>>>Me:
>>>My crack at it: Music is human-organized sound, or the threat 
thereof.
>>>
>>"Paul Winkler" :
>>For that matter, your definitions above definitely include speech.
>
>Absolutely, but only the part of speech that is the _sound_ of speech,
>stripped of its cognition/meaning component -- which means that there's
>room for Dutiful Ducks and Rainbow Bandit Bombs under the umbrella.

Which gets into realms of potential poetry that might be arguably 
blurring the line between music and language... interesting, eh?

>In general practice, of course, we consider speech primarily for its
>meaning component (its "content"), which is why at first glance its
>inclusion would seem to corrupt the definition I pose above.
>
>Unwilling to let me separate "speech" into sound and meaning? Don't we
>separate monophonic song into sonic (the "music") and cognitive (the
>meaning of the words) spheres -- especially if we don't speak the 
language
>of the lyrics?

Well, sure, okay. I was getting a bit niggling.

>
>>>Note that this doesn't attempt to define what "art" is, nor what 
"good
>>>music" is.
>>
>>Fine by me. Though if we COULD define "art," it might help the
>>definition of music to mention that it's a subset of art.
>
>Hm. One might argue that there are whole traditions of music which are
>outside the conceits of "art" as we understand it in Western culture.

I would tend to characterize that as a limitation of western culture 
rather than the other way 'round.

>>Oh, drat, I can't resist. I'm going to quote Scott McCloud's 
definition
>>of art from Understanding Comics: "...any human activity which doesn't
>>grow out of either of our species' two basic instincts: survival and
>>reproduction!"
>
>But what about love songs?

Yep... it's not really fair to Scott to quote that bit out of context... 
he went out on a limb there, and a lot of the richness of his ideas is 
conveyed visually... it's a 200 page comic book about how comic books 
work...

>
>>"Music is a cognitive framework for interpreting experienced or 
imagined
>>sound."
>
>I would so much prefer to define music in terms of what it is
>intrinsically, rather than how the mind prepares for, experiences, or
>reacts to its reception. The bullet rather than the wound.

But if it hits a tree in the woods and no one's there to hear it?
:0

You know, the way your sig file shows up in my email, it says:

>Dave LaDelfa           By "multimedia" I mean that when you 
click on
>ladelfa@rain.org       the picture of the cat the room will
light up 
>Santa Barbara, California   in undulating splashes of 
teal and indigo and

etc. etc...
but when I clicked on ladelfa.rain.org, nothing happened. It's really 
disappointing. But then I can't see Santa Barbara from here, so I'm not 
sure if that's supposed to be doing something.

--PW 

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