2

I learned a huge amount from one friend who is musical, just by listening to him describing his experience.

"Firstly I hear the flavour of the note, and then I figure out the range -- which octave it is in"

(he has perfect pitch)

"Right now the music is screaming out G MAJOR to me"

"...the bottom of the scale"

(where I would have expected him to say "the tonal centre")

From simple expressions such as these, I start to get some idea of how his mind works musically, and this is valuable understanding.

Are there any well-known examples of musicians attempting to translate their experience into language?

Community
  • 1
P i
  • 1,005
  • 3
  • 10
  • 19
  • 2
    friend of mine is synaesthesic - he describes music in colours. – Tetsujin Jan 11 '15 at 15:08
  • 2
    I think far more of us have some synesthesia than we recognize. In my case, for example, C-natural sounds "square" while C-sharp sounds "oily." :-) – Carl Witthoft Jan 11 '15 at 15:31
  • I don't have perfect pitch; I also sometimes feel I have a total lack of imagination;-) I really don't grok equating shapes/sounds/colours etc with a piece or chord. – Tetsujin Jan 11 '15 at 15:39
  • Your friend is talented and you're lucky that he's able to express these ideas to you. I have not seen everything, that's for sure, but I've seen an awful lot of great musicians talk about their approaches, their equipment, musical theory, etc. but not really about how they actually experience the music itself except in the most abstract terms like "I'm hearing it like this..." - chord.... "I feel it like this..." riff... I think musical experiences are generally non-verbal for most of us - I know that's true for myself, not having anything close to your friend's talent. – Stinkfoot Jan 12 '15 at 01:31
  • @CarlWitthoft - do you think this is an ability that can be developed? – Stinkfoot Jan 12 '15 at 01:35
  • @Stinkfoot definitely- getting mmusic out of my brain into someone else's has become easier over time via finding the right words and understanding that other people need to hear something they can grip onto in order to 'get' what you're saying. Eg saying "It's in A" is one thing but saying "it's in a, it's gentle, like you're stroking a cat" helps a lot. ps. I'm not synaesthesic that I know of but some sounds give a feeling of open space vs. tight enclosedness. A heavy chorus effect makes my eyes go funny lol – user2808054 Jan 12 '15 at 17:29
  • 2
    @user2808054 - they say that guys would ask Thelonious Monk theory questions (he was a jazz theory guru) and he would answer their questions without words - he would just play something that answered the question. – Stinkfoot Jan 12 '15 at 19:14
  • 1
    @user2808054, Now if only I could find a teacher who could teach me in this way! – P i Jan 12 '15 at 19:29
  • 1
    @Pi This is why I always take my cat to jam sessions ;-). I think this question brings out a fundamental aspect of music which is almost paradoxical: It's clearly not just notes and rhythm, and yet that's what you play to create it. The 'extra' bit is the feel or mood of how you play the notes which is pretty much just as important - and you have to use inventive language to get that across, otherwise you're really back to stating notes like a MIDI transcript or something. – user2808054 Jan 13 '15 at 09:47

1 Answers1

1

John Cage: Notations

That is an amazing book of musical scores that John Cage collected from 269 different well-known composers. Seeing how each composer chose to express himself on paper gives great insight into the various ways people intellectualize and conceive of music.

John Cage and Rahsaan Roland Kirk: Sound??

(

) A documentary on the perception of sound and music from the perspectives of John Cage (an avant-garde classical composer) and Rahsaan Roland Kirk (a blind jazz musician). Also awesome
pepper
  • 370
  • 2
  • 7