I was not talking about a wider spectrum of music itself. I was talking about a wider spectrum of reasons to listen to music. A wider spectrum of responses. I was talking about listening to music for beauty. Or listening to music for joy. Or listening to music for intellectual stimulation. You seem to focus on listening to music for "spiritual discoveries." I think I do also, but that is not the only reason. I also listen for the reasons I've mentioned above.
Let's talk music, no genre boundaries
This is an offshoot of the jazz thread. I and others found that we could not talk about jazz without discussing other musical genres, as well as the philosophy of music. So, this is a thread in which people can suggest good music of all genres, and spout off your feelings about music itself.
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When you love a woman for example, you love her for spiritual reasons, not only for his body, for his intellectual state, for his economical attitude, for his appartenance to the same tribe or because she is the mother of your unborn child etc.. The first most important reason may be his body but the last most important reason cannot be his body but "spiritual reasons"...
It is the same for music...
We all love a woman and music for many reasons the most important one being spiritual reasons, knowing it or not...
What is love without spiritual reasons and music experience with no spiritual discoveries and motives ? It is fun. Mere fun. It is pleasure and boredom. It cannot be meaning. When we discovered meaning in an activity or in a phenomena,or being, there is no more boredom or just pleasure... There is sustenance and continuous support of our being like eating sacred bread after communion or the bread offer by the father to his son, by the wife or mother each day with the soup. Bach is sacred experience, not fun merely but joy...Even Bob Dylan must be like that if i enjoy him time to time yet after 60 years...Pleasure did not compare to joy anyway even in music... I was never bored to listen "the art of the fugue" 1000 times at least in my life... Then it is spiritual sustenance of a new kind who attracted me to Bach, Scriabin or Bruckner, not just fun, even if the sensual dimension was there ...
Even Jazz attracted me first for unknown spiritual reason : i begin with Chet Baker long ago my jazz awakening, surprised to hear so strong emotions coming from a jazz musician..It awake my sense for a new musical language i never spoke nor heard before...Spiritual reasons not fun or boredom was the reason i was attracted to Baker then to the pianist Bill Evans as his unknown brother the rest is my history through jazz...( it begun with Armstrong but at 13 i was attracted to his singing not to jazz per se) Those who never have spiritual experience listening music had never hear what music is...
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I agree with you that music can have deep spiritual meaning. I don't agree, however, that for me all music, whether I enjoy it for beauty or melody or just for fun, must have spiritual depth underneath. Since it just seems to be you and me talking now, we cannot ask others what they think. I listened to the Eagles today because I like their melodies and the band. I don't think there was anything spiritual beneath that. You might be talking about what music means to you, but not necessarily to others. |
By the way in the last 2 days i enjoyed 12 hours of Vivaldi "I musici" Vivaldi albums... There is no spiritual depth in his concerti at all, only pure joy... I bet i am a normal dude even if my most precious music exihbit "spiritual depth"... I pity those who do not even recognize "spiritual depths"... I love Vivaldi as much as Scriabin "spiritual depth" by the way and will never claim that Vivaldi is inferior to Scriabin genius... I hope i had been clear...
By the way it need a good audio system to enjoy the high frequencies range of violins for 12 hours almost non stop ... I had one... Violin sound like honey butter between hot and cold...
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@audio-b-dog - I glance at this thread now and then. My take is that if I want spirituality, I'd go to some church, but I don't do spirituality or churches. I don't experience any art form for 'spirituality'. I like my arts, be they music, films, television, or books, visceral.... Different people get different things from the arts. |
"spiritual depth" is not a religious experience linked to a piece of religious music for me... This is a common place Lapalissade association by superficial look...
"spiritual depth" in music is linked to the " felt change of consciousness" Owen Barfield defined and associated with the way words/sounds/rythms are used in poetry...In the same way musicians can use music language of their culture and timbre mastery to create real "spiritual experiences" not just "fun" or a designed orthodox religious celebration.
"visceral" on the other way refer back to the property of music to speak trough the "timbre experience" which is a universal experience lived trough our body sensation nevermind the differences of culture... you read it here :
Bodily maps of musical sensations across cultureshttps://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2308859121
Timbral effects on consonance disentangle psychoacoustic mechanisms and suggest perceptual origins for musical scales: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45812-z
The reason why this is such is explained by this acoustician in his book here an article :
The Mechanical Invariance Factor in Musical Acoustics and Perception (Revisited)https://sciencepublishinggroup.com/article/10.11648/10026300
This article can help to understand all the others above : «Building on the current results, the researchers are now investigating how human hearing is more finely tuned toward natural sounds, and also studying the temporal factor in hearing.»
I insisted on "musical time" so much in this thread the reason is explained here in the lastarticle under these lines and why musical time cannot be measured by linear clock...Furtwangler knew it in a way Toscanini did not...(Gergiev Russian maestro) Human hearing beats the Fourier uncertainty principlehttps://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html
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For sure we can as the ignorant crowd of consumers speak only about music "fun" visceral or not ... But i am not member of this crowd... The most powerful music must be visceral in his effect for sure but it is not enough to create "a felt change in consciousness" the effect like Marian Anderson create singing anything,or in the didgeridoo experience, or with some talking Nigerian Yoruba drum experience or with a sarod master or with some Hildegard of Bingen etc we must add "consciousness change" tools and means to our visceral perceiving metabolism . Music experience is precisely the indifferentied/differentiated action of meaning as sound and sound as meaning through our body and mind as an internal pluralities appearing as ONE gesture. Then spiritual musical experience can be created by "love supreme" playing which is not religious music at all ...
«Why do you like eating cadavers marinated in underwater for so long ? I cannot explain said the crocodile, it is "visceral" » Anonymus zoologist |
I don't have time to read all the books you throw out. I'm writing and researching a novel. But inherent in what you say, it seems to me, that you believe that your experience of music is at a "higher" level than others. "For sure we can as the ignorant crowd of consumers speak only about music "fun" visceral or not ...But i am not member of this crowd..." As an American poet, I was taught to come down to earth in my language and sentiment. And perhaps this is why we enjoy different things in music. I believe the highest sentiment can be found in a stone. As a boy in high school we had a small record store with two listening booths. I would sit alone listening to classical music while a bunch of kids would sit in the other booth listening to pop tunes. As you can see, I set myself apart as an "intellectual" at a young age. When I arrived at college I met a very pretty girl who danced joyfully to the Beatles. I learned to like the Beatles and many other rock groups and began to eschew intellectualism. I still do, although I read books on archaeology and sociology and religion, always with a bit of skepticism. This is to say, that I don't fear the thoughts of anyone. Einstein had to brew his tea and drink it himself. And I try to understand everyone. But no matter what logical distinctions I make, you always refer to your own taste as a "truth" of sorts. I want to embrace the taste of others. If I don't like what they suggest for me to listen to, then I won't. But I don't suggest that my understanding of music is superior to anyone else. That being said, and I've probably pissed you off, in the latest Absolute Sound, there is a long writeup on Brazilian music and great recordings of Brazilian music. I know we share that love. And here is my poem about a stone: Composite Things
Suddenly you find yourself for some unknown reason staring at the ground & there is only dirt.
You fall to your hands & knees & start digging fascinated by the bits of rock & detritus yesterday's litter mixed with things from the earliest beginnings.
Then you pick up a rock to brush it off, some common composite thing, but the whirling striations have caught your eye so you fall into an enchantment wondering how all these bits of sparkle swirling with white & brown ever got compressed into a package so small & how that has come into your flesh-pink hand at this very moment with the sky just as it is overhead, tilted slightly away.
Everything freezes together & stops for that moment, the universe itself a composite stone & you sparkling deep in its center.
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I dont "trow out books" these are akll articles of science or acoustics linked to music...
I presume if you write a book you are not in the crowd and dont despise someone who think... must i apologize to suffest content articles and reflections ?
You make innuendos about my behaviour and posts suggesting that my "taste rule" over everyone... This is "ad hominem" attacks... I expressed in this thread and communicate links of music in all genres and styles from West or East or Africa, save commercial pop chart... Instead of trying to understand my point you dismiss it by these ad himinem attacks.. I am a "snob" who impose his taste... Are you serious ?
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This is a definition of Time in music by Google A.I. which i can use to fix the idea :
«In music, time primarily refers to concepts like tempo, time signature, and meter, which define the speed and structure of musical pieces. Tempo indicates the speed of the music (e.g., 60 BPM means 60 beats per minute), while time signature specifies how many beats are in each measure and what type of note represents a single beat. Meter is the underlying pattern of stressed and unstressed beats. More detailed breakdown:
1. Tempo:
2. Time Signature:
3. Meter:
5. Other Related Concepts:
Now this definition of time in music as measurable in some way as described by A.I. we must add the concept of "musical time" as non measurable, non linear, resulting from the gesture of the musician (rubato does not catch it all ) gesture which try to catch trough the "timbre"effect mastery of the instrument something which is an information about the instrument physical state qualities and something a time-like information about the musician body state itself vibrating with the instrument and something else, an information about the written music interpretation and meaning.
That is musical time which transcend measured time and this is is where is the "spiritual depth " of music...Between timbre of the vibratings sound sources (musician+instrument) , their time dimensions, measurable and non measurable,
I dont throw ad hominem arguments by the way...I like to think with others of good faith...
And yes my posts are sometimes long...
You can add this to "snobism" ...
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Thanks for the poem i appreciate it...
I like poetry for so long as i can remember, to be specific with Baudelaire when i was thirteen. I will gave mine i just wrote yesterday in french translated by A.I. : As dead as alive Winter’s hand Stirring of the waters: My animal father Joy is a cry Come the season: The pine needle The hole in the wheel Sharp philosopher: The tiny infinite grows I am a banker, Whether worth or whatever The heartbreaker |
Thanks for the link... I will go to see it ... I am moved by Villa- Lobos... And some Fado influenced voice of Brazil... |
@audio-b-dog - Very true, though my soul needs more energizing than soothing! |
This is a common place true fact nobody can contest... All poetry and all music soothe the soul... But how this fact is supposed to contradict my point about the "spiritual depth" of some musical pieces in all cultures and styles ? The fact that i used Scriabin, an important composer, does not means i imposed my taste; i explained why i use him to describe the abyss between tonal music , atonal music and a genius who discover a third region where to live.. When we discuss we must be of good faith and dont use someone post to return it against him as "his taste" dictatorship instead of understanding what is the point of his argument... If we dont understand something we must have the humility to say it and not killing the messenger ... The fact that this "spiritual depth" in some music pieces is linked to "timbre" perception by our body and his relation to musical time as not measurable, is my main point to judge musicianship... Is this means that i impose Scriabin or Ali Akbar Khan taste ? No.... If you are of good faith ...
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The five articles i used spoke for me about "spiritual depth" experience of "sound" and in a few words : Spiritual depth experience in music is perceived musical time through the microdynamics gesture of "timbre" which transcend measured time and this is is where is the "spiritual depth " of music : Between timbre of the vibratings sound sources (musician+instrument) and their time dimensions, measurable and non measurable,
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Soul existence is a demonstrated fact in CIA laboratory and in medical hospitals.. Believing in soul or not is beside the fact... Remote viewing is proven fact as is perception out of the body, OBE and NDE etc Then the word "soul" means at least in a minimal way perception at distance of physical or non physical meaning...In a maximal way of meaning it means that you are not your body at all. You are only kept alive or dead in his set of filters, alive if you think by yourself, dead if you are a robot with no critical thinking... Believing in matter only is being dead... As John Vervaeke demonstrated there is a reason why there is so many "zombies" movies now... ( the most boring movies ever in my opinion) |
Prior to my research into the ancient past, I would have agreed with @larsman about the soul. Something like a deep and abiding conscience, which not all people have. Christianity would say, I think, that everybody is born with a soul. Studies of psychopaths would disagree. As I studied ancient humanity, I found out that art and music seem to define humanity (Homos sapiens). Prior Homos species had the same body structure and just as large a brain cavity, if not larger in some cases. But not until about 60,000 years ago (some might say 100,000--it doesn't make a difference for my argument) we find a sudden burst of creativity out of the Homos genus. Tools, jewelry, art. From a Darwinian perspective, why would Homos Sapiens waste their time with art rather than finding food and lodgings? How does art help Homos sapiens in our survival? And yet there it is. Jewelry buried in caskets. Cave wall drawings and paintings. What was that all about? The oldest known musical instrument is a flute made out of an animal's horn from about 43,000 years ago. Most likely, prior to that there were instruments made out of wood and other materials that deteriorate. Like visual arts, music seems to go back to our beginnings, and we must have needed it to give it priority over other endeavors that would add to humans' survival. I think it's fair to assume that dancing may have gone hand in hand with the music. It is my opinion that people decorated their bodies, played music, and danced to celebrate their existence as part of the universe. The first deities of which we find evidence are pregnant female figures known as "Venuses." It makes total sense that early humanity saw femals as the creators, because when they saw animals and humans born it was always from females. I won't go into the evidence, but it seems that females were also the first cave painters. There is strong evidence that those first cave painters were shamans and priests. From what we know of the early feminine religions, they were much different than the later male-dominated religions. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc. believe in a male creator who stood apart from, and outside of the universe. The Torah (Judaic Bible) had no godesses, even though literature that influenced the Bible did have many strong goddesses. Why is this important to the soul and music? The Great Mother (highest feminine goddess) was a part of her creation, unlike the God we know today. She did not exist apart from the universe. So, when people sang and danced to the Great Mother, they sang and danced to the universe and their existence as part of it. Everything was a part of something. There were no individual souls like we have today. So music was joy on the deepest soulful level. Joy at our existence as well as a deep respect for the universe. And this is how I see music tied to the "soul." Although, I don't see the soul as an individual thing, as religions do today. We all share the universal soul with the Great Mother or whatever you want to call the creator who created by being a part of things, not outside and above things. I am sure this is different than how you have seen the soul as something that belongs to you. I see it as a collective thing that is to be rejoiced. Since this, I believe, reflects ancient thinking, very early composers could have written with a soul in mind that is similar to what I have just described. And for me, the deepest music is a reflection of this. |
The "soul" state and existence is not the matter of this thread about music then i will not go further on this...
I will only add this : Before any instrument perhaps with the exclusion of percussive objects, the voice gesture amplifying or resonating with the gesturing body is the simultaneous beginnings of speech as we understand it and of music. The depth of the spiritual expressive content of music is, as in the articles above together demonstrated, in the relation between the vibrating sound sources timbre (instrument+musician voice and body gestures) and the non measurable+measurable time dimensions of the expressive gestures act connected to the social group and Nature... No instituted religion is needed in the beginings why ? Because the Nature soul as the soul of the group and of each individual is one mimesis phenomenon, where hunting, praying, dancing, speaking-singing, eating or dreaming are one activity...Meanings is not mere information but a cosmic event cascading in the Group which perceive the synchronicities as meaningful events... We can see it nowadays degraded in crowd hysteria and lynching festival... We are "civilized" : we begin to loose our individualities in the mass control experiment call A.I. technology and other "progress" sponsored by mad uneducated oligarchs... But it is like the "soul" alleged non existence for programmed mind another matter for another forum...
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Before caves or Callas or Nick Cave we lived in trees. Two important principles about sleeping in trees....don't fall and be quiet. So late arriving member of the troop arrives at the tree house and makes a low sound of some sort not to alarm his fellow limb dwellers. One or two respond in a rhythm or cadence unintended and music is born! Next day on a long slog to a better tree the previous night's melodic episode is picked up by the ordered march and repeated by the group to the great effect of mitigating drudgery. Then that night around the fire a stick is introduced to a log, the music repeated, and someone sways, dances, and gets laid. No stopping this train now. Well Prog Rock is trying.
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I am ashamed to say i only know his name... I dont listen much to any jazz singer... (Save Chet Baker and Louis Armstrong ) I love Mary Nakamoto ... I bet you dont even know his name ... ;)
I will go for her... thanks ...
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I don't think AI can produce "real" art until it has a sense of mortality, love, loss, hearbreak, and a number of other very human emotions that art comes from. I don't think what we consider art came along until we were considered to be Homos spiens rather than any species preceding. In fact, one of the attributes that defines Homos sapiens is art, as well as sophisticated tool making. For a million years or more Homos erectus and Homo heidelbergensis had simple tools that didn't improve over that million years. Than, slam, bam, boom, there was an explosion of tool making, art, sophisticated burials and other things that defined Homos sapiens. That sudden eruption of consciousness is mysterious and it is who we are. |
I dont think that A.I. could play as Maria Yudina the woman Stalin could not kill even when she refused his money answering that she will pray for his sins in his face : No other pianist play Schubert so fiercely and with freedom as if she danced with Schubert heart... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8V964wP1Pw&list=RDg8V964wP1Pw&start_radio=1
A documentary about this woman, a legend among Russian musicians : |
Everybody's best guess. I've spent many years doing research to shape mine, but it's no more true than anyone else's. No observers wrote down anything about upper Paleolithic people.Best we know about music, I think, is the horn flute that is 43,000 years old and the supposition that other musical instruments deteriorated over time. My answer works for me and what I'm writing. But I'm writing fiction. |
if you want to learn something new about ancient history and sound this documentary is staggering : The Barabar caves : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RJ3Epd_SXk&t=2957s
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Mozart lacrimosa as you never heard it by Maria Yudina the pianist saint whom Stalin did not kill because she played like angel and did not fear Stalin at all : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVP6uWKBMbk&list=RDcVP6uWKBMbk&start_radio=1 The last piece of Music Stalin was listening , the gramophone still on the piece when he was found dead was a Mozart piece by Yudina Stalin ask for a recording the same day he listen the live performance at the radio and he died listening to her, the only one who without fear accused him of "great sins" to his face : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riRK7P_ynfc&list=RDriRK7P_ynfc&start_radio=1
This concerto of Mozart the 20th is my prefered one since 50 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI3HCVVajKU&list=RDriRK7P_ynfc&index=3 |
A not well known Genius able to play Scriabin : Alexey Sultanov died at 35 American citizen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a77SEOjA7Vw&list=RDa77SEOjA7Vw&start_radio=1
To play Scriabin the pianist must enter in a musical time dimension which cannot be physically and linearly measured... All ideas for Scriabin cames down from this dimension ... |
That Yudina performance of Lacrimosa is very intense!!! Perhaps I’m shallow but I don’t find listening to that particularly enjoyable. But then I'm admittedly not an experienced Classical music listener. I'm just reacting to how it feels energetically. On the other hand, I enjoyed the Sultanov performance and listened to more of them on youtube.
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You are right for sure! Yudina like Sofronitsky is pure spiritual power... You cannot enjoy an erupting volcano... You can only learn how to deal with his eruption... Spiritual interpretation in my experience are too intense to be merely enjoyable... You cannot listen to his Mozart like listening the magical Murray Perahia or any other magician on repeat just for pleasure... Yudina lives on another world...you must listen to her in some sacred moment...Then you will understand why a giant like Shostakovitch considered her the greatest pianist he knew not because there is not many great pianists in Russia or in the world but because very few artist touch the spiritual plane or what he called the goal of art...
Sultanov gave a truly good Scriabin... I did not even knew him yesterday...A pity he died so young... I would have bought his Integral piano work of Scriabin ...I did not like much any modern well recorded Scriabin ...I have many... All the one i like are not well recorded except Boris Zukhov a great pianist just under Sofronitsky the truly one god in Scriabin...
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For a variety of reasons, I won’t touch the more metaphysical/philosophical thoughts shared and arguments posed by some of you fine gentlemen. However, some thoughts about a couple of the more down to earth topics discussed: While it is the opinion of some authorities that the “first” musical instrument was the flute, the 60,000 year old Slovenian “Neanderthal flute” being the prime example (proof?), there are other authorities that disagree and opine that, in fact, the first instrument was probably sticks or bones used as percussion instruments. I agree with the latter. The Neanderthal flute discovered in a cave in Slovenia is actually fairly sophisticated actually having tone holes that allow tones to be played whose relationship is diatonic. A diatonic scale as used in most Western music. That it was the first seems implausible to me. Additionally, if one considers that rhythm, even more so than melody, is the prime essential element of music it follows that some sort of rhythm instrument, however primitive, was probably the first. I took the “Jazz pianist vs AI” test posted by Mahgister. Interesting indeed! I guessed correctly every time. I bring this up not in search of any undue kudos or credit, but to bring up something I heard in the comparisons that was interesting in the context of this thread which is, after all, part of an audiophile forum. One could point to the musical “looseness” (swagger as used in this thread) of the real Jazz pianist clips vs AI. This did not surprise me at all. What did surprise me was a certain timbral “tightness” in the sound of the AI clips, akin to what is claimed (heard) by some listeners in the perennial argument of “analog vs digital”. I guess I have, in fact and without meaning to, ventured into the metaphysical realm, but it reaffirmed my feeling that as concerns the arts AI will ultimately only come so close, but as they say, “no cigar”. Best to all.
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The first musical instrument is our gesturing body... Our body gesture on the members scale and on the throat/mouth scale ... The two gesture are synchronized then as frogman said the rythm is fundamental... The rythm is not merely something flowing in physical time but something creating his own time dimension... The fist musical instrument is not physical object but body parts synchronising in something which is not speech as we know it now nor singing as we know it now in a separate way but the two as one... Two feet and legs can synchronise with a bone sticking etc Speech and music were conjoined twin never naturally separated but artificially separated by specialization... it is why poetry register made us conscious about the deep root of language in music ... Prose register is only the peak of language iceberg... Methodologically Saussure advocated for the arbitrary of signs maxim , but he guessed that sounds in language are also motivated by meaning in his study about onomatopea... Language is way less known than our science think it is... The greatest linguist since Panini is not even translated in English by the way : Gustave Guillaume which opuses goes near 30 volumes and more to come in edition right now ... ( i studied it 35 years ago ) In the same way acoustics is a deep science which revolution is ongoing right now... but all this is out of topic here ...
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I agree with you on all counts, especially AI versus human creativity. And thank you for the information on the 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute, with a diatonic scale no less! I had either not heard of it or forgotten that I had heard about it. Perhaps the Neanderthals gave Homos sapiens the gift of music. So many of us seem to have a certain amount of Neanderthal DNA. It does not really matter, though, in regards to my main interest. Why was music and other arts created in a world where survival was of utmost importance. Why did humans need to create art. I think that question will lead to what @mahgister calls the spirituality in art. I have watched over the years a TV series called "Closer to Truth." A trained neurologist (and it seems so much more) named Robert Lawrence Kuhn takes up a philosophical and scientific question for six 1/2-hour episodes. One question was about art and religion. I cannot remember the name of the institute he visited that studied art and religion. One of the researchers there said that in ancient humans--upper Paleolithic Homos sapiens--art and religion were the same. Those people made no distinction between the two. It's probably clearer in the visual arts, since we have entire paintings and carvings from ancient times. In the book "The Mind in the Cave" by David Lewis-Williams, an archaeologist who has studied ancient caves, Lewis-Williams claims that these caves with early cave paintings were "churches." He has physical evidence to make these claims. He says that the animals drawn on these very early cave walls were not animals that were hunted for food. They were distant animals who were seen as "gods." It would take a thesis to explore this, so I'm just going to take it as fact for now. The point I want to make is that all art must have been extremely important to early humans or else they wouldn't have spent precious time normally used for survival creating and exploring art. I would say that if this argument is true, then early music, as well as the visual arts, would have been "spiritual" in some sense. And this is what we feel today, even those of us like myself who don't believe in traditional religion. And perhaps this is what @mahgister looks for when he talks about spirituality in music. I think music, as well as all of the arts, have branched out into things other than just spirituality, such as entertainment. In the Greek Golden Age (beginning around the 7th century BCE) we find plays about the gods as well as humorous plays that must have been for entertainment. And, of course, most of the arts are for entertainment today, especially music. But when a piece of music does appeal to the "spiritual" many people can hear it and feel it. I have not yet listened to Phillip Glass's "Akhnaten, but I have heard other Phillip Glass pieces that have that spiritual quality. And, of course, in jazz we can hear pieces that entertain and others that appeal to a more spiritual aspect of humanity. This is a topic I am much interested in. |
You get me right and that makes me happy...
Not only i means that , the oneness of art,religion, technology, but i must remind you the 5 articles i posted above about universals in Timbre perception, and the musical time dimension created by man out of the physical linear time dimension linked to the reason why human beat the Fourier principle or the Gabor limit... |
i felt that Glass Akhnaten is not just a beautiful piece of music... We dont lack beautiful piece of music anyway... I was spell bounded by the way he succeeded to recreate something of the Ancient Egypt spiritually using rythms and words in a way no modern opera never dare to go ... I read about Egypt a masterpiece on the Luxor temple i paid 125 Canadian dollars in 1978 ... A fortune for a book if you use the inflation index but well worth it... This book was an initiation to the deep symbolism of Egypt in two huge books... it gives even to me a key for mathematics understanding when i was young and in need of it... Philip Glass genius shine through this spiritual opera almost a kind of non christian oratorio which is a "felt change in consciousness" (Barfield) when listening to it... As an aside it is the piece of music i used,with the astonishing Lotte Lenya version of the three penny Opera of Weil to test my sound quality ( "out of the head" effect of my AKG K340 hybrid and his bass tones) when i needed to do it ... ( i dont need to test anything now |
I learned how to optimize my 4 systems one by one... The first one in a bigger room takes me a few years of learning , mainly acoustics experiments.. After that in few months with the basic understanding of electrical,mechanical & acoustical working controls devices and basic tweaks i was able to set and optimize my actual smaller room and smaller system, and my Top headphone and my secondary headphone... There is no relation between the S.Q. of a system/room before and after his optimization process... No relation... Most people buy and plug their system, their only optimization means and tools are upgrades of the gear...( they ignore the three working dimensions optimization process if not completely partially especially the acoustics) But optimization work with what you already own if the synergy bwetween pieces of gear is relatively good... Because if you dont know how to makes the better with what you already own you will not be able to optimize the new upgrade either... My small speakers, modified and optimized are satisfying now, i disliked them when i bought them by the way... My headphone systems the main one the hybrid K340 and the lesser sextett K240 are done also and optimized by modifications and good synergy choices... I dont need to listen critically now at all...My systems reach their peak level performance after optimization.. There is better gear system here by far in great numbers but many are not optimized... A non optimized system at any price will not reach his peak working level... I am glad and happy with the "minimal acoustical satisfaction threshold" i reach with a low cost system... I dont had the budget nor the money to optimize a costlier system... To beat my 1000 bucks system will be easy and i will reach almost high end ( the maximal acoustical satisfaction threshold with 15,000 bucks but my wife will kill me ... I am retired and in a small dedicated room, it could be better in a bigger room which i dont own anymore anyway...) I am not frustrated at all , my goal is reached the day i learned how to optimize anything at any price.. I now live with what i can afford with no envy, proud of the way my peanuts cost system could sound so good... This week i listened for 2 days only Vivaldi "i Musici" complete recording of Vivaldi non stop in ecstasy because the sound was good enough for me to hear the music without being bothered by sound trade-off defects... I then dont need to do critical sound listening anymore... I will do critical listening again if i must optimize another system/room one day... But i am 74 and i dont think i will had a new room and a bigger budget for audio ( it must be 15,000 bucks to really beat my actual system for good in a bigger room with a Choueiri DSP )
For many "critical listening" is a fate and a malediction that curse their enjoyment of music because their critical listening is about the gear piece defects they just bought and they are not acoustically informed to use critical listening as a tool for optimization and tuning ... I learned critical listening when i used it as a tool to tune my 100 Helmholtz resonators in my first bigger dedicated room.. When it was done after a full year of work the result was stunning.. After that no critical listening was needed... I used critical listening again in my last and actual room but now it is done...(it was way easier in this smaller room ) Critical listening when informed is a gift and a tool, not informed by acoustics it is a curse and a recipe for frustration in an upgrade wheel without end...My budget never could afford without end upgrades...
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By the way it was in the course of reading about acoustics few years ago to learn how to set my system /room right that i discovered the recent acoustical science discoveries about human hearing .. ( i posted an article in my above posts ) Then i discovered why and how musical time is not reducible to physical measured time (linear Fourier measures) ... Then i understood something i never understood about the way great musicians and maestro use musical time...(it is very clear if we listen Furtwangler use of musical time compared to some others maestro as maestro Gergiev pointed to in an article i read.My main example is Schuman 4th symphony, because it was my Schumann work of choice) I am also interested by acoustics and linguistic (speech) and the way poets use the time dimension of speech and also its history and evolution..
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