# Music and Sonic Art



## Guest (May 2, 2018)

I just found this comment today elsewhere and I think it's key (pardon the pun) to encapsulating differences between *music* and *sonic art*. It's a comment which probably derives from the idea some people have that music and sound are actually synonymous - an argument used to justify calling sonic art 'music' - which I personally don't believe it is. Here's the quote:

Music isn't sound. *It's a form of thought*. Sound is merely how it is conveyed.

The basis of this argument, I think, is that music develops ideas in a linear and horizontal fashion and is intrinsically narrative in thought and based on established theories and ideas.

An acquaintance of mine is running a lecture on "_Composing in the New Millenium_". He uses computers to put various sounds and patterns together - at no time does he call it 'music'. It requires zero musical skill but an ear for patterns and possibilities and a skill at manipulating computers. I think it should be called 'sonic art' or 'sound design' but not musical 'composition'.

Comments?


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## regenmusic (Oct 23, 2014)

I know someone who was one of my best friends for about ten years who was at the vanguard of this kind of movement. He runs a label that caters to it. The problem is that they see it as competition for listening, a competition to composers, somehow they more or less see it as superior to current music for the most part, even though they might not admit it to themselves or others that they do. I had other reasons for not hanging around my friend so much these days but I heard many hours of it. I can honestly say that it gives me a bad feeling to think about listening to it today. It can be charming, but it's not music, it's kind of contrived attempts at artfulness, just like a lot of painting that is abstract cannot be compared to anything by a Pre-Raphealite (the 19th Century movement). You can try to justify it by aesthetic theory but in no way is a Pollack painting like a Van Eyk, or any other Dutch Renaissance. It's the same way with this style, which is sometimes called "lowercase sound." It doesn't stand up to anything by any decent composer because it's not music, it's sound art, with a certain skew of the word "art."

You get a certain immediate feeling in front of a real masterpiece. You have to do an inner adjustment in front of contrived art to bring something out of it that just isn't as powerful. Music does this naturally and in a way such sound art can't really do, or it becomes music, which I think some of it does.

I will say that I find some of it intellectually stimulating but not on the same level of intellectual stimulation as good music.

It was inspiring to my music because some of my music is generative, using traditional music theory to work with notes created by low level "computer means" like arpegiattors, sequencers, and loops.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Christabel said:


> I just found this comment today elsewhere and I think it's key (pardon the pun) to encapsulating differences between *music* and *sonic art*. It's a comment which probably derives from the idea some people have that music and sound are actually synonymous - an argument used to justify calling sonic art 'music' - which I personally don't believe it is. Here's the quote:
> 
> Music isn't sound. *It's a form of thought*. Sound is merely how it is conveyed.
> 
> ...


Would you cite an example of what you consider to be sonic art please?


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## Guest (May 2, 2018)

Christabel said:


> I just found this comment today elsewhere and I think it's key (pardon the pun) to encapsulating differences between *music* and *sonic art*. It's a comment which probably derives from the idea some people have that music and sound are actually synonymous - an argument used to justify calling sonic art 'music' - which I personally don't believe it is. Here's the quote:
> 
> Music isn't sound. *It's a form of thought*. Sound is merely how it is conveyed.
> 
> ...


The act of creating music is certainly linear, since the composer must begin and end the process somehow, even if they try to avoid traditional musical forms and structures. But the idea that 'sound is merely how a thought is conveyed' seems meaningless.

As for the idea that your friends composing requires 'zero musical skill' but yet requires 'an ear for patterns and possibilities'...


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

janxharris said:


> Would you cite an example of what you consider to be sonic art please?


I think Alvin Lucier's _I Am Sitting In A Room_ is a good example.






A wonderful experience if you're willing to invest in it.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

There have been several TC threads about noise music (e.g. Merzbow). Based on responses from some one who knows several of the people who produce such music, those people likely do not consider themselves composers or even musicians but rather sound artists.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Nereffid said:


> I think Alvin Lucier's _I Am Sitting In A Room_ is a good example.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


A wonderful experience...or a tweaked repeated phrase with reverb?


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

janxharris said:


> A wonderful experience...or a tweaked repeated phrase with reverb?


The two aren't mutually exclusive.


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## St Matthew (Aug 26, 2017)

You are wrong, and also sound like you need a cigarette.

Sonic/Sound Art is a sub-genre of electroacoustic music (often focusing particularly on _natural _sounds), in particular it is music created for public displays and gallery exhibitions, with sculptures and fascinating contraptions. It's a well-established are within the current music and art 'culture', there is really nothing to butt heads about - it's an awesome musical category and way to experience music


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## St Matthew (Aug 26, 2017)

Christabel said:


> at no time does he call it 'music'. It requires zero musical skill


What gives this statement any relevancy, music is not defined by skill. If it was, we wouldn't have songs/pieces of likes of _Smells Like Teen Spirit, Baby, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata or Mozart's 16th Piano Concerto_ categorized under the word "music" :lol:


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## Guest (May 2, 2018)

MacLeod said:


> The act of creating music is certainly linear, since the composer must begin and end the process somehow, even if they try to avoid traditional musical forms and structures. But the idea that 'sound is merely how a thought is conveyed' seems meaningless.
> 
> As for the idea that your friends composing requires 'zero musical skill' but yet requires 'an ear for patterns and possibilities'...


Go on, I'm listening.... The man in question is NOT a musician and has no musical training. On his presentation day he had little patterns of all different colours and he was putting sounds with them, which were often repetitive and lacked modulation or subtlety.


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## Guest (May 2, 2018)

St Matthew said:


> What gives this statement any relevancy, music is not defined by skill. If it was, we wouldn't have songs/pieces of likes of _Smells Like Teen Spirit, Baby, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata or Mozart's 16th Piano Concerto_ categorized under the word "music" :lol:


(Sigh). At least 'skill' is recognizing tones and notes and how they're put together. But I guess if I was going to promulgate sounds from a computer I'd have to sell that by telling people it required 'musical skill'. As so often the case with the contemporary and avant garde (not all, of course) marketing is a feature of it becoming saleable to the public. In art galleries it's called a 'blurb'. I often think the real 'skill' resides in those blurbs.


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## Guest (May 2, 2018)

janxharris said:


> Would you cite an example of what you consider to be sonic art please?


An oldie but a goodie - not. And it's not 'a form of thought'. It's a random collection of noises, signifying nothing, as Shakespeare would say.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Nereffid said:


> The two aren't mutually exclusive.


The reverb gets irritating to my ears after 7 minutes. I don't get it.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

Christabel said:


> An oldie but a goodie - not. And it's not 'a form of thought'. It's a random collection of noises, signifying nothing, as Shakespeare would say.


Funnily enough, that piece immediately came to mind but I didn't post it as I wasn't sure of the definition and would have assumed that advocates of it would claim that its musicality is subtle.


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

There are widely variant opinions on this matter and I never see it getting anywhere when it comes up. I'm just here to give my vote for this 'sonic art' thing being a form of music.


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## Clairvoyance Enough (Jul 25, 2014)

I love a lot of electroacoustic/electronic soundart type stuff, but I find that I only enjoy it for the ways in which it resembles music, or for the aspects of it that undoubtedly are. Composers of it seem drawn to musical ideas that would elude someone thinking in terms of a traditional orchestra and I love that about it. I don't know that I like it more for deliberately eschewing a theme-development structure, as so much of it seems to, and actually suspect I would enjoy it all much more if it applied one.

It seems that without one you limit the complexity of your compositions. When I listen to Beethoven I hear 100 things that must happen in that particular sequence to produce an accumulated effect. When I listen to Stockhausen, who I also love, I just hear 100 interesting sounds in _an_ order. Often the presence of any beginning, middle, and end at all is only in that the business of the sounds increases and decreases over the course of the piece (often times without even that, like Cosmic Pulses), but with no particular melodies or sounds ever being selected and developed in a way that produce an accumulated effect.

I've always wondered if the real reason for this is the relative difficulty of producing sounds on a synthesizer (or whatever method) vs acoustic instruments. When you write for the latter you can pretty much let your imagination run wild, write it down, and then just play it or get it played.

Easier said than done maybe, but compare that to imagining a complex development section for an electronic sound that, if I'm not mistaken, you can't really "score," and that you have to painstakingly produce on a computer. It seems it would just be easier, but maybe not more aesthetically pleasing, to just forego the selection of any individual sound or phrase and just collage interesting noises together.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I'm quite fond of electronic music and musique concrete. I consider it music, even when it has no discernable notes, just of a different breed.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

This can promote an interesting discussion, but an unresolvable one. Much of the early/mid twentieth century was spent trying to define exactly what music was and you saw the borders pushed out to include musique concrete, aleatory music, performer assisted composition (like Berio's Sequenzas), electro-acoustic, and, as an extreme example of "art is whatever you put a frame around," 4'33". Traditionalists have always tried to put the genie back in the bottle, but the discussion and the experimentation remain.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Christabel said:


> I just found this comment today and I think it's key to encapsulating differences between music and sonic art. It's a comment which probably derives from the idea that music and sound are synonymous - an argument used to justify calling sonic art 'music' - which I don't believe it is.
> 
> *Music isn't sound. It's a form of thought. Sound is merely how it is conveyed*.
> 
> ...


Maybe I'm missing something I would enjoy but I think I would be frustrated to be drawn in by interesting sounds only to discover no thought. What are you supposed to do with "sonic art"? Is it a background thing that you sometimes focus on or that belnds with other things in the background - like a familiar but not great painting on your wall - and how long does it last? If it in fact goes somewhere over time - perhaps even as a repeating pattern - there is some thought. Perhaps I am being too literal.


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## Guest (May 2, 2018)

Enthusiast said:


> Maybe I'm missing something I would enjoy but I think I would be frustrated to be drawn in by interesting sounds only to discover no thought. What are you supposed to do with "sonic art"? Is it a background thing that you sometimes focus on or that belnds with other things in the background - like a familiar but not great painting on your wall - and how long does it last? If it in fact goes somewhere over time - perhaps even as a repeating pattern - there is some thought. Perhaps I am being too literal.


I'm curious to know about the form of that "thought", even if it exists. It seems to me a technological exercise not an architectural one - as is the case with art music. Even when 'breaking the rules', back at the end of the 19th century, the new sounds contested and interrogated traditional forms - straining against them and pushing the limits. But still within a system we recognize. I don't feel this is the case with 'sonic art'.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

It seems to me that there's as much musicality in poetry as there is in "sonic art," and we don't call poetry "music." But we do speak, metaphorically, of the "music" of language and various other things.

You can apply certain structuring principles of music to any sounds you like and call the result "music," just as you can apply certain principles of visual art to the contents of an auto junk yard and call the result "sculpture." It just comes down to how far you want to stretch the terms. But it's all been done. If you're happy stretching the term "music" to cover _4'33"_, you should have no hesitation calling organized noise - or even unorganized noise if it's intentionally unorganized by a "composer" (I believe that's known as "indeterminacy") - "music."


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

I think aleatoric music is definitely music since it requires someone defining parameters, etc. whether or not what comes out is Mozart, usually not. 4'33" I have the most trouble since the composer becomes more of a spectator, and the audience become composers. It is more a thought experiment


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## Guest (May 3, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> It seems to me that there's as much musicality in poetry as there is in "sonic art," and we don't call poetry "music." But we do speak, metaphorically, of the "music" of language and various other things.
> 
> You can apply certain structuring principles of music to any sounds you like and call the result "music," just as you can apply certain principles of visual art to the contents of an auto junk yard and call the result "sculpture." It just comes down to how far you want to stretch the terms. But it's all been done. If you're happy stretching the term "music" to cover _4'33"_, you should have no hesitation calling organized noise - or even unorganized noise if it's intentionally unorganized by a "composer" (I believe that's known as "indeterminacy") - "music."


Great comments!! I've always believed in the nexus between poetry and music, even though I wouldn't call the former 'music' per se. I'm not happy stretching the term 'music' to comply with any of the things you mention, since the art is sacred to me and not up for re-negotiation!!!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Christabel said:


> Great comments!! I've always believed in the nexus between poetry and music, even though I wouldn't call the former 'music' per se. I'm not happy stretching the term 'music' to comply with any of the things you mention, since the art is sacred to me and not up for re-negotiation!!!


I'm not happy, either, with stretching the term "music" to cover any and every assemblage of sounds, but if some people want to do it I suppose not much harm is done. Perhaps having a separate term for "noise music," something more dignified such as "sonic art," is a good solution. It makes no difference to me, as long as I don't have to listen to it.


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