for musical
>>> > institutions.
>>> >
>>> > Best,
>>> >
>>> > Peiman
>>> >
>>> > On 15 February 2011 16:36, Brian Redfern 
>>> > wrote:
>>> >> Music can actually heal, didn't Plato use music as medicine? In the US
>>> >> the only music that makes money is total garbage. I can play rings
>>> >> around many instrumentalists, whether on bass, guitar, or oud, but
>>> >> can't even get a coffee shop show in Los Angeles because everything is
>>> >> either taken by pop rock or by well established experimental artists
>>> >> who "bogart" venues like the Walt Disney Hall. I'm a CalArts alumn,
>>> >> but the school offers no help in getting gigs or grants.
>>> >>
>>> >> Back in the 1990s things were different, I played in an experimental
>>> >> jazz/rock band that still opened up for the Stone Temple Pilots. The
>>> >> whole rise of throw away rave music and culture has also been hard on
>>> >> artists, in that in clubs in LA only very simple and cheesy music gets
>>> >> play from DJs.
>>> >>
>>> >> We do have a good jazz scene, but its focussed on what Miles Davis
>>> >> called "museum music."
>>> >>
>>> >> I was born in the city and lack the resources to ever be able to leave
>>> >> here, so its like I was born here to die as an artist and never
>>> >> connect with any audience besides the internet. All right thank the
>>> >> gods for the internet or I would be 100% obscure.
>>> >>
>>> >> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 7:56 AM, Michael Gogins
>>> >>  wrote:
>>> >>> 100% agreement here. Or maybe 500%.
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Regards,
>>> >>> Mike
>>> >>>
>>> >>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:51 AM, Richard Dobson
>>> >>>  wrote:
>>> >>>> On 15/02/2011 12:59, Chuckk Hubbard wrote:
>>> >>>>>
>>> >>>>> If the government is going to fund music, or any art, it has to do
>>> >>>>> one
>>> >>>>> of two things: 1) decide which music should be funded and which
>>> >>>>> should
>>> >>>>> not, or 2) fund all of it, which means a huge percentage of the
>>> >>>>> population.
>>> >>>>> Sure society needs music, but does it really need special people
>>> >>>>> whose
>>> >>>>> only work is making music?
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> Sure, society needs doctors, but does it really need special people
>>> >>>> whose
>>> >>>> only work is medicine? For what subject areas is that question ~not~
>>> >>>> equally
>>> >>>> reasonable?
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> While I inevitably have concern, as we all do, always, about the
>>> >>>> broader
>>> >>>> funding of music and the arts, my current focus is on education - how
>>> >>>> and by
>>> >>>> whom music is taught in schools and beyond. Where music is taught by
>>> >>>> specialist musicians, the results, as you might expect, are
>>> >>>> excellent. But
>>> >>>> more often than not, they are not taught by specialists. And the
>>> >>>> curriculum
>>> >>>> can further constrain what is taught.
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> I have over the years got used to meeting new first-year
>>> >>>> undergraduates who
>>> >>>> have been taught the flute by (more often than not) saxophone players
>>> >>>> - the
>>> >>>> wrong fingerings and little or no vibrato (or worse, faulty vibrato)
>>> >>>> being
>>> >>>> something of a give-away. the majority of new students have at best
>>> >>>> weak
>>> >>>> theory and aural training (can't reliably recognise major and minor
>>> >>>> triads
>>> >>>> by ear, don't know the construction of key signatures), and know
>>> >>>> basically
>>> >>>> nothing of the music repertoire outside the handful of works
>>> >>>> stipulated in
>>> >>>> their heavily dumbed-down A-level syllabus. This describes 75% of my
>>> >>>> new
>>> >>>> student list. Some students arrive, discover that for the first time
>>> >>>> they
>>> >>>> actually have to work, and drop out. I lost one student this way
>>> >>>> after just
>>> >>>> four weeks, this year. And of course they "hate scales". Note "hate",
>>> >>>> not
>>> >>>> even "I find them difficult". This is equivalent to  a student
>>> >>>> arriving to
>>> >>>> study maths at degree level who says "I hate logs".
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> So ask yourself, if you have children with an interest in and some
>>> >>>> aptitude
>>> >>>> for music, would you prefer they are taught by a specialist, or not?
>>> >>>> Would
>>> >>>> your children benefit by being taught by musicians whose primary work
>>> >>>> (I
>>> >>>> would never insist on "only") is making music?
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> And above all, would people in general benefit by having a
>>> >>>> well-developed
>>> >>>> and cultivated listening faculty for music, not least the music you
>>> >>>> yourself
>>> >>>> make? And some awareness of the context in which that music is
>>> >>>> presented?
>>> >>>> Context is the most likely aspect to be lost in a non-specialist
>>> >>>> environment. Each musick is a learned art-form (including the
>>> >>>> "popular"
>>> >>>> ones), and without that cultivated faculty, what ~is~ heard likely
>>> >>>> remains a
>>> >>>> very small fraction of what ~could~ be heard. If someone says they
>>> >>>> really
>>> >>>> like your music, can you have any confidence that they are conscious,
>>> >>>> in
>>> >>>> their appreciation, of the special things you have done, and the
>>> >>>> special
>>> >>>> skills you have employed; or are they merely being polite?
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> Richard Dobson
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>> >>>>           https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> >>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> >>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body
>>> >>>> "unsubscribe
>>> >>>> csound"
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>>
>>> >>>
>>> >>>
>>> >>>
>>> >>> --
>>> >>> Michael Gogins
>>> >>> Irreducible Productions
>>> >>> http://www.michael-gogins.com
>>> >>> Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com
>>> >>>
>>> >>>
>>> >>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>> >>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> >>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> >>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body
>>> >>> "unsubscribe csound"
>>> >>>
>>> >>>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>> >>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> >> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> >> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body
>>> >> "unsubscribe csound"
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>>>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
>>> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe
>>> csound"
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Michael Gogins
> Irreducible Productions
> http://www.michael-gogins.com
> Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com
>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 6:36 PM, Brian Redfern  wrote:
> Music can actually heal, didn't Plato use music as medicine? In the US
> the only music that makes money is total garbage. I can play rings

If that's the music that makes money, how is it not the music that
society needs?
Ten years ago or so I went to physical therapy for a few months. Back
problems. I was constantly amazed at how well they knew my body. They
knew which vertebrae were giving me problems, what and how much
stretching I needed, etc. Real professionals. I also saw them working
expertly with serious stroke victims, sports injuries, etc. I remember
one day the big boss guy, the most capable of them all, telling his
coworkers how he had gone to a Backstreet Boys concert and it was just
awesome. Why would he need some expert on music to tell him otherwise?
Whether corporations or government organizations decide which music
our money should support, it's clear that most of society is quite
content with this garbage music, and could function quite smoothly for
an indefinite amount of time without ever knowing that something is
supposedly so desperately wrong.

-Chuckk


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On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 5:51 PM, Richard Dobson
 wrote:
> On 15/02/2011 12:59, Chuckk Hubbard wrote:
>>
>> If the government is going to fund music, or any art, it has to do one
>> of two things: 1) decide which music should be funded and which should
>> not, or 2) fund all of it, which means a huge percentage of the
>> population.
>> Sure society needs music, but does it really need special people whose
>> only work is making music?
>
>
>
> Sure, society needs doctors, but does it really need special people whose
> only work is medicine? For what subject areas is that question ~not~ equally
> reasonable?

Where did you get the doctor thing? Now musicians are doctors? If I
would answer "yes", that society should have people whose only work is
medicine, would that somehow prove that society also needs people
whose only work is music? My whole point is that people who need music
are quite capable of making music themselves, in the absence of better
options. No one's going to die of gangrene because the 4th is sharp.


> While I inevitably have concern, as we all do, always, about the broader
> funding of music and the arts, my current focus is on education - how and by
> whom music is taught in schools and beyond. Where music is taught by
> specialist musicians, the results, as you might expect, are excellent. But
> more often than not, they are not taught by specialists. And the curriculum
> can further constrain what is taught.

How is this something that can't be handled by private funding?


> I have over the years got used to meeting new first-year undergraduates who
> have been taught the flute by (more often than not) saxophone players - the
> wrong fingerings and little or no vibrato (or worse, faulty vibrato) being
> something of a give-away. the majority of new students have at best weak
> theory and aural training (can't reliably recognise major and minor triads
> by ear, don't know the construction of key signatures), and know basically
> nothing of the music repertoire outside the handful of works stipulated in
> their heavily dumbed-down A-level syllabus.

And this is a problem for whom? The ones who can will go on, the ones
who can't will find other work.


> This describes 75% of my new
> student list. Some students arrive, discover that for the first time they
> actually have to work, and drop out. I lost one student this way after just
> four weeks, this year.

Well, someone has to work the night shift at the gas station. That's
an important job too. People would end up stranded far from home in
the middle of the night.


> So ask yourself, if you have children with an interest in and some aptitude
> for music, would you prefer they are taught by a specialist, or not? Would
> your children benefit by being taught by musicians whose primary work (I
> would never insist on "only") is making music?

If I wanted my children to be taught music by a specialist, I would
expect to pay for it from my own pocket, rather than expecting my
government to use public funds to pay for it.


> And above all, would people in general benefit by having a well-developed
> and cultivated listening faculty for music, not least the music you yourself
> make? And some awareness of the context in which that music is presented?
> Context is the most likely aspect to be lost in a non-specialist
> environment. Each musick is a learned art-form (including the "popular"
> ones), and without that cultivated faculty, what ~is~ heard likely remains a
> very small fraction of what ~could~ be heard. If someone says they really
> like your music, can you have any confidence that they are conscious, in
> their appreciation, of the special things you have done, and the special
> skills you have employed; or are they merely being polite?

I have earnestly tried, since I started studying music, to write music
that approaches listeners, for which they don't need to "understand"
it (even the vast majority of musicians don't *understand* why it
sounds the way it does) to enjoy it. No one is going to listen to the
second minute of anything I write if the first minute doesn't convince
them.


But regardless, I don't need government funds to write or listen to
music, and I really, really, really don't want my money to pay for
other people to write music I can't stand.

-Chuckk

The attack against free education in the US goes right along with the
general assault against the arts.

But what am I going to do? Make an example! I'm basically a working
poor person who only owns a crappy netbook and doesn't even have a bed
to sleep on.

But I'm writing a hardcore revolutionary hip hop album using my $60
usb mic and csound with ardour, just proving that with the power of
csound I can make a high quality hip hop album and basically be a
homeless person and still pull it off.


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I totally understand the dialectic here.

When I started writing music software, I thought I would sell it. And,
in fact, I did manage to sell a few copies of the first version of
what is now parts of CsoundAC.

Then I found that to continue developing music software for commercial
sale, I needed to pay for licenses to other software that I needed to
use. I ran into problems with Numerical Recipes in C, compression
software, and the MP3 patent. I couldn't afford it considering what I
was making, and I am not going to steal, so that was out.

Well, the major motive has always been to make new software so that I
could make new music that nobody else was making that I wanted to
hear. Selling software was always a secondary goal. So, I moved
everything into open source and, eventually, into Csound, because that
way I could keep working without spending more than I could afford.
Since then I have been able to use free and open source software to
make a great deal of new open source software that I need to make the
music that I wanted to hear -- and I have managed to hear some of it.
Not enough - but more than nothing!

The lesson I draw from this is that the world now runs on two quite
different economies, one capitalist and one co-operative socialist.
They currently exist in a kind of uneasy and suspicious symbiosis, but
this is not a stable situation.

The co-operative socialist part only works if the cost of material
production is essentially nil, which the case with software and
digital media and not at all the case with any other goods. So, I
expect the capitalist part to re-assert control over the socialist
part. But for this to be fair, the stealing has got to stop.
Otherwise, capitalism will turn into feudalism and most of us will be
serfs.

The best way for the stealing to stop is to make copyright inalienable
and to enforce it for all copies. Technically this is quite possible
-- we could build the necessary accounting right into the Internet,
kind of like mandatory PayPal on steroids.

Regards,
Mike

On Wed, Feb 16, 2011 at 12:59 PM, Brian Redfern  wrote:
> The attack against free education in the US goes right along with the
> general assault against the arts.
>
> But what am I going to do? Make an example! I'm basically a working
> poor person who only owns a crappy netbook and doesn't even have a bed
> to sleep on.
>
> But I'm writing a hardcore revolutionary hip hop album using my $60
> usb mic and csound with ardour, just proving that with the power of
> csound I can make a high quality hip hop album and basically be a
> homeless person and still pull it off.
>
>
> Send bugs reports to the Sourceforge bug tracker
>            https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=81968&atid=564599
> Discussions of bugs and features can be posted here
> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body "unsubscribe csound"
>
>



-- 
Michael Gogins
Irreducible Productions
http://www.michael-gogins.com
Michael dot Gogins at gmail dot com


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> it's clear that most of society is quite
> content with this garbage music, and could function quite smoothly for
> an indefinite amount of time without ever knowing that something is
> supposedly so desperately wrong.

That people can be quite content with bad food, bad music, bad thinking, 
bad health, bad whatever indeed is strongly related to them having no 
clue something better may be in reach.

In french we call such people "imbéciles heureux". Happy idiots.

There are not considered a role model, though.


Stef





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On 16/02/2011 16:46, Chuckk Hubbard wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 5:51 PM, Richard Dobson
>   wrote:
>> On 15/02/2011 12:59, Chuckk Hubbard wrote:
>>>
..
>> Sure, society needs doctors, but does it really need special people whose
>> only work is medicine? For what subject areas is that question ~not~ equally
>> reasonable?
>
> Where did you get the doctor thing? Now musicians are doctors?

Many are. Many others are lawyers, teachers, scientists - perhaps even 
politicians. Society needs special people - period. If only for all 
those times when the effort of being special ourselves is just too 
great. We will feel their absence soon enough.


If I
> would answer "yes", that society should have people whose only work is
> medicine, would that somehow prove that society also needs people
> whose only work is music? My whole point is that people who need music
> are quite capable of making music themselves,

Many are, indeed. Many are capable of building their own house, creatign 
their own art, tilling their own soil (when they have any), disposing of 
their own waste, teaching their own children at home, caring for their 
elderly and sick, all sorts of things. Self-sufficiency is a noble goal 
indeed. But I find the expertise of those who are "professional" and 
"expert" at those activities, through extended study and practice,  both 
inspiring and worthy of support, and an expression of self-sufficiency 
at a higher level.

I am sorry but I cannot comment on the rest of your post, 
thought-provoking though it is, as it saddens me to much.  There is 
certainly a satisfaction in feeding oneself; but for me there is even 
more in feeding others, and I only wish I could do it more.

Richard Dobson



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On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 1:07 AM, Richard Dobson
 wrote:
> On 16/02/2011 16:46, Chuckk Hubbard wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 5:51 PM, Richard Dobson
>>   wrote:
>>>
>>> Sure, society needs doctors, but does it really need special people whose
>>> only work is medicine? For what subject areas is that question ~not~
>>> equally
>>> reasonable?
>>
>> Where did you get the doctor thing? Now musicians are doctors?
>
> Many are. Many others are lawyers, teachers, scientists - perhaps even
> politicians. Society needs special people - period. If only for all those
> times when the effort of being special ourselves is just too great. We will
> feel their absence soon enough.

How about food? We definitely need people who specialize in food
production. That's even more important than doctors or lawyers.
Therefore, food production and distribution should be controlled by
the government using public funds. Otherwise, people will be raising
their own animals, full of diseases, and eating all kinds of
substandard food.


> If I
>>
>> would answer "yes", that society should have people whose only work is
>> medicine, would that somehow prove that society also needs people
>> whose only work is music? My whole point is that people who need music
>> are quite capable of making music themselves,
>
> Many are, indeed. Many are capable of building their own house, creatign
> their own art, tilling their own soil (when they have any), disposing of
> their own waste, teaching their own children at home, caring for their
> elderly and sick, all sorts of things. Self-sufficiency is a noble goal
> indeed. But I find the expertise of those who are "professional" and
> "expert" at those activities, through extended study and practice,  both
> inspiring and worthy of support, and an expression of self-sufficiency at a
> higher level.

The Romanian government had a similar idea about home-building in the
1980's, that it was their duty to see to this basic need of the
people. They destroyed thousands and thousands of inefficient old
homes built by the families of their inhabitants and moved millions of
people into enormous concrete blocks, with holes called doors and
windows, and burrows called apartments. People couldn't take their
dogs with them, so millions of dogs were suddenly released on the
street. Decades later, the country is full of ugly apartment buildings
and stray dogs, and westerners like to come and criticize Romanians
for this sad state of affairs. I've also overheard many Romanians
disgusted that they haven't yet "received" a home for all the work
they've done- and I came here in 2007.


> I am sorry but I cannot comment on the rest of your post, thought-provoking
> though it is, as it saddens me to much.  There is certainly a satisfaction
> in feeding oneself; but for me there is even more in feeding others, and I
> only wish I could do it more.

If it saddens you, that proves you're right.

-Chuckk


-- 
http://www.badmuthahubbard.com


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