Official Video Starring Elijah Wood
notice the Cosmogramma poster in the room
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Official Video Starring Elijah Wood notice the Cosmogramma poster in the room
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The question remains: What happens when the music stops? What sticks with people? Now that we have unlimited access to music, what does stick with us? Some days ago I was having a conversation with two friends and we were discussing on how this immense flux of music that we're exposed to is changing the way we experience music. Is this changing the value of this amazing art? After all something does stick with us, we learn something even unconsciously and we evolve from that point. Edward O. WIlson, a well known entomologist in his book Consilience claims how cultural growth depended a lot in how we saved information and transmitted it to other generations. And we learn stuff from the present and the past, due the present is somehow a result from the past. But coming back to the documentation or "encoding" as Tilson calls it, all of this new information from a lot of more new musicians is passing through generations. Now we can listen different voices, diverse emotions from all over the world. The good part is that there's space for both types of information transmission: "composition" and "improvisation", as Tilson would call them. These are two types of transmitting information with different ends, which Tilson explains in the video. Here it is:
I have been continuously presented to the question “why do you make music in English?”. It is a really interesting question because it implies the inquiry about cultural identity and also why I make music. In my case, perhaps (and most certainly) it is because most of my influences are English speakers. The musical tradition of my stronger influences of course is different to the other linguistic scopes; counting in that the environment, (this includes the experiences, being political or personal within that environment), the history, the chance of the artist in space and time to encounter certain experiences, and the latter I would consider something really interesting and complex (perhaps unexplainable) I would keep talking hours about it.
Even though my stronger influences are English speakers, I must admit I am in love with many other musical cultures, and I'm the most thankful that chance gave me the opportunity to experience the digital revolution, so I can enjoy almost all kinds of music. I am also living a time in which humanity is being more and more aware of the cohesion amongst its own substance (we're all humans) and thanks to many facts, (digital revolution)(Globalization , which appears to imply a dilemma in some conversations) (etc.). And with this circumstances (history, time+space, opportunity), I would like to say that I came to learn English and eventually, after some learning and listening, I put it in my music. It is not a matter of hating my culture. Quite the contrary. First, I love my country; second, my culture goes beyond frontiers imposed by political choice. There are many music cultures nowadays that are notoriously cosmopolitan and free. But another question might rise, and ask me whether I'm just unconsciously responding to an authority imposed by massive media. English music is played almost everywhere. Well, I bring back the fact that I DO enjoy music in other languages, Latin beats are gorgeous, Bossa Nova chords are lovely, Reggae is perfect to have a nice ride. (And it is funny, because these are different abstract languages which are the result of different cultures mixing throughout time!). But when I listen to myself making music I feel identified with the English language. Maybe it's the rhythm of the words, and how it sounds with my voice. I am sure there are many other facts involved which I'm not aware of yet, or maybe I won't ever know about. By now, that language is what makes my music flow, it's one of my tools of creation. There's no definite response to an authority, in my perspective. Society is changing, while being introduced to new mixes of music. This change is getting faster, since information flows so easily. If rhythms and melodies are being mixed, why not language? It doesn't make sense to me, as a creator, to do music using Spanish lyrics just because people is asking me to do it. I think in the creative process, it goes beyond that. I do music because I do music. For the sake of my music. The best one can do for the culture, for the world, is being genuine. The world needs people who is. We can't decide things such as parents, natal language, or initial economic circumstances. But as we grow and we start creating ourselves by making decisions, those will define your self and your output to the world. One must wonder and keep trying to find out which choices are more harmonious with one self and the interacting universe that surrounds us. Even though I am not much of a player, of course I've heard great things from Halo and I know its good reputation. This documentary exposes the making of the soundtrack of Halo 4. The composition of the music was made by Neil Davidge (Andrew Vowles), of Massive Attack. The recording of the orchestras took place in Abbey Road. The documentary interested me a lot (despite the fact that I like Massive Attack), because of the effort and art behind the creation of a soundtrack, specially when there's an unpredictable interaction of the player and the game. So, really as the title of the documentary describes "Composing a Universe" was exactly what Davidge was about to do. The way he did it, from the very start, appears to me as being really committed to the project. He loved the game already, he played the game again and read all the books. He got inside the "Halo" universe before composing something that had to do something with the game. Another interesting thing I noticed in the process was the collaboration implied in the creation of the soundtrack. There are lots of musicians, engineers, and producers involved to accomplish this common goal. So the cooperation between these people is building something step by step. Even Davidge steps from the role as a composer to the role as a producer sometimes in order to create something meaningful. Philip Ball, author of "The Music Instinct" published some years ago an interesting essay on Science & Music.
It's interesting to start a conversation on this subject, because his argument can be taken as cold-blooded, but also he reflects a respect for the complexity and subjectivity of the definition of music. But what about the process and the understanding of how our brains work (cognitively and affectively) towards "organized sound"? "How strange that music is deemed a phenomenon in need of scientific explanation. We don't, in general, construct objective theories of how great paintings 'work', or great literature, dance or sculpture. We are interested in what is happening at a perceptual level when we experience these arts, but there is always a space in which we leave them to speak for themselves, beyond the reach of cold facts. Yet with music, scientific studies seem to be on the trail of an absolute, all-encompassing explanation that connects neurology with creativity, auditory physiology with acoustic physics. There seems to be a conviction that the composer Arnold Schoenberg was right when he cautioned: "One day the children's children of our psychologists will have deciphered the language of music." - Philip Ball, Science and Music: Facing the Music There are also cultural facts involved with this matter, and Ball introduces the question of how can we make sense out of something so complex. (Of course, culture is an extremely complex system). But returning to the cold blooded facts, he also claims that we can try to understand music like biology. Is that so? Probably we can try, but I think we will eventually find limitations. So... read it HERE and give it a thought! "...awakening...the process of dialogue itself as a free flow of meaning among all the participants. In the beginning, people were expressing fixed positions, which they were tending to defend, but later it became clear that to maintain the feeling of friendship in the group was much more important than to hold any position. Such friendship has an impersonal quality in the sense that its establishment does not depend on a close personal relationship between participants. A new kind of mind thus beings to come into being which is based on the development of a common meaning that is constantly transforming in the process of the dialogue. People are no longer primarily in opposition, nor can they be said to be interacting, rather they are participating in this pool of common meaning which is capable of constant development and change. In this development the group has no pre-established purpose, though at each moment a purpose that is free to change may reveal itself. The group thus begins to engage in a new dynamic relationship in which no speaker is excluded, and in which no particular content is excluded. Thus far we have only begun to explore the possibilities of dialogue in the sense indicated here, but going further along these lines would open up the possibility of transforming not only the relationship between people, but even more, the very nature of consciousness in which these relationships arise." |