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Joined: Oct 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Oct 2000
Posts: 5,400 |
there seems to be as large core of music lovers and musicians here.. so i thought everyone might enjoy this article about music as a means of communication.. Steven Pinker, it is pointed out, considers music to be auditory cheesecake but the general view of music in the article is very different. http://www.amnh.org/naturalhistory/index.html?src=homepage
(this month's featured article-- Face the Music)
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Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2001
Posts: 2,636 |
Thank you for such an interesting site. If you don't see me on the board for the next few days, that's where I'll be  . You can access many many past articles. I have looked at fossilization, hummingbirds, and singing sands so far.
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Helen, thank you. Before I get into anything about the article, let me try to give a URL that works: http://www.amnh.org/naturalhistory/index.html?src=homepage NOTE: I am doing this myself, rather than asking Helen to, because the board has been so slow to come up today that I believe this will be quicker. I found this concept the most interesting: Perhaps the most sweeping view of music's benefits for emerging humanity comes from Cross. He proposes that music evolved as what he calls a "play-space" for the mind. ... A musician might muse about how a melody that rises and falls is like a wave breaking on a beach or a bird soaring and then diving for a fish. That's a shift from one domain to another. The melody has led the musician through a bit of cognitive acrobatics. And therein lies the value of the musical play-space: it provides opportunities to experiment with conceptual leaps while incurring little risk that anyone will spear you for doing so.My first thought on this is that it is well known that the mind works at many levels simultaneously, and that while the "surface" may be focused on something that requires little immediate concentration, other parts of the mind can often make creative or problem-solving leaps, as the guy said. Another thought is (oh, here we go again!) that images and sounds are easier for our minds to...I want to say comprehend...than language, spoken or written, is. If I say, "Think of something at a table, that you sit on when you eat your meals", is there anyone in the world who will visualize the WORD 'chair' (stool, pillow, or whatever), and not an image of one ? Wish I could think of a similar example for music. I am very much looking forward to hearing from musick, BobY, Wordwind, and some others, on this!
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
Jackie, going slightly off track, this "play-space" that you mention above is apparently hyper active in the night while muscians sleep. I've often heard of their (and my own) experience of working out extremely difficult technical passages during the day, quitting, then after waking, to be able to play the passages near perfectly. I would love to know what goes on in the brain during sleep that enables this phenomenon. And is it just limited to music? The remarkable thing about the "play-space" in sleep is there is a physical leap, a muscular one, that occurs so that what was unplayable has miraculously become very playable.
Thank goodness for the power of sleep.
WW
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Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 618
addict
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addict
Joined: Jan 2001
Posts: 618 |
I would love to know what goes on in the brain during sleep that enables this phenomenon.
I'll explain it to you one day.
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Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2001
Posts: 6,296 |
Doc writes:
I'll explain it to you one day.
...well, if that ain't a tease!
Dub
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
I'll explain it to you one day.
I think he means whenever the day comes that he awakens with a complete understanding of this phenomenon.
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