Militia question 1

[Mercutio]

Not really...I don't know how you could drive in a nail with Jell-O.

Freeze it.*

But again, you're going to a qualitative argument, which I'm not making any claims of objectivity about. A rock of appropriate size and a hammer are both tools for driving in nails; that a hammer is so much better at it than a rock does not alter the fact that they are both tools.

It's almost as if the definition of tool might be hammered out (sorry) by general agreement among people...perhaps even with compromise by the "rocks are always tools" camp...If this agreement of tool definition were to be put on parchment...would it be objective or not?

Since I have never claimed that there is any one characteristic that is exclusive of music, I fail to see why this is a problem.

It isn't really...for those who see such things as social constructs...


*the Jell-O, not the nail.

 

[shanek]

If you claim something can be defined objectively, then you'll have to define it exclusively on properties it objectively has under all circumstances.

Except that it often doesn't have properties under all circumstances. Water doesn't have the properties of rain under all circumstances, nor of ice.

It may be a tool for something else. Whether it is a tool is relative to the wishes of a subjective person.

No, whether or not it's a tool depends on its suitability for a certain task. Are you saying there is no objective reason why a hammer can drive in a nail?

Then what are you making claims of objectivity about?

The ability of a person to play music. I didn't say the ability of a person to play good music, or to play it well.

How do you define 'musical dadaism'? And if it is not music, why refer to it as 'musical' ?

Dadaism was part of a movement to shake up the elite by calling something its opposite. Dadaist artists insisted they weren't doing art, but anti-art. Things like taking a toilet and putting it on a pedistal. The idea was to challenge the rigidity of the intellectual elite. Dadaism is about defining what art is by doing the exact opposite.

 

[shanek]

Are you sure? The Ancient Egyptians already used binary arithmatic for both multiplication and division.

But that information had been lost for centuries, and had to be rediscovered in the 17th Century by Leibniz.

 

[shanek]

You are correct that you can crash a car into a wall and call the sound it makes music. And you are correct that you can divide a note into sevenths.

And you can call a cat a semiconductor. But instead of changing the nature of the cat so that it represents a semiconductor, you merely give the word semiconductor a new meaning.

But if you establish the meter of your piece as being "x/7", you are writing--what was your word--rubbish.

Right. You can call a cat a fbriznik. It's still a cat.

 

[shanek]

Freeze it.*

Somehow, I doubt the Jell-O would be hard enough to drive the nail in without shattering.

 

[Mercutio]

Somehow, I doubt the Jell-O would be hard enough to drive the nail in without shattering.

It is an empirical question . Depends on what you are driving the nail into. Oddly enough, the same concern exists for hammers. Don't try to drive a hardened nail into concrete with a roofing hammer.

re: a different post...

Is water defined as "rain" or as "ice"? I think you may have just made Earthborn's point.


The ability to play music...not "good" or "well"...hmm...how much difference is there between bad music played poorly (but by people), and birdsong, or whalesong, or even wolves howling?

 

[CFLarsen]

Not at all. Listen to it. That's the progression it follows.

I haven't timed it, but it sounds like something on the order of 10 beats per minute.

Nice evasion of a point and avoidance of your own ignorance.

They're throughout the entire clip, Claus. I described a lot of them above.

Electronically, so it's difficult to say without seeing a video. He could have simply used a standard musical keyboard.

Already explained.

As I said, the introduction of white noise and the pegging of the sound level. Please read.

Well, for an example, I told you that the initial tone was B-flat. Are you even reading, or are you just being your usual @$$hole?

Not at all. Pure white noise isn't tonal, for example.

A rather impressive list of non-answers.

 

[crimresearch]

You've got to love a thread that has 2 non-musicians, who can't tell a pitch from a tone, re-defining music for the rest of the known universe.

 

[shanek]

It is an empirical question . Depends on what you are driving the nail into.

Well, I guess frozen Jell-O would drive a nail into unfrozen Jell-O...but then, I really don't see what use that would be.

Is water defined as "rain" or as "ice"? I think you may have just made Earthborn's point.

No, her point was that things are only objective if they have the same properties regardless of circumstances. That's clearly false.

 

[shanek]

A rather impressive list of non-answers.

How typical of you...you pretend that I haven't given you answers so you can avoid the fact that you are WRONG. I explained IN DETAIL how his music followed a phrasal progression. But you're so closed-minded and pigheaded your bigoted brain just can't allow you to consider anything I say.

 

[shanek]

You've got to love a thread that has 2 non-musicians, who can't tell a pitch from a tone, re-defining music for the rest of the known universe.

I am a classically-trained musician, thank you very much. A tone is defined as a sound of a distinct pitch.

 

[Cynical]

AMEN, Crim. Although it seems to me that shanek has Claus Flodin beat, but shanek might as well give up. There is no such thing as a debate with Claus Flodin.

Claus Flodin claims that ANYTHING is tonal. That is possibly the DUMBEST statement Claus Flodin has ever posted here. There is tonal, there is ATONAL, there is unpitched sounds.

Claus Flodin, you need to take a course in Music Appreciation 101. And for GOD's sake, I hope you don't have a JOB in the music business!

 

[Cynical]

Give it up, shanek. You are simply wasting your time. You CANNOT win an argument with Claus Flodin Larsen, because he can never even THINK that he may not be right.

You have just experienced a "debate" Claus Flodin style. It goes like this:

Bring up a point to Claus Flodin.
Claus Flodin will state his case.
You try to argue his point.
Claus Flodin resorts to bullying and name calling, then he simply dismisses you as an idiot.

You're at the end of the line, shanek. You are where Clancie was about a year ago.....think you can "argue" with Claus Flodin as long as SHE did before coming to her senses?

 

[shanek]

Claus Flodin claims that ANYTHING is tonal. That is possibly the DUMBEST statement Claus Flodin has ever posted here. There is tonal, there is ATONAL, there is unpitched sounds.

Just to be clear: "atonal" was originally a term to try and disparage the music. Kind of like Fred Hoyle coining the term Big Bang (which was neither big nor a bang) to try and make light of the theory which he was personally opposed to.

So-called "atonal" music does use tones; in fact, most of it uses the same 12-tone chromatic equal-tempered scale that most modern music uses. But whereas most modern music has a "key," as in, "written in the key of C major" or "D-flat minor" or whathaveyou, "atonal" music has no key, or tonic, or base tone. That's the difference, but it does use tone, and so is techically tonal; it really should be called "a-keyal," if that weren't such a stupid-sounding word.

And as I said, that's not the first time elitists have used the word "tonal" to try and distinguish their music from the "lesser" forms of it. They used to distinguish tonal from modal, where the major key (which is actually the Ionian mode) is considered to be proper (and the minor, the Aeolian mode, gained acceptance, too). Anything else was considered modal (even though all of them are both tonal and modal). Traditional Scottish folk music is often written in the Dorian mode. A lot of Spanish music, particularly flamenco, is written in the Phrygian mode. John Lennon wrote "Norwegian Wood" in the Mixolydian mode, and Danny Elfman wrote the theme from The Simspons in the Lydian mode. Modes other than Ionian and Aeolian are now also considered to be tonal; maybe someday in the future the elitists will accept (say) 12-tone music as "tonal."

 

[Mercutio]

Well, I guess frozen Jell-O would drive a nail into unfrozen Jell-O...but then, I really don't see what use that would be.

about the same use as the roofing hammer would be with concrete nails...so I guess neither one is a tool.

(btw, I have used a jello mold of a brain as an illustration tool in my classes. Perhaps "tool" is used more metaphorically there, but if powerpoint is a tool, so was that jello mold.)

No, her point was that things are only objective if they have the same properties regardless of circumstances. That's clearly false.

That was not Earthborn's point. Please re-read that post; I think you will see your misunderstanding.

 

[CFLarsen]

John Lennon wrote "Norwegian Wood" in the Mixolydian mode

So, someone can write music in a certain way, even though he has no idea what he is doing?

 

[Earthborn]

Claus Flodin claims that ANYTHING is tonal. That is possibly the DUMBEST statement Claus Flodin has ever posted here.

Actually that was Shanek's claim. He said: "It's still tonal, though, because it uses tones to make the music." Claus just pointed out that this definition means that anything (that has tones probably) must be considered tonal. He pointed out the consequence of Shanek's claim, not providing his own claim.

I think there must be another statement winning the prize for Claus' Dumbest Statement.

 

[shanek]

(btw, I have used a jello mold of a brain as an illustration tool in my classes. Perhaps "tool" is used more metaphorically there, but if powerpoint is a tool, so was that jello mold.)

I always considered Powerpoint as more of a crutch than a tool...

That was not Earthborn's point. Please re-read that post; I think you will see your misunderstanding.

I will reread.

 

[shanek]

So, someone can write music in a certain way, even though he has no idea what he is doing?

WTF are you talking about? Are you saying John Lennon just wrote his music randomly and got lucky?

 

[shanek]

Actually that was Shanek's claim.

No, Claus actually said that. He said that all sounds are tones, which is quite demonstrably false.