Thoughts on Music
A few thoughts following our episode on music
There are many parallels between the worlds of philosophy and music. One commonality is that non-musicians develop an unhelpful mystique or fear around learning music just like how people uninitiated with philosophy or sciences tend to wall themselves off from things they will apparently "never understand". They often put themselves down and immediately resign themselves to being "tone deaf". After trying for a week or two, a self-taught student will often tell experienced guitarists that their "fingers are too small" (that's not a thing mate!). The fear of failure and struggle, as well as the envy of being overshadowed by talented friends are just some of the early hurdles that fledgling musicians have to overcome. These virtues speak to the idea that there is a lot more to the art industries than simply being naturally talented in creating it. It requires hard graft and a sense of routine and discipline inside and outside of the music studio. Almost everyone is capable of musicianship - its just a matter of finding the right instrument and the right kind of sound… even if its noise music with bees!
Another parallel we found was in the study of music where there is often a pointless emphasis on novelty over usefulness when it comes to skills. This is the same in academia where new ideas are inexplicably favoured over valuable and relevant ones. In both disciplines its easy to see why you can lose a love for something when it becomes thought of as work or study rather than a passion or hobby. That said, there is sometimes greater creativity found in the being set limitations (i.e. writing a soundtrack).
Writing a music piece or essay with a particular lecturer in mind may seem like cheating but its actually a valuable life skill and teaches you to write with an audience in mind.
The psychology of music is super interesting. An eclectic music taste can often correlate to a high degree of personality openness (i.e. Being open to new experiences in general). Often our entire collective love of music has less to do with "golden ages" or "timeless classics" but generational feedback loops and an innate preference over certain sounds and melodies. Studied have even shown that preferences are sometimes as simple as familiarity; we may just literally prefer shapes and sounds we have been exposed more to or introduced to in a positive context. What's more is that studies show that musicians seem to experience the same neurological phenomena when speaking and playing music. We engage part of the frontal lobe called the Broca's area of the brain that deals with language and speech when playing music. Also, the occipital lobe (an area of the brain concerned with visual association) is engaged when a musician is hearing music. These suggest that musicians brains develop slight architectural differences over time.
This speaks to the idea of music not only being a kind of universal language but transcending language itself. Lullabies, for example, don't need to be comprehended in their own language to be "understood", the melody already "speaks" beyond mere words. This is recognised in poetic myth - when Orpheus travels to the underworld to rescue his wife he plays music to Cerberus rather than attempt to use rational argument to convince him to release her. Music "spoke" to Cerberus in place of verbal communication and this hits on the idea that music is transformative and universal... Even the guardian of the underworld can apparently recognise a banger when he hears one.
The Ancient Greeks thought that music (as well as maths) was written into the universe in a similar way to the laws of physics. There was very little distinction between the perfect harmony of the cosmos and a musical arrangement. Across the globe other ancient cultures held similar beliefs. One example is Hindu cosmology where chants, words and sounds are believed to be as old as time itself. This is often presented in modern fiction as spellcasting. It explains why certain languages are considered holy and commandments lose their power when translated.
Cultural appropriation of music has always been widely discussed and debated. While authentic and meaningful relationships with cultural artefacts is the most desirable relationship with one's history there is a very strong argument that appropriation is not only good for music, but necessary for it. Sharing outside of a person's immediate heritage is more creatively interesting and empathetic. Music history shows us that important movements are born out of such artistic cultural exchange, blues being the example we talked about. Though there are negative social sides to blues it is never just as simple as deciding who can play it with an offhand tweet or comment; neither does that attitude help anyone! The (usually white) people that are insisting on this tribalism are actually having the opposite effect by gatekeeping music based on race and thus segregating it and insisting on a lack of empathy. If we stayed within our musical walls we would be left with only the simplest forms of folk music. Often these cries are well-intended but hollow moral outrages and platitudes that neither consider the principle or the consequence that these 'hot takes' create. Projecting hostility and demanding conflict is not usually the best solution.
Cultural exchange is, of course, a matter of taste and requires considerate conversation. Sure, there are ignorant ways to borrow sounds; especially if there's any mockery involved… But take the blues explosion of the 60s - Bands like the Rolling Stones were exploring blues in the best possible spirit; innovating the genre and often plugging the musicians they were inspired by to their fanbase, featuring more traditional blues artists at gigs and involving them in their music. The intention, the act and the consequence were all good and respectful. To deny this is to stifle the necessary conditions for art to thrive. In a lot of ways music goes far beyond identity politics for very good reasons. Even protest music is seeking to be understood by outsiders and resonated with. If anything, music allows us to transcend our own experience and see life through the eyes of another. Spreading a tale and imitating artists is usually the most flattering outcome.
Listening to and playing music is often immensely therapeutic for this very reason. When feeling down, listening to melancholy music can counter-intuitively make you feel better probably because you've connected in that experience with a like-minded person across time. This creates the feeling of sharing in an emotion, exploring it and thus feeling understood. This often has the effect of both uniting and inspiring people, removing barriers.
Speaking of therapy… From personal experience, playing music can often remedy the problems of developmental and spectrum disorders and / or poor mental health by providing focus, direction and a sense of ownership over a craft. In short, control and consistency. It provides a hobby to become lost in and some friends to do it with; something creative and challenging that shapes identity. Understanding instruments and songs is almost a microcosm for understanding life itself… or at least oneself a little better. By testing your limits, knowing your part in a wider whole and self-improving you can learn a lot of skills that have a good general value in wider life. It can be a scaffold to start connecting with the wider world and taking that high-functioning energy from the music studio out to the rest of civilisation. At the very least it can feel like an anchor through difficult times.
Some of the best friendships are forged around performing music. The organic push and pull that exists in the dynamic of playing together is like a conversation that can go on for hours and it can form a strong mutual understanding that's often unspoken verbally. Bandmates are a lot like family in that they're often forced to endure one another's company. There's the highs of camaraderie and banter, travelling to festivals and sharing songs… and the lows of squabbling of enduring technical nightmares. Its another part of making music that isn’t just learning your scales and chords. Ultimately, these shared experiences create unique and powerful relationships for better or worse.
The story of blues is arguably the most important in music history. From Africa, some of the most primal and raw forms of folk music mixed with the deep emotion and lived-in history of slave songs, americana folk and gospel music, blues was born. Even though each type of blues is a different slice of a certain people's heritage and perspective, the almost primal emotion speaks to everyone. It not only gave men an outlet to express heartache and poverty but formed a voice for the black community and told the tale of that struggle, both personal and communal, connecting them to a white audience. It gave birth to rock and roll, the blues explosion and psychedelia and expanded its story into metal and pop.
We love pop music but were sceptical as whether this same social and personal power could be heard in some modern hits. It seems increasingly cynical and money-making in contrast to the music of the past which feels more authentic. Its hard not to feel this way when contemporary songs are manufactured using common sample sounds and churned out with at least eight producers credited as writers. This is partly on the consumers - in theory, the market should value artistry with creativity, talent and emotion being the way to guarantee money. Aside from the industrial implied assumption that it is and should be universally liked, it can almost be described as music for people that don’t like music. This is a point we've made before, particularly in reference to cinema like the transformers movies. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself but the most rewarding and enjoyable tastes are almost always acquired. There's lots of music out there for people to love and it would be nice if people explored and understood them.
A good analogy for this is (apparently) cheesestrings. Everyone likes them, even cheese connoisseurs and that's fine. But… it’s a much more enjoyable experience to eat a full platter of exotic cheeses with chutney and onions. Lovers of cheesestrings might find this snobby but often this can manifest as aggressively dismissing things that people "don't get". In relation to music, the analogy is jazz and prog music… just because you don’t understand or like it doesn't mean "its just noise" or "there's nothing to understand". Usually, the real issue is the expense or access to these interests or that they attract snobby individuals. No genre is intrinsically worthy of being dismissed and people should probably give everything a fair go. In short, people on both sides should just let people enjoy what they like and stop being crabby.
There also seems to be a fine line between art and "entertainment", particularly on the creative side when one is an innovative passion project and the other is delivered to a deadline to fit set parameters. That said, there's often some blurring between these two as some of the best art is defined by challenges.
Guess who is apparently a "solved game". I dunno, ask Nye.
There are more subcultures than ever (even if they aren’t as potent in their manifestation because of a lack of a strong overarching normative culture to rebel or contrast against). With that in mind, and given how subcultures usually come as a package with musical tastes, its easy to see why music tastes are more diverse than ever. Added to this is an ever-increasing accessibility to music via technology, fluidity across social groups / barriers and exposure in all kinds of media.
The age of streaming isn’t always helpful for artists and neither is getting signed which can often come with a whole new set of problems. Live music is often paid for in "exposure" for up-and-coming artists and it has increasingly become a "t-shirt" business that relies on the sale of merchandise. The exponential curve in the top artists making the majority of the money is similar to many other class issues and means that its harder than ever to take the leap and "make it". Often, success in the industry is down to branding and personality as much as talent.
Playing music is incredibly important in crafting identity and constructing meaning. In his book, Mastery, Robert Greene says…
"We are all in search of feeling more connected to reality… We indulge in drugs and alcohol, or engage in dangerous sports or risky behaviour, just to wake ourselves up from the sleep of our daily existence and feel a heightened sense of connection to reality. In the end, however, the most satisfying and powerful way to feel this connection is through creativity. Engaged in the creative process we feel more alive than ever, because we are making something and not merely consuming, Makers of the small reality we create."
At its best it can tap into a creativity that many of us think lost since childhood and indeed, do lose as we grow older and more jaded. Those that can still create in this way are almost rediscovering a piece of their past.
This identity is communal as well as aiding personal development. Songs can provide historiography and traditions for a culture and bring people together. Even if its just creating a sense of community at the local pub or characterising the experience of a subcultural group.
Feeling wayward and lost in our early years, there is sometimes a lack of direction and the looming question of "how should I live?". One answer that crops up in philosophy is to live "in pursuit of excellence". But then the question remains "what is excellence?". An excellent doctor or computer is one that performs its given purpose well. However, you need to know the general purpose of a person to answer what an excellent person might look like; a daunting task for anyone of any age. But satisfying the pursuit of being an excellent musician is a very good start. Many 20th century existentialist philosophers have written on extrapolating this attitude to that of seeing your entire life as a work of art in order to meaningfully navigate a post-Christian world and remedy life's apparent lack of meaning... Food for thought.
"Without music life would be a mistake" - Fredrich Nietzsche
Another parallel we found was in the study of music where there is often a pointless emphasis on novelty over usefulness when it comes to skills. This is the same in academia where new ideas are inexplicably favoured over valuable and relevant ones. In both disciplines its easy to see why you can lose a love for something when it becomes thought of as work or study rather than a passion or hobby. That said, there is sometimes greater creativity found in the being set limitations (i.e. writing a soundtrack).
Writing a music piece or essay with a particular lecturer in mind may seem like cheating but its actually a valuable life skill and teaches you to write with an audience in mind.
The psychology of music is super interesting. An eclectic music taste can often correlate to a high degree of personality openness (i.e. Being open to new experiences in general). Often our entire collective love of music has less to do with "golden ages" or "timeless classics" but generational feedback loops and an innate preference over certain sounds and melodies. Studied have even shown that preferences are sometimes as simple as familiarity; we may just literally prefer shapes and sounds we have been exposed more to or introduced to in a positive context. What's more is that studies show that musicians seem to experience the same neurological phenomena when speaking and playing music. We engage part of the frontal lobe called the Broca's area of the brain that deals with language and speech when playing music. Also, the occipital lobe (an area of the brain concerned with visual association) is engaged when a musician is hearing music. These suggest that musicians brains develop slight architectural differences over time.
This speaks to the idea of music not only being a kind of universal language but transcending language itself. Lullabies, for example, don't need to be comprehended in their own language to be "understood", the melody already "speaks" beyond mere words. This is recognised in poetic myth - when Orpheus travels to the underworld to rescue his wife he plays music to Cerberus rather than attempt to use rational argument to convince him to release her. Music "spoke" to Cerberus in place of verbal communication and this hits on the idea that music is transformative and universal... Even the guardian of the underworld can apparently recognise a banger when he hears one.
The Ancient Greeks thought that music (as well as maths) was written into the universe in a similar way to the laws of physics. There was very little distinction between the perfect harmony of the cosmos and a musical arrangement. Across the globe other ancient cultures held similar beliefs. One example is Hindu cosmology where chants, words and sounds are believed to be as old as time itself. This is often presented in modern fiction as spellcasting. It explains why certain languages are considered holy and commandments lose their power when translated.
Cultural appropriation of music has always been widely discussed and debated. While authentic and meaningful relationships with cultural artefacts is the most desirable relationship with one's history there is a very strong argument that appropriation is not only good for music, but necessary for it. Sharing outside of a person's immediate heritage is more creatively interesting and empathetic. Music history shows us that important movements are born out of such artistic cultural exchange, blues being the example we talked about. Though there are negative social sides to blues it is never just as simple as deciding who can play it with an offhand tweet or comment; neither does that attitude help anyone! The (usually white) people that are insisting on this tribalism are actually having the opposite effect by gatekeeping music based on race and thus segregating it and insisting on a lack of empathy. If we stayed within our musical walls we would be left with only the simplest forms of folk music. Often these cries are well-intended but hollow moral outrages and platitudes that neither consider the principle or the consequence that these 'hot takes' create. Projecting hostility and demanding conflict is not usually the best solution.
Cultural exchange is, of course, a matter of taste and requires considerate conversation. Sure, there are ignorant ways to borrow sounds; especially if there's any mockery involved… But take the blues explosion of the 60s - Bands like the Rolling Stones were exploring blues in the best possible spirit; innovating the genre and often plugging the musicians they were inspired by to their fanbase, featuring more traditional blues artists at gigs and involving them in their music. The intention, the act and the consequence were all good and respectful. To deny this is to stifle the necessary conditions for art to thrive. In a lot of ways music goes far beyond identity politics for very good reasons. Even protest music is seeking to be understood by outsiders and resonated with. If anything, music allows us to transcend our own experience and see life through the eyes of another. Spreading a tale and imitating artists is usually the most flattering outcome.
Listening to and playing music is often immensely therapeutic for this very reason. When feeling down, listening to melancholy music can counter-intuitively make you feel better probably because you've connected in that experience with a like-minded person across time. This creates the feeling of sharing in an emotion, exploring it and thus feeling understood. This often has the effect of both uniting and inspiring people, removing barriers.
Speaking of therapy… From personal experience, playing music can often remedy the problems of developmental and spectrum disorders and / or poor mental health by providing focus, direction and a sense of ownership over a craft. In short, control and consistency. It provides a hobby to become lost in and some friends to do it with; something creative and challenging that shapes identity. Understanding instruments and songs is almost a microcosm for understanding life itself… or at least oneself a little better. By testing your limits, knowing your part in a wider whole and self-improving you can learn a lot of skills that have a good general value in wider life. It can be a scaffold to start connecting with the wider world and taking that high-functioning energy from the music studio out to the rest of civilisation. At the very least it can feel like an anchor through difficult times.
Some of the best friendships are forged around performing music. The organic push and pull that exists in the dynamic of playing together is like a conversation that can go on for hours and it can form a strong mutual understanding that's often unspoken verbally. Bandmates are a lot like family in that they're often forced to endure one another's company. There's the highs of camaraderie and banter, travelling to festivals and sharing songs… and the lows of squabbling of enduring technical nightmares. Its another part of making music that isn’t just learning your scales and chords. Ultimately, these shared experiences create unique and powerful relationships for better or worse.
The story of blues is arguably the most important in music history. From Africa, some of the most primal and raw forms of folk music mixed with the deep emotion and lived-in history of slave songs, americana folk and gospel music, blues was born. Even though each type of blues is a different slice of a certain people's heritage and perspective, the almost primal emotion speaks to everyone. It not only gave men an outlet to express heartache and poverty but formed a voice for the black community and told the tale of that struggle, both personal and communal, connecting them to a white audience. It gave birth to rock and roll, the blues explosion and psychedelia and expanded its story into metal and pop.
We love pop music but were sceptical as whether this same social and personal power could be heard in some modern hits. It seems increasingly cynical and money-making in contrast to the music of the past which feels more authentic. Its hard not to feel this way when contemporary songs are manufactured using common sample sounds and churned out with at least eight producers credited as writers. This is partly on the consumers - in theory, the market should value artistry with creativity, talent and emotion being the way to guarantee money. Aside from the industrial implied assumption that it is and should be universally liked, it can almost be described as music for people that don’t like music. This is a point we've made before, particularly in reference to cinema like the transformers movies. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself but the most rewarding and enjoyable tastes are almost always acquired. There's lots of music out there for people to love and it would be nice if people explored and understood them.
A good analogy for this is (apparently) cheesestrings. Everyone likes them, even cheese connoisseurs and that's fine. But… it’s a much more enjoyable experience to eat a full platter of exotic cheeses with chutney and onions. Lovers of cheesestrings might find this snobby but often this can manifest as aggressively dismissing things that people "don't get". In relation to music, the analogy is jazz and prog music… just because you don’t understand or like it doesn't mean "its just noise" or "there's nothing to understand". Usually, the real issue is the expense or access to these interests or that they attract snobby individuals. No genre is intrinsically worthy of being dismissed and people should probably give everything a fair go. In short, people on both sides should just let people enjoy what they like and stop being crabby.
There also seems to be a fine line between art and "entertainment", particularly on the creative side when one is an innovative passion project and the other is delivered to a deadline to fit set parameters. That said, there's often some blurring between these two as some of the best art is defined by challenges.
Guess who is apparently a "solved game". I dunno, ask Nye.
There are more subcultures than ever (even if they aren’t as potent in their manifestation because of a lack of a strong overarching normative culture to rebel or contrast against). With that in mind, and given how subcultures usually come as a package with musical tastes, its easy to see why music tastes are more diverse than ever. Added to this is an ever-increasing accessibility to music via technology, fluidity across social groups / barriers and exposure in all kinds of media.
The age of streaming isn’t always helpful for artists and neither is getting signed which can often come with a whole new set of problems. Live music is often paid for in "exposure" for up-and-coming artists and it has increasingly become a "t-shirt" business that relies on the sale of merchandise. The exponential curve in the top artists making the majority of the money is similar to many other class issues and means that its harder than ever to take the leap and "make it". Often, success in the industry is down to branding and personality as much as talent.
Playing music is incredibly important in crafting identity and constructing meaning. In his book, Mastery, Robert Greene says…
"We are all in search of feeling more connected to reality… We indulge in drugs and alcohol, or engage in dangerous sports or risky behaviour, just to wake ourselves up from the sleep of our daily existence and feel a heightened sense of connection to reality. In the end, however, the most satisfying and powerful way to feel this connection is through creativity. Engaged in the creative process we feel more alive than ever, because we are making something and not merely consuming, Makers of the small reality we create."
At its best it can tap into a creativity that many of us think lost since childhood and indeed, do lose as we grow older and more jaded. Those that can still create in this way are almost rediscovering a piece of their past.
This identity is communal as well as aiding personal development. Songs can provide historiography and traditions for a culture and bring people together. Even if its just creating a sense of community at the local pub or characterising the experience of a subcultural group.
Feeling wayward and lost in our early years, there is sometimes a lack of direction and the looming question of "how should I live?". One answer that crops up in philosophy is to live "in pursuit of excellence". But then the question remains "what is excellence?". An excellent doctor or computer is one that performs its given purpose well. However, you need to know the general purpose of a person to answer what an excellent person might look like; a daunting task for anyone of any age. But satisfying the pursuit of being an excellent musician is a very good start. Many 20th century existentialist philosophers have written on extrapolating this attitude to that of seeing your entire life as a work of art in order to meaningfully navigate a post-Christian world and remedy life's apparent lack of meaning... Food for thought.
"Without music life would be a mistake" - Fredrich Nietzsche