An amazing guitarist.

King - What do you call sub-sonic sound then?
A compression wave form in matter.

Calling something no known being can hear "sound" is linguistic laziness on the part of the physicist . . . and indicates a failure to take sufficient philosophy of science credits ;)

We used the term "sound wave" to study just that -- sound. As equipment got better and science learned more about those types of waves, they started using the term "sound wave" to mean any compression wave form travelling through matter. However, the use of the term to relate to an auditory experience never changed either.

It's one term being used for multiple concepts.

Which is why I was very clear that the tree causes a waveform to exist. I don't deny the physics. What I'm pointing out is that there are two concepts -- as Arjen says the physical and the mental. But beyond that, the mental aspect of sound has hstioric linguistic priority. It's not the philosopher's fault that the scientist has no linguistic skill in crafting a new term for a seperate concept.

And yes, I did study with Holmer, why do you ask?

Why should it be possible to have music exactly defined in one sentence? You'll either end up excluding things that are music or include things that aren't. Just because language might not be sufficient to capture the true meaning of 'music' in the word music doesn't mean anything about what is music and what isn't. Which is, as has been said, why many cultures do not have a word for music.

Can you really define the experience of spite, love, disgust or music? I don't think so. 4'33 isn't music, for the reasons I have above (which have kinda been ignored by you, to be honest). That has nothing to do with being able to 100% accurately describe certain concepts or ideas into a language, never mind a second language.

Aren't you guys done here, yet?

Do I need to get another jam going to avert your attention to something you can actually sink your teeth in to? :P

I messaged that guy in the link to come join GN so he can defend himself.

He said he just got into a band and doesn't have the time. :roll:

I messaged that guy in the link to come join GN so he can defend himself.

Who? John Cage? :wink: yeah, lets bring him in on a GN 4'33 jam - I'll take the first part - :-D

I got the second. I just took all the strings off my guitar for preparation.

Buaahaahaahahahahahahaahahahahahah! :lol:

From what I've read, there are three basic components being argued: sound, vibration, music.

To me, maybe within the past couple of years, I've been forced to expand my definition of what 'music' is; forced, meaning my perceptions of my own understanding of 'things-that-are,' have relaxed (or expanded perhaps is a better term) to now include 'things-that-are-not' or in this case, 'things-I-thought-were-not.'

Right now I see no real, practical difference between sound, vibration, or music. The first two seem to be more or less scientific terminologies, and the last is maybe more of a personal, intuitive, or subjective concept. 'Music' is also a technical term, meaning certain specific things, but it's my opinion—at least in my own present understanding—that even with these already-present definitions of the word/term, it can, and has to be, included in my own definition, right along with sound and vibration.

To many (or most), they are quite different, but to me, in my own perceptions, they aren't. And since perceptions are pretty much all subjective, then others' definitions, though valuable, can't really affect my own understanding of it.

Or...won't affect it.

To me, everything which vibrates is part of the type of music I'm learning/thinking/talking about. Whether my senses are able or unable to detect all frequencies of vibration is not important, really, because as I see it, they vibrate regardless of whether I perceive them or not. Some are too high, some are too low for my range of hearing, yet they exist and they exert certain influence over whichever particular medium in which they exist – air, water, solid matter.

And they will continue to do so even when I am long gone.

And to me the interesting thing is, at least on this particular planet, there really is no such thing as a lack of vibration, whether I can perceive of it as sound or not. And since I have no theoretical objection to equating vibration with sound, then I would have to say further that there is no such thing as complete silence. Even in an anechoic chamber, technically, outside the chamber, below and above, there is sound. The fact that the chamber prevents the sound from entering, and therefore being perceived by a listener, does not negate that these external sounds exist.

It would be like me, standing on the East coast of the US, listening for a symphony playing in London. That I hear it or not at that point is almost irrelevant; the music (if it truly is so) is being played, and the fact that I'm too distant to hear it does not remove that performance from existence.

To me, the listener, it doesn't exist, but to say the performance is not going on simply because I can't hear it, is a kind of sensual-arrogance. Mind you, the senses are important—that's a given—but to use something as limited as human senses to determine whether something is real and happening, or not—well, this is the exact thing I've come across in my own life. That's why I say I was 'forced' into a slightly wider definition of what music, in my case, actually is.

Even the idea that the organization of sound is what music is, has, in my own understanding, came under question recently. I'm looking into it, but so far, to me, organization is a human thing, and that might be too limited a definition.

Why would sounds have to be organized? The first reasons I come up with is that so they can be understood.

By whom?

By us—humans.

The next need would be perhaps to transfer that organization—that understanding—to others.

To whom?

To other humans.

And then perhaps there is a need to reproduce that organization of sounds.

For what purpose, and for whom?

For humans.

I've noticed, in my studies and just...through life, that the human factor has grown almost out of proportion. The need to capture something so that it can be brought back again and re-enjoyed at a later date. This is true in photography, music, etc. For a thing to have any real value, in a human understanding of things (in my opinion), it has to be repeatable.

But then I have to ask, for what reason?

To sell. To buy. To give, to receive. Even when it is archived or stored, it's for future use, and these same 'use' patterns still hold.

The idea of giving or selling something random—or even sometimes inspired but not 'refined'— has all sorts of negative connotations attached to it, if you think about it. Words like shoddy, unfinished, hurried, etc., are given to things like these. But if I stand back and look at it, those are all 'habitual human traits' –that something good can never be in its natural, unrefined state—and I'm beginning to consider these traits and definitions a lie in many ways.

As a small aside, I've begun enjoying television commercials. Ever since the remote control came into being, it's been the habit, probably world-wide and cross-culturally, to mute the commercials or flip the channel. It's almost coded into humanity's subconscious. "It can't be good or important because they're trying to sell you something."

For me it's interesting to just let the commercial run and see what I've been missing all these decades, and...even if a particular commercial isn't all that interesting, it's the experience of experiencing it, that is interesting.

And that sort of leads me back to my own perceptions of what is or is not music.

Maybe it was the fact that I was introduced to guys like Schoenberg and Webern and Cage and all those back in my college days, but also to the ideas of music concrete and performance art I think it used to be called, that started me on this sound, vibration musical journey. However they're named, it was the idea that a listener would actually become the performer, but even more importantly, and as was mentioned by others posting here, this performer once again became the listener. The performance was the act of the listener listening, and it didn't matter what the sound, vibration or music (or lack thereof) was, because the act of focusing and listening itself was the reward, you might say.

Act 1: walk to the corner of such and such a street. Stand there for five minutes and listen to the sound of the buses going by.

Act 2: turn north and walk up the sidewalk. Listen to people talking; count the number of "I"'s you hear.

Things like that.

To me, vibration = sound = music, and though not all performance art was predominantly 'musical', it's still music in a way of thinking, and my journey with these concepts continues.

But even in seeing. Colors. Light.

There's a site somewhere which is called something like 'Cosmic Sounds' or something similar. It has recorded sound or magnetic or radio waves from the Sun, the planets, slowed or sped up to put it into our range of hearing. It's pretty interesting. There are patterns, groupings, cycles as you might imagine, but even when there's a lack of recognizable patterns or cycles, I personally still consider a sound or vibration to be 'music.' That I cannot recognize a pattern is immaterial now, now that I've come to consider that patterns are merely human concerns/considerations.

That there is actually no pattern at all, to me, now, is even better. Like sitting, watching a water fountain outside my building. I listen and hear patterns, but they never quite come around the same way. Most people would take a momentary mental 'sample' of that sound, label it 'noise,' and move on.

But to me at least, white noise, pink noise, any noise where just about all frequencies are represented is a type of music. Wind in the trees is the same to me. My recognition of patterns or lack thereof, or my inability to focus and mentally record more than perhaps five or ten minutes of this sound at a time (in order to...analyze it? for what?) does not make it less of what it is. It's simply there, happening, and the moment I try to figure it out, I've missed a part of it. Even if I record it and study it later, go over it split-second by split-second, I'm still missing what is going on now at the water fountain, or in that forest with the wind blowing. It's not 'live' anymore, it's 'memorex.'

But even if one were to take this noisy, busy world away, there'd still be the 'echoes of the Big Bang' as some people call it, or the 'speaking of the Word' as others would refer to it, or this or that sort of light.

To me they all have in common the concept of vibration, of vigorous movement within the smallest particles leading to larger formations and larger. Everything moving, perhaps not radiating their vigor as in light from a star, but vibrating none the less; again my perception of their vibration is immaterial. They exist, they vibrate, and therefore, for me, in my own understanding, they are a part of perhaps a larger music. That I don't perceive this music—or only perceive a limited spectrum of it—is the problem I've been working on. I've learned a little, but the main thing I've learned is that I've learned to keep the door open so to speak, to allow larger, broader concepts to join in to what I already know.

My family has gotten used to it. We'll be at a restaurant and I'll hear something, maybe the thrumming of a refrigerator pump or some low, almost imperceptible sound, and I'll listen to it—intently. To most people I'd merely be spacing out (and sometimes I AM just spacing out), but lots of times the sound has captivated me. I'll maybe start humming along softly, trying to catch whether it's a single note or some interval, and my daughter might say something like "Oh there goes daddy again," and I'll be back.

But I'm still listening.

A plate drops and shatters—was there some sort of room/ambient dynamic that it coincided with?

And even that's the problem; trying to sort through it. When I catch myself doing that (which is part of this ongoing process now), I'll stop and go back to merely enjoying the sound as a thing unto itself. To do less is almost an insult to it. And then other sounds will start to enter, but these are internal ones, internal notes that go along with that one basic sound. Maybe harmonics, maybe dissonance. Even when the background is total dissonance, as in white noise or a compressor letting off excess pressure, within the noise are any number of things to be focused on and perceived. Similar to the visual trick of seeing patterns in random dots on a page. Faces, melodies, they're the same in a certain way of perceiving them.

But that takes me back to the idea of randomness and my reasons for considering it somehow 'less' than perfect, and as I said earlier, recently I've been given over to the idea that perhaps random sounds, natural sounds, or even 'no' sounds (still remembering the always-present ocean of sound we all live in) are just as perfect, just as important, just as viable, just as valid—I guess is the best word—as anything else.

And, the same is true with all the opinions expressed here, in my estimation. Everyone has perceptions, understandings, and though some may be wildly different than others, I consider them all to be valid. It's all about perception, subjective understanding, and I'm in no position to evangelize my standpoint as being 'the only way' just as others have not pushed their points. I think we all understand for the most part that in a discussion of subjective matters, it takes complete objectivity to allow the personal, subjective ideas to be presented. No preaching here, in other words.

These are simply my own experiences, and I believe that nobody can truly experience what another has. Similar things yes, but exactly? No. It's not meant to be that way. It would be boring if it were :)

This all just proves to me that the majority of those who profess their own intelligence are quite plainly idiots. Please call me a moron. Thank you. I'll gladly wallow in my stupidity and ignorance so long as I never have to pay for something that I will experience in the twenty minutes or so before a real concert begins. Have I experienced what Cage was trying to present? Yes. Of course! Anyone who has waited in expectation for an anticipated event will have experienced this to an extreme. Of course we may have only tollerated it for a minute at the most, at which point we engage in conversation with the other idiots who paid to see an actual performance. If anything Cage proves that the self obsorbed "high society" is too oblivious to realize that life exists whether they do or not.

This all just proves to me that the majority of those who profess their own intelligence are quite plainly idiots. Please call me a moron. Thank you. I'll gladly wallow in my stupidity and ignorance so long as I never have to pay for something that I will experience in the twenty minutes or so before a real concert begins. Have I experienced what Cage was trying to present? Yes. Of course! Anyone who has waited in expectation for an anticipated event will have experienced this to an extreme. Of course we may have only tollerated it for a minute at the most, at which point we engage in conversation with the other idiots who paid to see an actual performance. If anything Cage proves that the self obsorbed "high society" is too oblivious to realize that life exists whether they do or not.

signed,TwistedLefty esq. FIHS (fellow idiot in high standing)