Classical music anyone? (+ my random musings for those bothered to read)

Jabberwocky
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Classical music anyone? (+ my random musings for those bothered to read)

Just sitting and listening to some fantastic classical singers on YouTube has got me thinking. 

(if you're here for the music, click the link, skip the rest, and post your own!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1k5l4oiCEc

As a musician, music is one of the things I appreciate most in the world. It has the ability to make me feel anything, if it has in itself enough passion. It can force me to grin ear to ear, or move me to tears. Hearing some of the best vocalists ever recorded, I can't really find a better word for it than Godly (and that's because our largely religious culture has the supernatural at one end of the spectrum, and hearing something truly beautiful deserves to be put on exactly that pedestal). However, I certainly don't mean it in a supernatural sense (and I, for one, won't stop using that vocabulary exactly because I feel the praise is deserved...if only we atheists could come up with a word that means above Godly, in which case I'll gladly adopt that change in language!). However, I would never hope anybody sees it as me passing off the hard work that goes into being the best at anything. You truly have to have both a natural pre-disposition that gives you an advantage in anything you do seriously, and lots of hard work, to be the best at anything. When people tell me that my musical ability is God given (and they ACTUALLY mean exactly that), I have to be a little pissed about that! I could never call honing my craft hard work in the same sense as my full time job, because I enjoy it greatly. But it is a lot of work, and while I don't need any sort of constant praise about it, I feel offended when someone else is credited for what I did out of love for an art.

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Sockra Tease
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I suppose you have to simply

I suppose you have to simply ask yourself if there is room in your world for the "supernatural".

As much as some may hate the word God, some may hate the word 'supernatural', but is everything IN nature?

Science will tell you that music doesn't exist. Sound exists, and sound can be tested and examined and its frequencies can be quantified. Science cannot tell us why we listen to Bach over white noise. They are both just collections of sound frequencies.

The beauty of a piece of music cannot be quantified; only the sound of it can. Are there scientific "beauty tests" for music?

Love is an unscientific hypothesis; for science, love doesn't exist. For science. music doesn't exist. Remember, some of us have gone to the extreme of suggesting that if science doesn't recognize something, it actually does not EXIST.

So... through lovely music, is there room for the supernatural, the "meta-scientific"?

 


Luminon
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 I'm not religious at all,

 I'm not religious at all, except when it comes to music. Then I turn into an intolerant, bigoted and devoted listener. Music is sacred! That is, some carefully chosen music, that hits exactly the right spot in neocortex. Everything else is just an ordinary stuff or worse, unbeliever... I mean, other people's taste to which they are perfectly entitled to. My doctor says.

Mostly I prefer something sad, avantgarde (weird) or hypnotic, or any combination of these. Usually without lyrics. There are some pieces in my collection that come close to the classical music. But none of the old classical masters that seem to represent humanity's best music, whenever humanity needs representing, like in sci-fi. Unless you count DJ Prometheus' edit of the Beethoven's 9th symphony. Very nicely done, I'd say. If this was used to represent humanity, aliens wouldn't dare to attack us Smiling

Then there are several songs from the very popular Carmina Burana opera. Most of the rest sounds like crap, unless you know the dirty lyrics or unless you realize that Ego sum abbas de Cockaigne is very similar to Siberian or Mongolian shamanic songs. It sounds like they're murdering somebody, which is the point.

I know that Yanni is a weapon-grade cheesy New Age composer, but he does have some nice tracks. Piano solos or this one, Tribute. Comes close to orchestral symphony or something. Nice work with violin.

 

These were just small bits, but I'm a regular fan of "neoclassical" piano composer Dax Johnson. He was a genius! (RIP) His music can be extremely sad and emotional, but I like how he usually puts there lighter tones to give the listener hope, and I suppose to keep him alive to buy the next album. It's also very accessible, not any obscure mathemathical sequences that sound like crap, or a piano soundscape where nothing musically happens in a thousand notes, but super-geniuses crave it. His style is like storytelling. These are my favorite pieces, extremely recommended.

Sleeping Sisera

Rain

A search for significance (and about a dozen others)

And now something less sad:

Invention

Canon (by Pachelbel, feat. Dax)

If anyone knows a music of similar parameters, suggestions are most welcome!!!

Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.


EXC
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Luminon wrote: I'm not

Luminon wrote:

 I'm not religious at all, except when it comes to music. Then I turn into an intolerant, bigoted and devoted listener. Music is sacred! That is, some carefully chosen music, that hits exactly the right spot in neocortex.

Actually its the Nucleus Accumbens, the in most primative part of the brain:

http://scientopia.org/blogs/scicurious/2011/01/31/this-is-your-brain-on-music/

Music is sacred to you like a pipe is sacred to a crack head.

 

 

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Luminon
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EXC wrote:Luminon

EXC wrote:

Luminon wrote:

 I'm not religious at all, except when it comes to music. Then I turn into an intolerant, bigoted and devoted listener. Music is sacred! That is, some carefully chosen music, that hits exactly the right spot in neocortex.

Actually its the Nucleus Accumbens, the in most primative part of the brain:

http://scientopia.org/blogs/scicurious/2011/01/31/this-is-your-brain-on-music/

Music is sacred to you like a pipe is sacred to a crack head.

Nope, I meant the part of brain that decides whether the music is even worth to wake up the nucleus acumbens. I'd say neocortex is the processing center where the musical taste is stored. It is something that we grow. As children we prefer simple and more predictable and harmonic music. But as we grow up, we teach the neurons to process more complex and disharmonic music, until we terrorize our parents with some heavy metal or drum n' bass and huge loudspeakers. Then over the years, I guess we mellow out. We get older, burdened by life and duties, and we need some soothing of nerves. It's specially obvious on musicians, they may start with some hard but nice music, make a couple of decent albums, but eventually they get soft. They try new things (new for them) that put them way off the fanbase. Their income drops, so they go mainstream to earn some money. When one fan's musical taste changes, it is no great event. But if a musician 'loses it', dozens of people on forums will complain. 

The thing with musical taste is, that it tells a lot about the personality. It is sort of a cellular keyboard, with keys tied to emotions. This is probably using language and voice or tone processing. And whatever gives us the most pleasure depends on our personality. 

Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.


EXC
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Haven't you ever thought

Haven't you ever thought music was a kind a scam? A way to may you feel emotions that are not genuine given the circumstances?

That is why advertisers, religion, etc... use music to sell shit by playing with our emotions. They can't convince people that Jesus loves them through evidence, so they need music to make them feel that he does. A lot of people pick the church that they do based on it's music not its theology.

 

Taxation is the price we pay for failing to build a civilized society. The higher the tax level, the greater the failure. A centrally planned totalitarian state represents a complete defeat for the civilized world, while a totally voluntary society represents its ultimate success. --Mark Skousen


Luminon
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EXC wrote:Haven't you ever

EXC wrote:

Haven't you ever thought music was a kind a scam? A way to may you feel emotions that are not genuine given the circumstances?

That is why advertisers, religion, etc... use music to sell shit by playing with our emotions. They can't convince people that Jesus loves them through evidence, so they need music to make them feel that he does. A lot of people pick the church that they do based on it's music not its theology.

It doesn't work on me so easily. I use music to reflect bring out emotions that are latently there, which is a very useful effect. But if they aren't, that's too bad. Very few things make me feel anything, I'm always short on emotions, genuine or not. 

But I suppose normal people are easy to manipulate, that's how their form relationships and relationships are a great source of happiness. suppose it's worth it, being manipulable but happier. It's inevitable some people will make a business out of exploiting this capability.

It's not just churches, it's team sports, isn't there some music just before they start playing? Hell, just think of people following their team, they love the team and follow it through a Calvary of the yearly championships and matches, they share the pain of loses and exaltation of glorious victories. 

Just look what a great potential people have together, when it's played right. The primitive centers of pleasure and flight, fight and hunt are employed in higher service of churches and watching sports. Churches sometimes do charity, but sport fans do nothing but mess. They're just an evidence that a secular sermon is possible, if it employs our insticts and feelings. 

Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.


Luminon
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 Can anyone please identify

 Can anyone please identify this piece of classical(?) music for me? (well, it might be also Oliver Shanti, for all I know) It's beautiful and very familiar, but I can't find the original CD or a track list. (yes, it was an original CD I had as a gift) I hope there is more where it came from.

Here's the link, right click, save as.

Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.


harold12beache
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any

any update......

 

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