THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Mon Aug 25, 2003 12:00 pm

I have wondered very much about the psychology of music.

I have not read much about the psychology of music, because most of the books and articles I've found, poited to a different direction to what I was looking for, so they didn't interest me much. I don't know about you, but it happens to me that something comes into my mind, without form, without being ready, I don't know what it is exactly or why is it there flying inside myself, then, probably after several months or even years, it starts to develop itself through asociations, feelings, moments of intuition, and of course and above all, your direct experience; finally it comes the theory, or let's say the output.

Something is obvious to me: Music it's not just a bunch of sounds that make you feel well, sad, strested, happy, etc., but the most powerful language available and posible. I have sustained it for ages, and I start to understand in deapth why... Music resides in nature, and reflects the hidden laws existing within it. It has the power to reproduce anything existing in the universe, absolutely any human experience.

Music is a point of convergence among all the universal posible numbers. It has the extraordinary hability to reproduce any posible convination and so, transmiting any posible feeling. Music has the power to create, it can MOVE you doing something, it can push things to happen. Human nature resonates by empathy with sounds and their infinite posible convinations, and so can experience other people's lifes without even have ever met them. Music is like a universal ingeniering scanner, something that can read the universe and then make it sound here, for you.

andy · Post by **andy** » Mon Aug 25, 2003 6:02 pm

The most beautiful words i've ever heard!

darkrezin · Post by **darkrezin** » Wed Aug 27, 2003 7:17 pm

Some of you may find the works of Hazrat Inayat Khan interesting :

http://www.inch.com/~ari/hik2.html

A friend of mine who was very spiritual and musical already read his stuff and was totally blown away.

peace

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Wed Aug 27, 2003 10:11 pm

I didn't know him, it seems trully interesting... cheers for the link

emzee · Post by **emzee** » Thu Aug 28, 2003 5:10 am

Don't recall the exact quote or orator but

"If you want to change a nation's behaviour, first change their music".

spoimala · Post by **spoimala** » Fri Aug 29, 2003 12:30 am

Mikka, and who says how the music should be changed

emzee · Post by **emzee** » Fri Aug 29, 2003 6:35 am

Ceasar for one....

Goebels for two....

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Mikka on 2003-08-29 07:37 ]</font>

Immanuel · Post by **Immanuel** » Fri Aug 29, 2003 11:07 am

There is a very interesting book named "Music and Emotion" edited by Juslin and Sloboda. It covers the relation between music and emotion be people from various backgrounds; philosofi, psychology, music therapy, sociology, music history ...
And it cowers the relation between the music and the listener, the music and the performer and the music and the composer.
Lots of interesting reading. Some of the chapters are hard reading to most non-native english speakers though.
It was our main book in music psychology in my first year of my music therapy study.

emzee · Post by **emzee** » Sun Aug 31, 2003 8:09 pm

I think I need some music therapy now..........

Maybe just therapy.......

kensuguro · Post by **kensuguro** » Mon Sep 01, 2003 1:41 am

Something is obvious to me: Music it's not just a bunch of sounds that make you feel well, sad, strested, happy, etc., but the most powerful language available and posible. I have sustained it for ages, and I start to understand in deapth why... Music resides in nature, and reflects the hidden laws existing within it. It has the power to reproduce anything existing in the universe, absolutely any human experience.

I think I totally agree with you. Only catch is, music is a language. Music is a strange language. It's existed for so long, that it almost crosses the line between natural language, the lingo we speak, and an artificial language, like mathematics. I guess that's why you can approach music from both ways.

For me, music is dynamic. It can express anything I want, as long as it's dynamic. I tend to suck at being subtle, or perhaps I believe that when I express something, it needs to be dynamic. Whatever it is, I'm not good at being very specific with music. It's usually an explosion of emotions. I guess this is just my dialect of the musical language.

So anyhow, I can pretty much take all music up to 19th century music. Common practice music is all cool. It's structured, harmonic, and in tune. When it gets to later 20th century music, with chaotic structure and especially when things are out of tune, then that becomes really hard to appreciate. I can appreciate it when I know why a person wrote such a tune, the concept behind it, and especially the technique used to write the tune.

But without the background info, it sounds like chaos. Perhaps that's the central theme. It just seems like if chaos was the way to be "cool", and everyone did chaotic stuff, then music has pretty much lost its ability to expand, because all the rules are now broken. It's been reduced from a rigid language that wanted to express beauty of life, all the way down to a bunch of screams and screeches that wants to express the chaos of nothingness. What's your take on 20th century music?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kensuguro on 2003-09-01 02:43 ]</font>

paulrmartin · Post by **paulrmartin** » Mon Sep 01, 2003 11:26 am

My take on 20th century music, eh?

For one thing, the music of the last century has to be divided into many frames. Mahler and Richard Strauss were still around, so romanticism was alive. Italians were coming up with "Bruitismo" so noise was being introduced in music at the beginning of the century. Stravinsky, Ravel and Debussy experimented with poly-tonality and poly-rhythms, another step forward. Paul Hindemith was working with tonal "cells". The swing era, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller moved music forward in giant leaps. Then came Be-bop. Pierre Schaffer and Pierre Henry put together the first concrete musc pieces by splicing tape and applying mixing techniques to their resulting loops and strands...Karlheinz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen, Mario Davidovsky, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Elvis Presley, Arlo Guthrie, The Beatles, Eddie Offord, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Moog, Belà Bartòk, Brian Eno, the Progressive Rock bands of the 70's, Disco, Punk, New Wave, Techno, D'n'B, Hip-hop... So many frames, so many variations on a same theme, music!

Let's not forget mass broadcasting starting with radio and then television.

My take is that music went forward in leaps and bounds and this in many directions during the 20th century and now we artist are trying to catch our breath trying to keep up with ever-evolving technology perhaps to the detriment of our art, who knows?