Saturday, May 24, 2008

JUST A THOUGHT

Has someone ever asked you what you liked about a particular piece of music? Is it the lyrics? The tune? The rhythm? What do these become when made to stand in isolation? A different music, perhaps, if music at all.
Some experiences in life are like music. The moment you try and break them down into their components, they become something else. They're then not the same experiences any longer.
Which is why the cliche - some things in life are better left unsaid. Simply because speaking them will mean breaking them down into components, which are not the same as their beautiful blend...

3 comments:

Prashant Singh said...

I thought about this thing a lot ..i mean what i like about Music( an other things in life for that matter) and why ? hmm tricky /difficult question .

as far as music is concern i use an analogy in physics to explain that that is Resonance . when a wave of certain wavelength hits a pipe you have resonance right ? when you like a piece of music its something like that only .
There are two component #1 Context ..or the mindset : Like Heating a pipe can change its resonance frequency so your state of mind effect what you like when you come across the music . i thik that contribute 10% . thats why occasionally you will see perfectly sane and serious people dancing like idiot in wedding and hostel parties or after getting drunk .

#2 Intrinsic trait of composition : this i believe effect 90%. but it hasn't been studied much . Not with very high granularity , thats why music is classified as genre, Singer,Mood, Movie,Era . which is very very broad & don't help you "Discover" music of your choice . Best attempt to solve this problem is done by my Fave music site Pandora's founder Tim Westergren . his music genome project [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Genome_Project]
they classify music on hundreds of parameters
[http://tinyurl.com/y5h953]
and when you vote for a particular song it brings more song of that attribute . if its not for MGP and Pandora i would not have discovered some of my fave songs . this was a real good project on internet which is not available in india as of now .
While I agree on your closing remark about breaking down in component but without that you are leaving the discovery to accidental
stumbling .i think there got to be a better way

Nice Post . :)

the who said...

great analogy Prashant! Although i struggle to categorize music as much as i struggle in categorizing people!

Prashant Singh said...

5 years but i found the answer
http://www.hooktheory.com/blog/chord-progression-search-patterns-and-trends/