why music "clicks" into place

[BlockUser]

13 minutes ago, beerwolf said:

Yeah I never pursued Trout Mask Replica. That album is a true test, twice was enough for me 

Still sits pristine in the cd drawer 25 years later. Clear Spot was easier and better imo.

Damn, you read that whole post? I really need to stop posting here when hungover and procrastinating at my job. Shit's too long now that I look at it.. But yeah, maybe the album was meant as a test.. And I am the fool that couldn't stop.. Now i am trapped in this diamond forever!!

[beerwolf]

58 minutes ago, BlockUser said:

Damn, you read that whole post? I really need to stop posting here when hungover and procrastinating at my job. Shit's too long now that I look at it.. But yeah, maybe the album was meant as a test.. And I am the fool that couldn't stop.. Now i am trapped in this diamond forever!!

Yep I read the whole post, it's a subject I find interesting. Enjoy The Diamond 

[J3FF3R00]

2 hours ago, Boxus said:

Oh yeah, adapting to vocal styles is a big one for me too. I wasn't that into Fugazi at first because I had never liked punk that much and didn't connect with the vocal delivery, but I appreciated the instrumentation and kept listening, and pretty soon a switch flipped and I started to love the way they sing as well. And recently I've become really obsessed with their whole discography - I'm so glad I stuck with it.

You pretty much plucked this memory out of my brain. My best friend in high school’s favorite band was Fugazi and he was determined to make them my favorite band so he played all their albums for me constantly (up to Red Medicine at that time) and I just didn’t get it. Then I went to college and End Hits came out and I remember liking a lot more songs on that album. That on “clicked” with me more but I wasn’t as crazy about their early albums. A couple years later he insisted we see them live and bought me a ticket one of their last tours and a plane ticket home from school and they definitely became one of my favorite bands after that. 
 

As a matter of fact, that friend often successfully converted me into adoring music that he loved by playing it over and over until it clicked with me. Before Fugazi it was The Smiths (who I originally thought sounded whiny but then Panic clicked for me). Later it was of Monteral (he thought “Coquelicot Asleep in a Field of Poppies” was a modern masterpiece and I thought it was annoying but then it started getting stuck in my head and after hating it I started loving it and then I became obsessed with them. They eventually became the band I saw most live at about 13-14 shows. 
Over the last 30+ years, the same friend also got me into Led Zeppelin, Suede, The Makeup, Donovan and probably a few others. In return, I got him into Roy Orbison (who became his all time favorite artist), David Bowie, Frank Black, Jungle, Gabber, Dungen, and maybe a couple others. Was most recently trying to get him into Belle and Sebastian, Sparks and Elliott Smith but he’s been bad with communication for the past 10 years or so. 

[beerwolf]

Well I was told maybe 25 years ago to keep playing Loveless, one day it will all make sense!!!

nope still doesn’t make sense, still hate it  

[TubularCorporation]

[J3FF3R00]

1 hour ago, beerwolf said:

Well I was told maybe 25 years ago to keep playing Loveless, one day it will all make sense!!!

nope still doesn’t make sense, still hate it  

Isn’t Anything is far better 

[vkxwz]

10 hours ago, BlockUser said:

Loved that bit. I digress but iirc, Sean was talking about how they're using Max specifically(and then started relating this principle to processes in nature or smth). I love how Sean + Rob are constantly speaking up against this meme of "Autechre is at the forefront of music because they're using the most intricate and cutting-edge sh*t1!!". Pretty sure that a lot of the processes in their Max system, at least on message level / in the sequencing domain, are really just many simple bits / modules set up in a way so that they all can communicate and mess with each other. And then, complexity arises from the interaction between the elements, while the elements themselves are simple. The rest is their strong work ethic + incorruptible instinct. 

You say "it's very satisfying when something complex gets reduced to something simple", but didn't Sean mean that it's the other way around? Personally, I find complexity from simplicity really beautiful. Or am I getting you wrong here?

Yes I agree he meant creating complexity out of simple principles in the process of making the music, but I'm saying that because the music is constructed in this way, our minds can basically learn to reverse engineer it in a way, reducing the complexity/noise back down to simple principles, and I think that this phenomenon is one way music can "click".

9 hours ago, xox said:

3. thankfully we have many ways of understanding the nature including ourselves! “other approaches” being incoherent as you say, just shows you how difficult and deep the subject really is but id rather take the road less traveled vs the usual shallow one bc I believe it’s closer to the truth. science is beautiful, i love it, i consider myself a scientist (and probably the people who play me to do the work) but scientific methodology is not practically applicable to every aspect of life and existence, and in this form as is today it shouldn’t be imo; it’s confusing to see how science started to dominate in some famous art universities

I'd like to know what you mean by these other methods in more detail. I've recently gotten stuck into logical positivism so I'm probably taking a more extreme view on this that I usually would, but the way I currently see it is this; in order for you to know that something is true or have any level of confidence that it is true, it should be either a tautology or something verifiable by sense contents. And overall I think the only thing we have access to is the information of our conscious experience, so all that we can do is study this information and make models of it, etc. I do agree we are only really answering how and not why with science though, we are just building models that can make good predictions, which is valuable.

9 hours ago, BlockUser said:

My problem with most pop music is that it always leaves me feeling both hungry and nauseous, like a big McDonald's menu. It just hits me in all the wrong places. It wants too much from me. It's too user-centric. I prefer stuff that is following its own course, the less I matter in that process, the better. But pop music is engineered towards eliciting emotions, manipulating the listener. It's constantly trying to press buttons in my brain. It's trying too hard to click. The Loudness War was nothing compared to the Engagement War.

I think I know what you mean here, I'd rather be watching an ecosystem unfold than have YOU FEEL GOOD YOU FEEL GOOD shouted at me

[hoggy]

4 hours ago, beerwolf said:

Well I was told maybe 25 years ago to keep playing Loveless, one day it will all make sense!!!

nope still doesn’t make sense, still hate it  

3 hours ago, J3FF3R00 said:

Isn’t Anything is far better 

whaaattttttttt?????

[J3FF3R00]

10 minutes ago, hoggy said:

whaaattttttttt?????

It is, to me. No question. 

I could keep going. So many bangers. 

Only Shallow, Sometimes, and Soon are all fantastic but the rest of Loveless is skip skip skip for me.  

I prefer all of the Creation EPs to it as well. 

[Squee]

For me, a lot of times things will click into place if a track plays in a movie or tv show that I'm absolutely obsessed with. It's not that I can't think for myself and enjoy music without a visual context, but it helps hearing a tune in a context as it catches your attention in a completely diifferent way. It can be the fact that the music is married to specific pictures, it can be an emotion, it can dialogue etc.

Had it not been for the The Sopranos (oh gawd, here he goes again about that dumb fucking show) I would never have fallen in love with The Tindersticks' "Running Wild [Extended Instrumental]" simply because I can't stand most of their music. Had I just shuffled through their music on Youtube or iTunes or what have you I never would have given their stuff a second chance. But because of one specific scene in The Sopranos I all of a sudden found myself with some Tindersticks tunes in my music library.
 

The same happened when I watched Eastbound and Down. Tindersticks had another tune on that series and it worked perfectly with the pictures.

The same goes when someone I respect and love immensely recommends me something. It automatically prompts me to listen to whatever they want me to listen to in a completely different light whereas had it been some random guy on the street I probably would dismis it after 5 seconds.

So in other words, it's all about context and setting for me.

[TubularCorporation]

On 8/18/2023 at 9:19 PM, J3FF3R00 said:

It is, to me. No question. 

I could keep going. So many bangers. 

Only Shallow, Sometimes, and Soon are all fantastic but the rest of Loveless is skip skip skip for me.  

I prefer all of the Creation EPs to it as well. 

Isn't Anything is the only one I even bothered to own.

[Hi Guys]

Any album with To Here Knows When is the superior album

[Brisbot]

On 8/16/2023 at 8:23 PM, Summon Dot E X E said:

Also, it's interesting how people hear music differently. I know very few people IRL that like experimental electronic music -- most just hear what they call "noise"... is it possible their brains actually cannot do the work to hear or appreciate the patterns? Others simply cannot listen to instrumental music of any kind. They need a narrative, or some kind of social cue that they are allowed to appreciate this music ("do enough other people like it?"). Actually, complicated art music (I'll call it that) is definitely the outlier given music's social origins.

I've been thinking about this lately. When it comes to our fav artists we really hang onto every moment of the track and perceive patterns we really enjoy, but most people aren't like that and can get musical euphoria from much more basic music with a 'good beat' or 'catchy hook'.

I ALSO realized recently that those kinds of people get the same level of musical pleasure from a top 40 song as we do from our fav electronic music. I saw someone who really likes Justin Beiber's music say listening to it gives them the experience of bliss and floating on a cloud. It's like, they get a shortcut to musical nirvana and we have to listen to a specific sound at a specific time to have a 10% chance of feeling music nirvana for 10 seconds... at least I do.

So from a purely 'pleasurable' perspective the experience of the music is likely similar in intensity. If not less for people like me who likes very particular sounds/compositions.

Our brains which are physical things, are simply wired differently.

Edited August 21, 2023 by Brisbot

[BlockUser]

On 8/19/2023 at 1:55 AM, vkxwz said:

Yes I agree he meant creating complexity out of simple principles in the process of making the music, but I'm saying that because the music is constructed in this way, our minds can basically learn to reverse engineer it in a way, reducing the complexity/noise back down to simple principles, and I think that this phenomenon is one way music can "click".

Ah, now I see! Thanks for clarifying. Yes I agree, that's one way of clicking: On the intellectual level. Personally, the real click is when I connect mentally/emotionally, it usually trumps intellect. It's through mood, atmosphere, and texture that stuff really wins me over. But it's fun to reverse engineer if you have a curious mind.

[BlockUser]

On 8/19/2023 at 1:55 AM, vkxwz said:

I think I know what you mean here, I'd rather be watching an ecosystem unfold than have YOU FEEL GOOD YOU FEEL GOOD shouted at me

Yup, this is what I meant. Ecosystem is a very good term for this, both figuratively and literally. It's the depth of interconnected layers and entities that is part of why Autechre is so intriguing. On the literal level, Autechre often conjures images of natural motion in my mind, like wind, waves, clouds, flames, and how all of these interact, things melting, things solidifying, this kind of stuff. Other times, the images are of more concrete entities, or landscapes I am moving through. Like that thing in gonk steady one which always sounds to me like a massive shimmering metal moth that's flying around my room (It's a welcome guest). eastre makes me feel like I am watching two massive spaceships slowly crash into and completely crush each other as they lose course and begin to drift off into the universe. Now that's a CLICK!

[vkxwz]

14 hours ago, BlockUser said:

Ah, now I see! Thanks for clarifying. Yes I agree, that's one way of clicking: On the intellectual level. Personally, the real click is when I connect mentally/emotionally, it usually trumps intellect. It's through mood, atmosphere, and texture that stuff really wins me over. But it's fun to reverse engineer if you have a curious mind.

Yes I agree the emotional connection is the important part. I think that on some level our mind has to figure out what's going on and reduce the complexity to simplicity in order to connect to that emotion in the first place though, but that seems to happen without needing that "intellectual level" understanding, it could happen on a subconscious level. When this emotional connection happens I think it's because our mind realises that the best model of what it's hearing is that it's sound produced by an entity that has it's own emotions and internal life. music with lyrics obviously shortcuts this because we know it's a human and are used to interpretting emotion that way.

A story containing other conscious experiencing entities is much more meaningful than a bunch of shapes moving around, no matter how complex and perfect that may be, and I think that autechre nails the former even though it appears like the later on first listen for some tracks.

[BlockUser]

10 hours ago, vkxwz said:

I think that on some level our mind has to figure out what's going on and reduce the complexity to simplicity in order to connect to that emotion in the first place though, but that seems to happen without needing that "intellectual level" understanding, it could happen on a subconscious level. When this emotional connection happens I think it's because our mind realises that the best model of what it's hearing is that it's sound produced by an entity that has it's own emotions and internal life.

A story containing other conscious experiencing entities is much more meaningful than a bunch of shapes moving around, no matter how complex and perfect that may be, and I think that autechre nails the former even though it appears like the later on first listen for some tracks.

Yeah I guess it can also be seen as a part of perception. I mean that music can be set up analogous to how optical illusions work. You can intentionally create rhythms where the 1 is shifting around for instance. And yes, Autechre are really good at giving their amazing sound design a reason to live as well. It's very easy today to make weird sounds, but Autechre also know how to organize them into something worthwhile.

[Brisbot]

On 8/21/2023 at 9:24 AM, Summon Dot E X E said:

Whole grains vs refined sugars

Yeh. I do wonder if I get something more from listening to 'deeper' music over top 40 stuff. If it feeds my soul or something you can't get from 'normal' music. It's about more than just enjoying it. At least it can be for people.

[BlockUser]

On 8/23/2023 at 1:02 AM, Brisbot said:

Yeh. I do wonder if I get something more from listening to 'deeper' music over top 40 stuff. If it feeds my soul or something you can't get from 'normal' music. It's about more than just enjoying it. At least it can be for people.

The whole grains vs refined sugars analogy is a good one. If something (at least seemingly) complex makes you curious instead of ignoring it, if the feeling of disorientation isn't too much for you and it actually encourages you to try again, then there's a whole lot to enjoy about music or any art that isn't immediately obvious. Maybe it's something to do with what is called brain plasticity. Been said before in this discussion but I guess some brains just enjoy breaking down and digesting things more than others. Wait.. The brain even looks a bit like the intestines, doesn't it? What with all these folds and wrinkles..

Anyway, I don't judge people over this, to each their own. Just funny sometimes when you see it in action. I was at the beach with a friend this weekend and we looked at the sea and the sky and she turned some music on because, as she said, she "really likes this vibe". I was surprised to hear a pop song, I would have put on something a lot different.

 

On 8/22/2023 at 5:18 AM, vkxwz said:

When this emotional connection happens I think it's because our mind realises that the best model of what it's hearing is that it's sound produced by an entity that has it's own emotions and internal life. music with lyrics obviously shortcuts this because we know it's a human and are used to interpretting emotion that way.

A story containing other conscious experiencing entities is much more meaningful than a bunch of shapes moving around, no matter how complex and perfect that may be, and I think that autechre nails the former even though it appears like the later on first listen for some tracks.

Which reminds me of your post again.. Thinking about this a bit more I can see that I actually can connect easily to something that is more abstract and has no vocals because then, the music doesn't come with a prescribed emotion. It allows me to explore and experience my emotional response instead of someone telling me how I feel. My emotional response might even deviate from what the artist intended or feels about it themselves. But if it's pure music it hits me right where I feel it. This can never err. This does in no way mean that I don't listen to music with vocals; There's a lot that I love deeply. But vocals and lyrics are always expressions and translations from feeling to thought, while instrumental music is straight feeling.

I might really very often connect emotionally to shapes moving around.. Don't know what that says about me. I found geometry extremely fascinating back in kindergarten already.  But to round this off, let me post an example of music with vocals that really does it for me (It had to be Blues, didn't it? ).

 

Edited August 24, 2023 by BlockUser