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Graelwyn
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18 Feb 2007, 1:29 pm

I was thinking last night about how music and certain notes and tones affect me and it got me curious. Since a small child, I have been what I can only describe as addicted to music. I play it all day long mostly, often the same song or album over and over. It takes very little for me to learn the lyrics by heart and I must know thousands as well as being able to recall the actual tunes and sing them unaccompanies.

But with certain sounds, notes and songs, my mind floods with images, sensations, memories, and I fill with this elation...euphoria I would call it. It can be very intense. One such thing is the sound of birds singing in summer. I was watching a DVD of footage from 1930s Britain and there was a Summer scene with birds singing and I was suddenly full of this elation and it was as if I was back in another period of time. I am not sure what this is. Certain songs just either bring back very strong memories, make me feel totally connected(the only time I can feel connected), some even have me experiencing all the smells and sensations and sounds associated with a certain memory where there were birds singing etc.



Sophist
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18 Feb 2007, 1:49 pm

Well, to tie it to myself, I notice I get more emotional when there is music. So I'm like Stonehenge irl but a bawling, emotional baby when watching a movie or something (with the background music that is). Music is always much more connected to the emotional centers in our brain. Not sure why, but that's definitely the reason there are soundtracks to movies, because music affects us emotionally and triggers similar memories more easily.

I'd just imagine, for you, perhaps it's an even stronger connection?


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SteveK
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18 Feb 2007, 1:59 pm

I got on a memory kick a few months back. For months, the LITTLEST and most obscure tune would draw me back. I felt like I was 5, and remembered all these things. Like "NEVER MY LOVE" by the association triggered memories surrounding a trip I took with my father to wisconsin a LONG time ago. About him showing me a restaurant and telling me how the 747 was bigger than that, about my driving with him to the airport while that song played on the radio, and about my having peanuts in the planes lounge! YOU HEARD ME! They had a lounge on the second tier!

Or the bridge street song by simon and garfunkle(sp?) triggered memories about a trip with my mother to the shoe store(YUCK), but I DO remember the city was nice, they had lamposts like those refered to in the song, along with cobblestones, and I remember doing all the puzzles I had to while away the time.

Some songs triggered like a YEARS worth of memories, and just kept going.

One was even a montage!

Steve



paolo
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18 Feb 2007, 2:13 pm

Of course I can’t say way. But I am moved to larms by the motif of a french popularo song (Le temps de cerises – one can find this motif in the Web).
I like all kinds of music, though I am not musical at all and I listen most jazz in this period (Miles Davies and after). I am amazed by the capacity of our brain to remember tunes we have heard years and years ago, and also to recognize from a short fragment who the author may be.
I like very much listening birds’ songs and all kinds of natural noises, water of strams and of the sea and the wind in a wood.



ZanneMarie
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18 Feb 2007, 2:14 pm

I do get whole memories from sixties songs complete with smell and sensation. Beethoven always makes me feel like laying on the grass and staring at the stars. I am particularly fond of his 9th Symphony and wil listen to that for hours on end while I write. I just like it. I like to think about the fact that he was deaf when he wrote it. I also like that he was bizarre. Beethoven is definitely my dude. I wonder if I sat inside his head if I would see notes? In my head, I see the people actually playing the instruments. I'm able to actually learn to play that way although I haven't done that as much as I've gotten older. My aunt was like that and could play any song she heard once. She could never read a note of music. She told me my grandmother, great aunts and great grandmother could do that as well. It makes you wonder.



mariiha
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18 Feb 2007, 2:57 pm

Music is the one universal language
Beethoven, it is said, would conduct without hearing a note after his hearing diminished in his later life. The music score was already there is his head. Can you imagine 4 movements of a symphony hearing it the way he wanted to >WOW< The musicians would extra need to watch his cues!
I really love "The Emperor" with only 3 movements. That was unheard of during the classical period. Go Beethoven!! !



miku
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19 Feb 2007, 4:28 pm

mariiha wrote:
Music is the one universal language

Sure it sounds cool to say that, but it's anything but true.

If I say 'apple' to an English speaker, it doesn't matter what his past experiences are, he will understand it as apple. However, when I played 'Beach' (a piano piece of mine that's supposed to be about nostalgia, lost childhood innocence, etc) for a bunch of Christians, one of them told me about how he saw it as the theme music to the 2nd coming of Christ.

Point is, music's not a language. A language is a practical tool to convey meaning. An art form, on the other hand, deals more in feelings and abstraction.



mariiha
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19 Feb 2007, 4:50 pm

miku wrote:
mariiha wrote:
Music is the one universal language

Sure it sounds cool to say that, but it's anything but true.

If I say 'apple' to an English speaker, it doesn't matter what his past experiences are, he will understand it as apple. However, when I played 'Beach' (a piano piece of mine that's supposed to be about nostalgia, lost childhood innocence, etc) for a bunch of Christians, one of them told me about how he saw it as the theme music to the 2nd coming of Christ.

Point is, music's not a language. A language is a practical tool to convey meaning. An art form, on the other hand, deals more in feelings and abstraction.


Your/my opinion rpertaining to the interpertation really doesn't matter. The Point is, music does communicate in any form you desire to call it whether art, language, poetry, writing or whatever media. "Cool to say" is just another cliche that has no content to what i was thinking.



katrine
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19 Feb 2007, 4:54 pm

Trained musicians (unlike the rest of us!) are supposed to use some language centers in the brain when playing or listening to music.



miku
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19 Feb 2007, 11:07 pm

mariiha wrote:
Your/my opinion rpertaining to the interpertation really doesn't matter. The Point is, music does communicate in any form you desire to call it whether art, language, poetry, writing or whatever media. "Cool to say" is just another cliche that has no content to what i was thinking.

To call it a form of communication (which is fair enough to say) isn't the same thing as calling it 'the universal language.'
And my saying it's not a language isn't an opinion, it's a fact based on what the definition of a language is.

(this next sentence is an opinion though) To say music is a language is to demean the real value music holds.

If a Christian hears my music as the second coming of Christ, that's his personal interpretation of it based on his perspective, and that's totally fine. But for a fellow English speaker to hear the word "apple" and think I'm talking about an orange, that would mean he's crazy. When you're talking about what a language is, each person's interpretation DOES matter. A form of communication only becomes a specific language when those who speak/understand it more or less agree on the meanings of words/phrases/sentences. Obviously we all agree on what an apple is, but we don't all agree on what a minor triad entails, and if we did, music would be very, very boring I think.