[Leaters]

I love the way music speaks to me. Depending on the mood I am in, music can lift my spirits, calm me down and relax my mind when it is racing with unwanted thoughts.

It is like a universal language, that speaks to everyone who wants to listen.


Margaret

[Enalsebeerkawl]

For me, music is a natural and legal way of getting "high", without having to worry about being arrested and going to jail. It is a vehicle which serves to transport one beyond the self--no matter how lousy or depressed one might be feeling at the time. I believe it is the greatest mood enhancer ever conceived of by the human brain.

[vodaPlaps]

"A legal way of "getting high" - Be careful of what you say because the U.S.Congresscats will FIND a way to make it illegal to get high off of music.

[sam]

I just wish I could play well enough to express myself, whatever my emotion. Music can be your other voice, but unfortunately I am dumb. Too late to regret that lack of practice when I was young, and before my hands started to stiffen and lose their sensation.

teddy

[Jueqelyl]

"A legal way of "getting high" - Be careful of what you say because the U.S.Congresscats will FIND a way to make it illegal to get high off of music.

Hi Corno Dolce. Thanks for your concern, but I would highly doubt our "exalted leaders" in the Congress could care less about some insignificant person such as me and my particular likes or dislikes. But thanx for crediting me with being more important than I really am. Of course, I know that you are writing with "tongue in cheek", but I do appreciate your comments nonetheless. Peace and out--wk

[Assunkkensatt]

I think to answer well I have to start of by saying that music can have different functions, in fact most of the music we hear is serving a functional, rather than a purely aesthetic purpose.

I think back on the Congressional elections here in the U.S. and I remember the kitch they had playing behind monolouges praising (or more often attacking) this man or that woman--I hated that music. Music as propaganda, I do not like.

Consider the "Dirty-South" hip-hop with it's notorious degradations against women, some of the thrashcore metal bands that espouse violence and murder wherever they go. Music as a means to incite evil, I do not like.

Consider the countless anthems that soldiers have sung as they left a field full of dead men, merely because they had sung a different anthem and held a different flag. Music that disguises murder as patriotism, I do not like.

Consider the thinnly disguised bragadocia of the smug performer, wrapped up in him/herself, and convinced of their own genius above all other things; or the syphilitic old men that use their music as a means to get with there young and ignorant fans. Music as self-praise and self-service, I do not like.

Music is a tool that can be used for anything a man wants to use it for. More often than not it's used as a piece of orwellian candy, a trite offering to entertain it's listeners for a fraction of a second until the latest hack offers up their nearly identical piece of drivel.

I think a piece of music that is truly beautiful is rare, and therefore more worth the listening. When we hear a Barber's Adagio, Elgar's Nimrod, Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah...etc...we must stop and listen, and not cheapen the experience.

I like music that is composed by people trying to communicate to the core of another person for a good reason. I like music that has purposeful dissonance and resolution. Whether the music is tragic opera, or light-hearted dance music, I only find myself enjoying it when it is contains musical thought, from a musician with some kind of understanding of the world he/she lives in. I like music that is made to be listened to as art, not as a tool for our alterior motives.

[Jesslovers]

Well said thirdcreed, I agree with you.


Margaret

[Lictimind]

Thanks Marval, I'm always glad to meet a like-minded person on this issue.

"The purpose of art is not the momentary ejection of adrenaline but the gradual and lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity."- Glenn Gould

This quote is great. I was always put off by some of my colleagues that used the term 'Eargasm' when talking about great music. There's such a thing as pleasure (in the strictest sense just chemicals), and then there's such a thing as "A sense of well being and understanding". I think a lot of people never get any of that second thing.

After Bentham and John Stuart Mill there's been an enormous group of people that knowingly or unknowingly have been strictly utilitarian,: that is [pleasure = good, pain = bad]. This is a much outdated philosophy. Philosophers of today that side with the hedonist call their philosophy 'Alternative Hedonism' i.e. they recognize that pleasure is multi-faceted, that is--there's chemical pleasure, and 'pleasure that' (pleasure that something has happened) and then 'A sense of well being'. Almost noone who actually thinks about these things for a living uses a purely hedonistic model. (See Thomas Hurka or Kate Soper for examples of 'Alternative Hedonist' philosophers)

So knowing that the mood in academia is shifting one would expect to see this shift at least in the university, but looking even there, you find they're still looking for a cheap substitute. Pleasure's great but it's not the only thing and certainly not the best thing.

Nietzche wrote alot about this, particularly in The Birth of Tradgedy, Nietzche lists art as one of the few things that is made of sturdy enough stuff to scratch up a purpose in what he believed to be a meaningless desolate chaos. While I don't see reality as so bleak, I do see the value of art as revealing truth, in such a way that we can understand it, and not be crushed under it's pressure.

I wonder how as a music teacher I can cultivate this love of art in music? It is difficult to make people experience the deeper benefits, I'm beginning to wonder if it is a "You can lead a horse to water..." situation.

[dxpfmP0l]

What I love about music is that is the perfect expression of human creativity. It actively reaches out to people and grabs them. You can't ignore it like you can a book or a painting. If music is playing, you will notice it.

And it's universal (this applies to paintings, too, of course). Music can be understood by anyone who hears it.

Music has no past, and no future. It exists only now, in the same moment our lives are occurring. It moves with us through life, and as we breathe in and out, music pulses and lives in the same moments we do.If you are on long drive then this car DVD players serve you as a boon to kill your time.

[Lipitorseffec]

I like the fact that music will carry on, long after I do. Whether people will be listening to the same music I cannot tell.


Margaret

[Dapnoinaacale]

When you read and play music perhaps you are in the mind of the composer and if it was written 200 years ago you are a time traveler, sort of

[QualityReachOut]

Beautifully put SW

teddy

[Appeselve]

SW, So right you are.......................

[girlsround]

every song i listen to either takes me to a place i've already been in my life, or it takes me to somewhere i want to be.

it's difficult to explain better than that.

[mikaelluioy]

Yes, I agree. It always takes you somewhere

teddy

[Jxmwzgpv]

I love harmonies that are so close they almost cause a dissonance but are so perfectly together that it sends tingles through your body

[UrUROFlS]

BatChic nails it...

[Hokimjers]

music makes your soul alive..

[ThekvandoVideo]

If you get into the old lyrics does that make you a rhyme traveller?

It's beautiful what those twelve tones can sound like, unique for us all.
Okay, semi, hemi, demi, quarter, eight and ascending or descending tones,
do, uh, muddy up the notality of it all, springs, strings and things that push from your palm.
They're beautiful too.

[Enfonebew]

What I love about music: It talks to the deepest part of all of me if I let it.
We can write music that has the power to heal wounds and connect us all, which is something that a painting or a sculpture is less able to to