bradr@bartok.Eng.Sun.COM (Brad Rubenstein) (06/05/90)
Music-Research Digest Sun, 27 May 90 Volume 5 : Issue 53
Today's Topics:
A hypothetical experiment on "NO SEMANTIC"
Meaning of music
Mira Balaban (was: Re: Workshop on Artificial inteligence and Music) (2 msgs)
Musical Semantics (was: Re: Mira Balaban (was: Re: Workshop on Artificial inteligence and Music)) (2 msgs)
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Date: 25 May 90 06:01:09 GMT
From: fai to leung <gaia%portia.stanford.edu%shelby%agate@edu.berkeley.ucbvax>
Subject: A hypothetical experiment on "NO SEMANTIC"
To: music-research@prg
Message-ID: <1990May25.060109.14386@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Let's device a hypothetical experiment to prove the "NO SEMANTIC"
nature of music.
We will use some pop symphonic music for the listening.
First we want to find subjects that have not been "influenced" by the dry
academic studies, and furthermore, it will be best to find subjects with no
knowledge and experience about western music -- the kind that we've decided
for listening. So we go around the world and find some people. But that
doesn't seem adequate, western music is a cultural activity and very much
associated with other aspects of western culture, we want "clean" results!
Somehow we find a better batch of subjects. Wait, don't sound events
sometimes associated with human emotions, e.g. you hit a table when you're
angry and you hear a big "bang". Let's device a laboratory so that we
can isolate these two. Since there cannot be found persons with no such
correlations, we bring up a bunch for the experiment. (Let's assume we
don't make them "learn" a different sets of associations. It's quite
impossible but say we manage to do so.) After much sweat, we finally
achieve the state (let call this the differentiation state). This group
of subjects with "purity" of experience start to listen to, say Mozart's
39th Symphony or Tchai's #6. We record all the physiological and psychological
differences of each individual during their listening. (Oh, we should have
them undergo a diet plan to make sure the uniform state of their physique.)
When we compare the results, if the record correlates, we may say there
is indeed some common grounds, or if not, we somehow prove the "NO SEMANTIC"
nature of music. Right now we can start finding sponsors to finance this
experiment. But let's backtrack, ...away from the differentiation state.
Along the way, we observe assignment of emotions (well let's say
physiolgical and psychological states) to some sound events...further we
backtrack, no more simple assignments, now we have function calls,
recursive calls, procedure passing, walawala... further we backtrack...
macros, multiprocessing, paradox, contradictions, walawala... further we
backtrack...
(
When I first travelled to the States, there's a lot of anxieties. The
emotion might be primitive, but the trigger was highly complex. Leaving
one's country, a lot of unknown ahead, obligations, duties,... Not at
all primitive. Yet the emotional state is quite similar when I broke
my father's antique once...
Is it possible to study intelligence without the ability to produce and
control a physiological-psychological equivalence?
The first time I heard a Bach piece, it's impressive. What do "concerto"
means? What are the numbers at the bottom of the score?
)
walawala...further we backtrack... We're back to now (despite the time
to bring up the bunch....) Now there's hierachy after hierachy of
associations. Can't be translated to english, darn.
We are going to decode and recreate Tchai's #6. Not only the notational
details, also tempo rubato, minute timing, dynamic changes, balancing voices,
use all "learned" idea, methods procedures to approximate what he would
have done.
And there is meaning, seemingly, even more correlations, assignments,
syntax and grammar creating and varying on-the-fly. Interesting thirds,
decending scales, what jokes...
Classes I took seems to make more sense as the approximation goes further...
Has music all along been as a syntatic-grammatical-semantic-walawala
entity? Or the notion of "NO SEMANTIC" a true revelation? Or is it a
failure to capture the language? Yes, "LANGUAGE". Rosetta stone.
------------------------------
Date: 25 May 90 08:29:56 GMT
From: fai to leung <gaia%portia.stanford.edu%shelby@gov.nasa.arc.eos>
Subject: Meaning of music
To: music-research@prg
Message-ID: <1990May25.082956.27866@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Let see if I can make some sense out of my posting on
"A hypothetical experiment"
I started with some statements on the process to reach the differentiation
state, i.e. a certain sense of direction "towards" that state. Then I
backtrack "away" from that state, along the way, a digression on some
remotely related matters, then backtrack again, finally ending on a
kind of question. Hm...
If I can find a piece of music, with features "towards" and "away" from
a certain state, and on the "away" path there is a digression, i.e.
a sort remotely related features, then back again, and ends with a certain
state; and also I regard the posting a discourse in the English language,
can I transfer the notion that the posting carries some meaning to this
piece of music?
But wait, each English word carries some meaning (i.e. the usual way we
use this word), but not the case in the piece of music!
How about the word "walawala"? It carries no meaning at all in the English
language. At its last appearance as "syntatic-grammatical-walawala", does
it carry a meaning just because of its appearance in the context and the
words that it attached to. To a certain extent, I think yes.
But in the piece of music we don't even have words of meaning to attached to!
Is there any existence that we refer to as meaningful and its being
meaningful relies only on the context of its elements and not references to
say, the English language? How about math, or, say a certain computing
language expressed in BNR form? If we say they are meaningful, can the notion
be transferred to some music that exhibits similarities to these existence?
------------------------------
Date: 23 May 90 03:03:16 GMT
From: Mark Gresham <mgresham%artsnet@edu.gatech>
Subject: Mira Balaban (was: Re: Workshop on Artificial inteligence and Music)
To: music-research@prg
Message-ID: <838@artsnet.UUCP>
In article <10293@sdcc6.ucsd.edu> cg108dgt@icogsci1.ucsd.edu (Kenneth Bibb) writes:
>In article <13102@venera.isi.edu> smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar) writes:
>>I feel it is more important to ask
>>what the study of music has to offer to the study of artificial intelligence
>>and vice versa. Balaban seems to with to address the former question, but I
>>fear that she has not made much of a case that the study of music offers
>>ANYTHING to the study of artificial intelligence.
>
>Music has much to offer to artificial intelligence. Not only is it a
>viable testbed for temporarl reasoning, it is also of interest to
>those researching language processing. Music and language both have
>syntax and semantics.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>[...]
>
>The advantage of investigating AI music processing is that the
>researcher has an abstract language which can be worked with--it
^^^^^^^^
>has semantic value dependent on context and not on inherent semantic
>value. (The same note heard in different phrases and chords can
>convey sadness or exuberance depending on the surrounding notes.)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I think you will find that the vast proportion of proponents of
post-Langerian aesthetics will have quite contrary viewpoints to
what is assumed above, i.e. that 1) music is a language, 2) has
semantic value (posesses "meaning" in and of itself, and 3) can
convey "meaning" (or *communicates* specific emotions or semantic
values).
Perhaps, first of all, music has *no* meaning in and of itself
(there is no music which contains or communicates "sadness"
thanks to its sonic structure alone)? In that case, at least,
AI has little to learn about "communicating meaning" through
logical structures. What AI may well learn, however, is that the
"meaning" is as dependent on the recipient (observer) of the logical
structures as on the nature of the logical structure itself.
(We may not even be so sure of language anymore, either.)
And I'm not speaking of inadequate or inaccurate
reception/observation of the logical structure, I am, indeed,
talking about "meaning" itself.
Cheers,
--Mark
========================================
Mark Gresham ARTSNET Norcross, GA, USA
E-mail: ...gatech!artsnet!mgresham
or: artsnet!mgresham@gatech.edu
========================================
------------------------------
Date: 24 May 90 19:03:16 GMT
From: Thomas Edwards <amy_017%jhunix%aplcen%uakari.primate.wisc.edu%zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu%pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu@edu.ohi
Subject: Mira Balaban (was: Re: Workshop on Artificial inteligence and Music)
To: music-research@prg
Message-ID: <5361@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU>
In article <838@artsnet.UUCP> mgresham@artsnet.UUCP (Mark Gresham) writes:
>Perhaps, first of all, music has *no* meaning in and of itself
>(there is no music which contains or communicates "sadness"
>thanks to its sonic structure alone)?
First, I know little about modern music psychology, but I have heard
of a series of experiments going on in an Australian music
school where subjects are asked to press down on a pressure-sensitive
device after being asked to take on various moods (anger, sadness,
etc.)
The pressure vs. time graphs are then examined to see whether there
are patterns which all humans produce which are keyed to the moods.
The concept is to see whether such patterns can then be identified
in music pieces, and whether humans can pick up on these patterns
and be predisposed to these moods.
While I am sure the study of AI and music lacks much sturdy ground
right now, we must realize that music is a production of intelligent
systems, and is definately desired by intelligent systems for
one reason or another (just ask your teenagers whether they want some
music).
-Thomas Edwards
------------------------------
Date: 24 May 90 20:36:19 GMT
From: fai to leung <gaia%portia.stanford.edu%shelby%agate@edu.berkeley.ucbvax>
Subject: Musical Semantics (was: Re: Mira Balaban (was: Re: Workshop on Artificial inteligence and Music))
To: music-research@prg
Message-ID: <1990May24.203619.9231@portia.Stanford.EDU>
>Now in saying "x is a whole way of thinking" I mean not that x is an
>instrument of thinking, rather that x is DOING "thinking," it is
>BEING "thinking." I'm not suggesting that music thinks "about" something,
>and in fact that's what I'm denying (the commonplace picture of the
>composer with something to get off the chest who transforms the "it" into
>a musical utterance, Beethoven "expressing" his feelings about spring etc).
Aare typos "expressing" "thougths" or typos "doing" or "being" "thinking"?
I find it difficult to discuss "meaning" and "semantic" without a consideration
of the intent of the orignator.
I can deny the possibility of "meaning" of certain picture fragment or
I can attempt to seek possible existance of a Rosetta stone. From the
originator's point of view, I believe music has syntax, grammar, semantic,...
yes, the whole deal (I'll need to specify a scope to this statement later.)
To answer the question of music semantic, it seems to me, require some
proof of embedding in sound certain intent, and historically at least,
that's evident. The contribution of Schenker's theory is credible perhaps
not because of the Ursatz idea but to the extended effort to seek the
possibility of something more general, and diminution and counterpoint
are valid mechanism to structure a group of music. From the encoder's side
music for sometime was encoded with common methods and procedures. I don't
mean that notation is the very nature of the whole musical experience or
the transmission of it, but out of the enormous search space, there has
been a consistent scope of choices. And we DO KNOW that there were
cases of intentions to embed "idea" or "meaning" in music, say text painting,
thematic transformation, or Leonard Ratner's idea of topic in Classic music.
>From the decoder's side, having a grasp of the coding scheme and a certain
technique to recognize it, the best we can say is music is incapable of
carrying "expression", which I believe was Stravinsky's stand at some point
in his life. I am not saying that is the being of music but a historical
usage to deal with some sound events we now call music. We can start anew
the process, denying any correlation and assignment to this sound events,
or start to listening to music from a new perspective (a blessing from
20th century music,) all don't follow the "NO" notion but possible arguements
on the "CAN" notioin. We can say it's a rotten system or it's a nice one or
totally ridiculous one, but not a "NO" one.
As far as demonstrating the "SEMANTIC" of music on the net, I'll be interested
to know how eliot demonstrate the non-existance of it.
To discuss meaning of music on the net do not necessary require one to state
what section means "smell" or "sadness", that's a translation problem. Can
Roman alphabets discuss calculus, Chinese American icecream favours...
It's nothing new for musicians to discuss music by playing options, etc...
or comparing section of music.
I also believe music is a fertile ground for A.I. I don't think we learn
a lot more about how human play chess or move one block over another,
but along the way we pick up a good amount of insight and idea about dealing
with problems. After all figuring out how one figures figuring out how
one figures figuring out... is so interesting a question.
No, I don't want flames, fire, laser, bombs...
Just a good positive discussion of the matter, i.e. without much emotional
and psychological complications.
------------------------------
Date: 22 May 90 01:03:42 GMT
From: Eliot Handelman <eliot%phoenix@edu.princeton>
Subject: Musical Semantics (was: Re: Mira Balaban (was: Re: Workshop on Artificial inteligence and Music))
To: music-research@prg
Message-ID: <16616@phoenix.Princeton.EDU>
In article <136021@sun.Eng.Sun.COM> bradr@bartok.Eng.Sun.COM (Brad Rubenstein) writes:
[I wrote:]
;> I'm trying
;>to put across the idea that music is a whole way of thinking, that this
;>way of thinking is what's supplying film with the film equivalent of
;>meaning, and that equivalent happens to be musical.
;Is this different than saying "english is a whole way of thinking."?
I hope you're not suggesting that there are such things as thoughts that
then are translated into an appropriate vehicle of expression, one of
which may be english: if that were the case then the exclusive object of
language would be to carry thought and mutatis mutandi music would be the
vehicle of some other form of thought, perhaps not amenable to the
english vehicle. That's just what I'm denying. I don't see thought as
some sort of energy in search of presentation, be it linguistic, be
it musical.
Now in saying "x is a whole way of thinking" I mean not that x is an
instrument of thinking, rather that x is DOING "thinking," it is
BEING "thinking." I'm not suggesting that music thinks "about" something,
and in fact that's what I'm denying (the commonplace picture of the
composer with something to get off the chest who transforms the "it" into
a musical utterance, Beethoven "expressing" his feelings about spring etc).
;Do you admit less than whole ways of thinking ("half a way of
;thinking...")?
I not only admit it, I come across it all the time.
;Suppose the film were a silent movie, with no music and no cue
;posters. We can understand the plot. Is the action on the film
;"speaking" to us? Can we say that that the film images have "semantic"
;content? Or are they too iconic a representation of the meaning they
;attempt to convey?
I watched "America's funniest home videos" last night (or some of it,
anyhow). It consists of a bunch of brain-deadening
clips of babies throwing up and that sort of thing. Every one of
these clips had been dubbed, and evidently they had been dubbed by
the "funny videos" crew. So for example there was a dog pushing a rock
with the explanation that "Thanks to modern technology we can listen
to the dog's thoughts." The dog had a cartoon voice that said "pushing
a rock, pushing a rock, pushing a rock." Without the dog voice the
clip wouldn't have been funny, so, I imagine, was the reasoning of the
crew, and probably they were right. There's nothing funny about a dog
playing with a rock. It's only funny to consider that the dog is doing
some sort of thinking about the rock, and that the thinking consists of
the dog asserting its actions to itself. It's funny because the dog
stops being a dog and becomes a cartoon of human consciousness, couched
in recognizable terms, underlining the circularity and pointlessness of this
most human of human characteristics, etc etc. It's funny because in
watching "america's funniest videos" one is engaging in a circular and
pointless activity of thinking which in no way is more dignified than
the "thinking" of the stupid dog. Would you say that the dog's thinking
has "semantic" content insofar as it has an obvious referent in the
dog's actions? Is it the fact that this reference is simulated that accounts
for the clip's so-called funniness? Would you say that the semantic content
of the clip is the circularity and pointlessness of watching the clip,
reflected in the manipulation of the structure of the clip itself?
;What if, in addition to understanding of the plot,
;we claim that the movie says "pathos", "frivolity", "poignancy" (a
;recent posting said that a final tritone in a scale was "poignant").
;Is that semantic? My intuition (and linguistic
;indoctrination/education) suggest it's not.
When a newspaper runs an ad for a film that says:
1. "Wonderfully poignant and sensitive. It radiates love and tenderness."
2. "Extraordinary!"
3. "Remarkable! It has sophistication, wit and unflinching honesty.
Extremely moving. A sterling cast."
4. "Wonderfully funny and heartbreaking. It's O.K. to laugh at the end.
It's O.K. to cry."
... does the word "semantic" even seem to be suggested somewhere in this?
Could you guess that the movie in question was "Longtime Companion"? How's
about this as the semantics of a movie:
1. "I needed to take a leak throughout most of the movie, but I didn't
bother to go because I thought that the movie would soon end."
2. "The popcorn was good, though I spilled most of it on the floor."
The second set probably tells me more than the first set. It might
convey the idea that this movie is impossible to describe, maybe
not even worth the effort. Maybe it's a funny movie and saying as much
is like the old german joke spoiler "Spass muss sein," declaring that
the preciding was a joke. It ruins a joke to have someone announce,
as the german version of Bugs Bunny does, "today laughing is permitted."
The english positivistic tradition of music appreciation is highly
oriented towards the acquistion of concert-hall behavior, just as
germans are all too often unaware what it is that they're supposed to
be doing when a joke is made without the proper preparations.
;When I tie the two ideas together, I come away agreeing with Eliot,
;that music has no semantics, but I don't feel as shocked as I think
;Eliot wants me to feel (he'll deny it),
Yes I will. It's only shocking to me that someone could casually put
forward the claim that "music has semantics," as though that
much could be assumed without disagreement.
;Eliot says "music has NO semantics" and (oh, I hope I get this
;paraphrase right) "talking about music semantics is nonsensical". I'd
;agree with the former, and disagree with the latter.
You got it wrong, unfortunately. I said "it's never meaningful to ask
about the meaning of a piece of music." Underline "ask" there, if you
like. Or something like, "there's no meaningful answer to a question
concerning the meaning of a piece of music." Of course sometimes
people will ask "what is this music supposed to MEAN?" and that means
that it was an empty experience for them. And sometime sthe answer is
"well, it's minimal music, you see: it repeats a lot." And then people
will sometimes say, "Oh, I get it." And then they can listen to minimal
music without feeling that something is terribly wrong, and they may
come to appreciate it. But the word "meaning" here is strictly
metaphorical. If I said something like, "well, the meaning of this
piece is that the world is very fast moving and highly scheduled,"then
people will often say things like "I need music to unwind, not to
get me wound up," and in a way they'd be right, because clearly the
conveyance of a "being wound up" isn't really a good motivation for
getting into this music. But again that's metaphorical. The point is,
there is no meaningful conveyance.
;Applying the
;structure of linguistic semantics metaphorically to music says a lot,
;if not about our perception of music, then about the way we structure
;and distort our perception in our drive to assign meaning to our
;experience. The predominant metaphor in my culture for structuring
;and discussing musical experience (both popularly and among performing
;musicians) is MUSIC IS LANGUAGE (CONVERSATION, ARGUMENT, NEGOTIATION).
;Examples:
;
;"Please state the cadence more forcefully"
;"The violins present the theme, then the brass reply."
;"an argument between the winds and the strings"
;"a deceptive cadence"
;
;It could be that we speak imprecisely when we say these things,
;but we say them nonetheless. Interestingly, our structures
;for music are more commonly pragmatic (or discourse) structures,
;rather than lower level semantic structures.
I agree with all of this. Of course music education happens to be pretty
language oriented, which is probably why Schoenberg said "if you're in
a position to see how Gustav Mahler puts on his bowtie in the morning,
you can learn more counterpoint that way then you can in two yewars at a
conservatory." Lewin talks about a cognate problem in his paper that
Steve's always quoting: he says to a theory student, whom he says is
an excellent pianist, to "show him what she means at the piano" and then
she's completely blocked. And part of the sterility of US music eduaction
is due, I think, to an insistence on particular forms of verbal
expression. Language can open up the imagination: it can also close it.
I was once blocked with a transition in a piece, and I showed the passage
to a friend: I said, give me a lateral take. He said, OK, in the first
part you're witnessing this guy who's a bit unsettled, you see him
kicking a dog, he's winding up for a violent act. And then all of a
sudden he's in McDonald's with a machine gun. I liked the idea, so I
cut back the transition and brought in the volles werk without further
ado. So in this case, language, ok: but it's the language of a b-movie
or something, not the support language of discourse, a "he said this
and then she said that," "the violin said `wowowow' and then the trumpet
replied by going `blap.'" But of course narrative is itself only one
paragigm, one that I'm interested in getting considerably beyond; and
yet I liked poking holes into the idea of narrative structure, etc.
;>response in some lab rats with no guaranteed generality. And yet music
;>is, quite obviously, the instrument of mass consciousness. Your theory
;>is predicting the wrong thing.
;
;Hmmm... I consider that music is an epiphenomena of mass consciousness
;(which is itself epiphenominal of social beings, in mass). I place
;language in the same camp.
You mean something like "when there are a lot of people, there will be
music to keep them happy?" I'm saying that mass consciousness is due
to music, that's why they're all there in the first place, so to speak.
;Slightly different topic: If we want to consider what music and mass
;consciousness have to do with each other, the problem seems far from
;the concerns of university music departments (I'd love to hear
;counterexamples).
Myself and many others. The concern of university music departments
is to apply advanced thinking to music, not to reject whatever it
is that isn't amenable to the language of Schenker, or to maintain
an island of good faith about 12-tone music precisely because it has
no role in the vast world beyond. I'm interested in virtually all
music -- make that "all music made within the past 50 years, and before
that mainly so-called classical music." When I talk about music the
last thing I'm probably thinking of is a Haydn Minuet. More likely
I have Public Emenmy, or the Butthole Surfers, or Terretektorh, or
Le Grand Macabre, or Nancarrow, or Euelenspiegel, or Zappa, or
Hendrix, or U2, or Luc Ferrari on my mind.
;It seems to have little to do with harmony and
;counterpoint, with semantics and affect. It has everything to do with
;the sociology of superstardom (Madonna, now that's music that speaks to
;me!) and the effect of top-40 music stations on the musical and
;cultural values of this generation.
Talk to me about the political economy of I-IV-V-I.
------------------------------
End of Music-Research Digest
--
---Brad Rubenstein-----Sun Microsystems Inc.-----bradr@sun.com---