#710717 - 11/08/05 02:31 PM
How do you conceive music?
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RicBassGuy
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There were some posts recently, involving improvisation skills and music languages, that started me thinking in this direction.
I started a search and came up with this one on ear training , but it didn't really address what I'm contemplating. (There may be more in the archives, but I've given up searching for now.)
How do you conceive music? That is, in your mind, how do you "visualize" music? A better term may be, how do you abstract music?
Is perfect/absolute pitch the result of a deep, innate understanding of music? To the point where you don't need any "help" to know what a pitch is, you just know. (The "help" could be some written notation or a reference note to allow use of relative pitch.)
Once you learn a music language -- hopefully standard music notation ("sheet music") -- do you "see" that whenever you hear a tone? When you hear 440Hz do you automatically think of the its representation as a note on a staff? Do you see it as A4, or "the A above middle C"? Is it a key on the piano keyboard, or a certain fret on bass? (Ok, maybe not 440Hz, but do you think of different bass pitches as locations on the bass fretboard?)
Do you think of music in its "native tongue"? For example, I'm an English-speaker that studied German (one year in college). I'm not to the point where I can "think" in German; I still have to translate back and forth from English. Is your internalization of music to the point where transcribing monophonic music (at least pitch-wise) is effortless? (Yes, this would relate to having a "good ear", but how is your brain processing everything?) Are you "thinking" in standard music notation?
How does it work when you go the other way, from some musical idea in your head until it becomes an audible sound? Do you know the exact pitch you want to hear and automatically your fingers fret that note, without much conscious thought? Is it like athletics, just based on instinct and muscle memory? (Especially when [sight]reading music, but is this also how you improv?) If you just played a flurry of notes of different pitches, would you know exactly what they were in real time? Or are you just playing patterns of fingerings based on some analysis of what others in the ensemble are playing (either by ear, by memorization, or by reading a chord chart)?
As bassists, we're often more in tune with rhythm and harmony and less with melody than other instrumentalists (yet equal with dynamics). Is rhythm something that you somehow internalize, or is it something that needs to be counted out loud against a sort of "tempo cadence"? Does rhythm influence pitch choice? Is harmony second nature to the point where you could hear a chord sounded for the briefest time and know exactly what chord was played and in what voicing? And further, exactly what notes or positions on the fretboard could reproduce that chord (perhaps octaves lower)?
I'm not trying to incite some sort of "I'm better than you" debacle. I'm trying to come to grips with my own understanding of music. I've played and written music for many years, but in what ways do I still need to develop? Can I achieve that depth by self-study? Am I looking for some sort of nirvana outside of my abilities?
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#710718 - 11/08/05 02:33 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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Phil W
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Fascinating post, I'll have to think some time before I answer properly.
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#710719 - 11/08/05 06:22 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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chromos
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As far as internalizing rythms, melodic concepts, and intonation, my take is that you hit the nail on the head with your bilingual analogy. I think of music as a language, one that allows us to delve much deeper into ourselves on a spiritual level. With enough appropriate practice, all of the facets become second nature, internalized. Until that point, one may have to think it out in advance. Especially when dealing with improvising over chord changes.
Something else that occurred to me upon reading this was that i visualize music in an abstract manner. The best example I can give you is a media player with ambient colored patterns in the background that change colors with the chords, and the wiggly chalk line effect representing the melody. That's just me though. Think about it however you think about it.
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#710720 - 11/08/05 08:20 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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Dave Sisk
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Interesting question, RBG. Since I started music as a drummer, I internalized rhythms a long time ago. When I play whatever rhythm (whether it's on bass, drums, or anything else) I can see the standard notation of the rhythm in my head. I'm not quite that far with the pitch side of it...I can't see melodies and harmonies as standard notation in my head, but I'm working on the pitch reading skills to get better at it and even it to that same point.
Rhythms just come out of my hands. I can think a rhythm and play it without there being much processing going on between my head and my hands, unless I'm working some new picking technique, etc. I can do that with simple melodies, but more complex melodies/harmonies require me to put those extra thought steps in there. I do find though that I don't have to work too hard, for instance, at learning church songs. Most of them tend to be reasonably simple and fairly common chord progressions (maybe 3-5 chords), and especially lately, my hands seem to automatically find the right notes in a lot of cases. I've still got a ways to go in this area though...but I am working on it.
When I first saw this thread, by "conceive" I thought you meant "how do you go about creating a new song?". For me, that pretty much always starts with some groove that I have in my head. I'll sit down and start playing the bass line...I can generally already hear the drums in my head as well. The bass line will imply a chord progression, and I usually work from there...fit a chord progression to the bass line and drums. I'm not a great lyricist, so excepting lyrics the rest of it seems to kinda fall into place after those two steps. Sometimes a lyrical idea emerges from the music...if it does, then lyrics generally come easily.
I suppose this might be a little bit of an unusual way to write a song. However, I like music with a good groove (regardless of the genre), and I think that starting from the bass line (one of the two main groove instruments IMHO), that's generally what I end up with. In a lot of cases, rather than using chord changes consciously to establish movement, I tend to use pitch changes in the bass line and the resulting chord changes from that as a way to accent the rhythms, if that somewhat subtle distinction makes any sense. In other words, I almost fit pitches to rhythms rather than fitting rhythms to pitches. What I usually end up with is a song that has a good groove and a reasonably simple chord progression.
I might post more as I think about what you've said.
Dave
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#710721 - 11/08/05 08:53 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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g.
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I think it's situational and varies depending on focus, for me. But, yeah, a lot of different patterns and relationships in the music are showing up on an internal heads-up display where different data metaphors are invoked depending on circumstances - I relate at several levels simultaneously when I'm really plugged in, and some of that is the more obvious overlays of fingerboard patterns, some is notational lines and chords, some gets a little more abstract...
...Like psychoacoustic phenomena of room, local position and mix, overtones and resonances, spatial placement and illusional placements... stuff I also relate to as a soundman. And some of that is colors in vague subtle periphery, shapes... and as my focus travels I might become, in a way zoned out, yet all of the aural data and conceptual stuff then gets experienced as a more direct awareness/beingness where the conventional symbols aren't really at the surface - like I'm almost in a different plane, and those tools and consstructs only get brought back up to the surface when they are needed.
Hopefully.
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#710722 - 11/08/05 09:03 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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g.
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Then there's the persons level, where I'm polling the movements, facial and body english, and all the aural feedback coming from the others. I really love interactive music, it seems like a lot of people playing rock and pop oriented styles concieve of static parts with almost all their attention on only their own bit - but I really like FLOW and cause and effect and maybe a little more interested in the spectrum that good jazz players tune into, though I'm really not a jazz player in conventional terms.
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#710723 - 11/08/05 09:08 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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g.
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And one thing I really like about playing with A GROUP for awhile, is that you know some things about the way the other players concieve and think about music, how they process stuff, what they bring. Sometimes that's pretty useful, and it's not just about their skills with theory or their technique, it's more...
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#710724 - 11/08/05 09:16 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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Bottomgottem
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Wow. Heady stuff.
I just play what sounds good. I cannot read standard notation anymore. Played trombone in jr. high and have tried to relearn since but it apparently is not like riding a bike. My euphonium playing daughter is tired of me improvising with her and is re-teaching me. She says that I am musically illiterate; I suppose she's right.
As far as taking ideas and turning them into soundwaves goes, I guess in my case it all goes back to the way that I learned to play bass. Simply recreating the tones that I heard on the record that I wanted to learn. I have never tried to put into words how I translate ideas into sounds but I guess all my learning experiences have taught me to somehow see or conceptualize the intervals and my brain turns that into a motor response that puts a finger at the right fret on the right string (usually). I do not necessarily see colors though I have heard that this is common. I guess I just internally perceive the interval. Then muscle memory takes over.
This is a great topic. I will probably have to come back to this one after I have philo-sophocized on it a little more.
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#710725 - 11/09/05 03:05 AM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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C. Alexander C.
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Do you not mean perceive - i.e. how one 'sees' music - rather than conceive - i.e. how one creates music?
Good thread!
Alex
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#710727 - 11/09/05 08:50 AM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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RicBassGuy
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By the way, these are great responses thus far. I realize it takes a while to answer a question like this. Keep them coming! 
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#710728 - 11/09/05 09:14 AM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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g.
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root five root five root five...
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#710729 - 11/09/05 09:39 AM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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g.
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There's another higher aspect to this too. What I said earlier often applies to the learning and practicing stage: learning the tools, learning to use the tools...
That's only part of the picture. Then there comes the balancing act of where focus and attention is placed. Learning to tap into creativity is a greater thing. Becoming a decent vessel to channel creativity is needed too. And there's the emotional level - establishing resonance, connecting with this. And beyond the emotional and the passionate (we may not concieve of these as abstractions but they too need to go into the mix), there is the spiritual. I kind of percieve of a higher vibrational state that when I am in tune with it I am able to bring down into the common world some of what is to be found there.
Perhaps this is Love... not just the emotional attachment to a person or thing, but maybe the love for Creation, the Life Force, something that music expresses better than words, and lyrics really only a reflection of...
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#710730 - 11/09/05 10:10 AM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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Jimbroni
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It depends....................
Seriously, it does depend on specifics for me, mainly because I'm not where I want to be in terms of ear note recognition. I think the goal for all musicians should be to get the point of playing the music in your head. Everyday I wake I have 3 to 5 new songs in my head, which is a gift I feel like I'm squandering.  If I'm lucky on a good day I am able to reproduce the basslines for one or two of them, nevermind the horns and keys and guitars. I can't just write the music in my head, I have to find it on my bass. Sometimes there are uncommon intervals I hear in my head that I can't reproduce. Some intervals like 4s, 5s, 7s, and 6s are easy for me to recognize in my mind, but thirds can be difficult for me without the presence of additional harmony.
I find that when improving on the fly initially I stay close to home and pay attention to my theory knowledge until I get a good taste for the scale, once the taste is there the ideas flow from my head more easily and I'm able forget about what the proper mode for this chord or that should be. At that point, I'm playing music. I wish I could have this stuff totally internalized so I don't need that initial state of aclaimation to the key for lack of a better term.
Essentially this thread is highlighting what I feel is my biggest weakness as a musician.
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#710731 - 11/09/05 11:23 AM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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Fred the bass player
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This is probably not the answer you were looking for, but then I have a habit of trying to think outside of the box. The box here being the definition of music by other musicians. I want to go beyond that.
On one level, music has a visual structure, which is as vital as the alphabet, mathematical and scientific notation, and art in communicating ideas to other musicians. The initial paradox is that blind and deaf people can learn to "read", understand, compose and perform music. To this I cite the experiences of blind musicians I've encountered and read about, along with Beethoven's efforts in composing the Ninth Symphony and conducting it while losing all of his hearing. So is music visual or aural communication? Both? Neither?
Then there is the level of music in nature. Since notes are essentially vibrations at specific frequencies (fundamentals and harmonics) then any moving object can produce music. Like art, it is up to the "listener" to interpret whether it is music or random noise. Are the singnals from deep space merely background noise or is there a musical pattern which escapes us? When a hummingbird flies by you, are the vibrations it produces music? Does a songbird "sing", "talk" or both? (I'm reminded of the sing-song quality of Asian languages here) Do whales "sing" epic songs, "tell" stories about their lives and experiences?
I'll leave it here because I'm still open to the idea that music is everywhere and that, like mathematics and science, is part of a universal language we are still learning. If I'm right, and I've said this before, perhaps someday a distant civilization will retrieve the record from the Voyager probe and try to interpret the message hidden in "Johnny B. Goode". (and who says there isn't a message there?)
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#710732 - 11/09/05 11:27 AM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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jeremy c
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Great thread!
Personally I can split the question into two parts. The first part is not too profound...it's just technical.
First of all, because of my years of study and a little God-given talent, I know the names of notes and chords and what they look like when written down. So you could stop me while I was playing and I would be able to tell you what notes I just played or write them down. And on a good day I can listen to something and do the same thing.
That part of it is like listening to someone tell a story. You could get out a pen and write it down, but you are not thinking letters and words when you hear the story. The other night I served as secretary at a meeting, I had my laptop and I wrote down what was going on as it happened. I just listened and typed. I didn't think about letters or words, just about what was happening and my fingers typed the minutes of the meeting. In some ways that brings me to the second part of my answer.
But that's not how I conceive of music. And that opens all the great issues that RicBassGuy was looking for.
So here is the main answer now that I have my opening statement out of the way.
There are a lot of ways that I conceive of music. One way is obviously pure sound. I hear a sound in my head. Later (or right on the spot if I am in an improvisational situation) I attempt to reproduce it.
The second is as a series of relationships. Since most of my life I have been playing tonal music (there was a brief flirtation with atonal music in college....I liken that to the cute blonde who got away), every note has some relation to another note in a sort of hierarchical format. So I am hearing all kinds of relationships and patterns. Has anyone read the Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi) by Herman Hesse? That book made a big impression on me.
Then of course there is the emotional content of music...this is very hard to talk about, but obviously some music makes you feel one way and some makes you feel another way. I can decide to play music that will make the listener have various responses, so on some level I am thinking about the emotional content of the music that I am imagining just before and as I play it.
Then there is music as a reaction to a stimulus. Most of the time in my current playing career, I am walking into unrehearsed performances. Often there are musicians I have never met and often there is music I have never heard before. I try to remain "open" and the way I conceive of music in those situations is as a response to a stimulus. I hear other people, I play something. There is no premeditated response, it just happens on the spot. In the best improvised music, everyone in the band is thinking about music in this way.
And then there is a physical response. The bass is obviously a physical instrument.. we play rhythms that make people move. We produce large sound waves which sometimes we can physically feel (pant legs flapping in the breeze from the speakers, anyone?). And we are part of a rhythm section, which might be just us and a drummer or might include the rest of band as well. I feel physical tensions...pushes and pulls among the various players. Sometimes I think of various styles of music in terms of those pushes and pulls. I am aware of the physical tension between instruments when playing with people and so sometimes that is how I am conceiving of music.
And finally, (and I hope this is not because in the 60's I took LSD), sometimes I feel, see, and hear shapes moving around the room. Different kinds of sounds seem to have a physical manifestation in my mind and them seem to be moving around and lining themselves up in various patterns.
But mostly, I just listen and play and try not to think. Music is something that I do, it's been a major part of me for my entire life and it's who I am.
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#710733 - 11/09/05 04:31 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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RicBassGuy
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Thanks, Fred. I found this link (caution! I think it has autoplay) on another deaf composer, 34yo Tammie Willis who lost her hearing at age 25. Interesting read. Although she received her masters in music, I'm not sure how much musical training she had before losing her hearing. I'm interested in finding someone who was born deaf but can compose music.
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#710734 - 11/09/05 05:14 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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SeamyD
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I think I will stew on this one a little, to many thoughts just to ramble. Very good thread!!
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#710735 - 11/09/05 08:59 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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Gord -B
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Well being a bit of an armchair philosopher, especially regarding the words 'concieve' and 'perceive' i can be a bit pedantic on such issues but there you go.....
Music is a contingent conception. That is it is not something that is established prior to my conception of it (a priori). Therefore music can mean whatever i want it to mean.
For me the concept of music is made up of:
1.) Pitch - which is how notes are 'percieved' by the human ear. This is a perception of physical vibrations. (excellent info on wikipedia which won't link for some reason)
2.) Time - a sticky concept dealt with better by sources such as this.
3.) Energy - This requires an action by something
1) and 2) are requirements where my perception can be developed via a purely scientific approach. I can framework pitch and time into 'music theory' usually under the headings of rhythm, harmony and melody. As people have said this music theory is the same as any language. In fact the spoken language could probably be conceptualised as 'music' if an individual chose to concieve it as such.
As for 3) this is action by an individual which brings the framework to life. This is where the spiritual element comes in because we have this capability of choice within freewill. What drives us to decide upon particular combinations of 1) and 2) when 'making music' is based on a complex framework of emotional reasons which I would link more with intuition than rationality. The nature of intuition is still something i haven't really decided on for myself but i think it is what a lot of people associate with being the 'spiritual' element of music. This element seems to be able to be experienced by people listening to music as well as those making it. When music is described as having 'soul' i think that whoever made it might have imbued it with some of theirs.
Perhaps this empirical evidence may provide help in the future for bringing together the scientific and the spiritual into a theory of everything. This is a model i am currently finding very interesting.
Woah! went off on one a bit there, hope some of this actually makes sense to anyone other than me.
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#710736 - 11/09/05 09:05 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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g.
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Gord,
I often think of music as the vehicle, a shell for this greater thing you might want to call Spirit or Soul or Creative Force or whatever. So maybe I understand at least part of what you are saying.
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#710737 - 11/09/05 09:26 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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Jimbroni
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Gord,
I'm not sure everyone would agree that its a given that music doesn't exist prior to our conception of it. I personally can let go of the possibility that the universe is musical in nature, considering it is known that everything is vibration in nature. The spiritual side of me sometimes agrees with some of the new agers who think that music is already there for some of the lucky few who are able to tune into it. Mainly because music can seem like magic sometimes.
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Together all sing their different songs in union - the Uni-verse. My Current Project
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#710738 - 11/09/05 09:40 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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g.
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Then of course there is the emotional content of music...this is very hard to talk about, but obviously some music makes you feel one way and some makes you feel another way.
Present the same people with an instrumental and you'd better hand over the album art so they know WHAT to feel ; }
And of course we bring our own feelings and enthusiasms to what we hear as musicians, having appreciation for still other elements like clever use of materials, finely executed playing, imaginative mixes, etc. Perhaps that's the true beauty of music (and other arts) - that there is more there than what the surface might ever suggest.
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#710739 - 11/09/05 10:09 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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Gord -B
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Originally posted by Jimbroni:
Gord,
I'm not sure everyone would agree that its a given that music doesn't exist prior to our conception of it.
I think that the label 'music' is a term which people will apply differently. It has all the same problems as the word 'art'. It's this label that is contingent upon conception not the substance of music in and of itself (if there is such a thing).
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Derek Smalls: It's like fire and ice, basically. I feel my role in the band is to be somewhere in the middle of that, kind of like lukewarm water. http://www.myspace.com/gordonbache
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#710740 - 11/10/05 07:14 AM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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Phil W
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Wow RBG's original post and questions have really made me think. RBG, I got your use of conceive straightaway. Your post has actually got me practising differently, so far.
I don't see sound as colours and if truth be told I don't visualise it at all, I just hear it as sound and I work hard, all the time on being able to relate those sounds to identified pitches, harmonies, positions, standard notations etc.
Some of your questions really identified my aspirations - how I'd like to be able to play/improvise. I'd like to gat a more constant, direct connection between a sound conceived in my head and played with my fingers with less processes coming in between. When I thought about this, I realised that I often used by voice as an intermediate way of expressing a musical idea. I hear it from someone or conceive it in my mind and then try to play it, but often trying to sing it (even though my singing is rubbish) is often easier than playing it.
Than I thought of three experiences:
-Jamie Aebersold demonstrating to a group of us by asking a volunteer to sing an improvised solo over unfamiliar chord changes (- not a bum note in sight).
-A clinic where saxophonist David Liebman emphasised learning to sing a solo with all the expression and phrasing of the solo, before trying to transcribe it.
-Another clinic where Richard Bona's guitarist Sheryl Bailey showed us a way to develop our ear, by singing along with everything we play, and singing intervals in harmony with what we play (ie 3d above etc).
 Oops - end of lunch hour - I have to go - I will add to this in a few hours, especially in relation to Greenboys point about concentrating on the other musicians while you play (something I aim for constantly and I think bass payers in general are better at) - more later
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#710741 - 11/11/05 02:39 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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RicBassGuy
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Originally posted by greenboy:
Present [...] people with an instrumental and you'd better hand over the album art so they know WHAT to feel ; }
I remember in grade school, when we had music class once a month or whatever. The music teacher played a major chord on the piano and then the same chord with a minor 3rd. Then I think she asked us which one sounded happy, and which one sounded sad. You know how grade school goes, so eventually we were asked if the major sounded happy and the minor sad. Nudged enough, she got the room nodding in agreement to the "proper" assignment.
People do tend to respond appropriately to well done film scores, but again they're given the visual/dialog cues of the film.
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#710742 - 11/11/05 02:48 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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RicBassGuy
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Registered: 02/02/05
Posts: 3832
Loc: Metro Detroit, MI
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Originally posted by Phil W:
I often used [m]y voice as an intermediate way of expressing a musical idea.
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#710743 - 11/11/05 02:50 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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g.
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Registered: 01/31/01
Posts: 10021
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Heck, if I just spend to much time looking at the light playing on the epoxy of my fingerboard I start thinking my tone is "ultraglassy"* - and to think it used to be "woody" ; }
* until I engage the T-Bird-through-a-SVT preset
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#710744 - 11/11/05 03:03 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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RicBassGuy
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Registered: 02/02/05
Posts: 3832
Loc: Metro Detroit, MI
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Many have mentioned a spiritual or at least emotional aspect to music. In high school, my band director said something along the lines of "when you play music your audience should feel something, unless they are dead or a fish". (Of course someone said something about a "dead fish" for yuks.)  The process of reproducing sounds from a page of music through an instrument can become mechanical, and when it does the music is often dull. My director was trying to teach us about the emotional impact music can have when performed properly. The take-home lesson was that instrumentalists were in some way actors, that if we wanted to portray deep sadness we might have to use the actor's trick of focusing on an unpleasant memory, like the death of a family pet. In order to produce believable emotions through music, you had to really feel the emotion as you were reproducing the sounds. At least that's how I understood it. (For what it's worth, we were awarded a grade of "I+++" at festival that year by one enthusiastic judge.)
With lyrical pop music, it's easy to let the vocalist shoulder the bulk of the burden of expressing emotion. Quite frankly, they have an instrument that humans can respond to more easily when it comes to detecting emotion. It can become formulaic -- lay back during the verses and play up a bit on the choruses -- or somewhat along the lines of a film score, where what we play is aimed to highlight the emotional delivery of the vocalist.
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#710745 - 11/11/05 03:09 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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lug
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Registered: 03/13/01
Posts: 1701
Loc: League City,TX,UNITED STATES
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I screw around until something is produced.
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lug, you should add that statement to you signature. - Tenstrum
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#710746 - 11/11/05 03:14 PM
Re: How do you conceive music?
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g.
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Registered: 01/31/01
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I screw around until something is produced.
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