Let's talk music, no genre boundaries

@mahgister,

All of this musical sophistication couldn't have occurred at once. Certain things must have happened first, then others, then others. Early Homos sapiens probably didn't have a concept of time beyond the sun setting and rising. Phases of the moon, too. This is a total aside, but I wonder what was inherited from the Neanderthals. Apparently they made art and buried their people. 

I don't think Einstein every speculated on how people experience time in relative time frames. It seemed to me that the twin going nearly the speed of light would experience relative time the same as the twin "standing still." A concept that nobody has ever explained to my satisfaction. How can it be that centrifugal force works whether we're on a space ship traveling 60,000 mph relative to the earth or resting on the earth? 

 @kofibaffour ,

Below I will post a youtube of one of my favorite female singers, Tracy Thorne of "Everything but the Girl." In the jazz forum we were talking about Billie Holiday having a limited voice but tremendous depth of emotion. I am not comparing Tracy Thorne with Billy Holiday, exceept she also has a somewhat limited voice with not a lot of range, yet she hits me emotionally as deeply as any other singer. Her husband Ben Watt lays down the background.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAKpK5E09Ys

You dont get what i spoke about it seems...

When you speak are you conscious of the complex mechanisms behind syntax and semantic ? Not at all, we learned it without even knowing what we do...

It is the same for the musical time, which is born from our complex response to society and to Nature from the body members (rythm) and from the throat/mouth (timbre and tonality)...

Then this  "musical sophistication" occurred from the beginning...But it is now that we get this sophistication consciously understood...

Ancient language are not less complex than english... it is the opposite...

 And Einstein concept of time or Newton concept of time has nothing to do with "musical time" not measured by the watch, and if so is being denatured and lost...It must be felt not counted...

@mahgister,

All of this musical sophistication couldn’t have occurred at once. Certain things must have happened first, then others, then others. Early Homos sapiens probably didn’t have a concept of time beyond the sun setting and rising.

@audio-b-dog 

I often wonder what the earliest music must have sounded like. I assume it had a strong beat and the melody from a flute or whatever was less important than it is today

The first nations people of Australia seem to have a continuous culture extending back at least 65,000 years.  Their songlines are a form of oral history documented in dance formations and storytelling.  Remarkably, they include a narrative of the end of the last major ice-age about 12,000 years ago, when sea levels rose by several hundred feet as ice sheets melted.  The shoreline swallowed large tracts of land, and allowed the Great Barrier Reef to form.  In North America the Great Lakes formed at this time from the remnant fresh water from melting glaciers. This period marked the first cultivation of plants by humans.

Most likely the earliest musical instruments go back at least 40,000 years and included two clapsticks beaten together, plus hollowed out tree branches - the didgeridoo. Ants do a good job of hollowing gum tree branches.

Didgeridoo players can breathe continuously into the instrument while 'talking' to create an incredible variety of sounds.  Clapsticks (hundreds of them) and didgeridoo featured in the opening work of the refurbished Sydney Opera House, in "Of the Earth" by Willian Barton. I cannot conceive how music for the didgeridoo can be written down!

Unfortunately archeological evidence of very early instruments may be restricted to rock paintings, as the instruments were made of perishable materials.

I think human music began with mothers singing to babies and surrounding family creating rhythm with hand claps. Other melodic and rhythmic sound making methods evolved from that.

But the birds were already singing in a rhythmic way. 

Very important observation about breathing and non written music... breath is a gesture as is speech or playing an instrument... Some gesture can be written some others not, the flow in time and his cycles created a time dimension proper to music and not to metronome measured by the clock time...

I own 20 albums of didgeridoo, not one is like an other...

This music may be very powerful...

Didgeridoo players can breathe continuously into the instrument while ’talking’ to create an incredible variety of sounds.  Clapsticks (hundreds of them) and didgeridoo featured in the opening work of the refurbished Sydney Opera House, in "Of the Earth" by Willian Barton. I cannot conceive how music for the didgeridoo can be written down!