Forgetting about the sound of our systems for a moment, there is a larger question of how sound by itself integrates into our appreciation and comprehension of music. Those notes written by composers have no really significant meaning unless physically heard.
How much of a part does the sensual aspect of music play in its apprehension, and what part does the stringing of those notes together play? A musician can read a score and visualize ( or audio-ize) the meaning of the music but without the physical sound how much is missing?
This has significance in the debate over how one listens to a system: for the sound or for the music.
the best book i read about music/sound for decade is a book by a nigerian acoustician studying Yorumba talking drum and speech at his beginning ..
It was painful for him and very hard to be published his doctorate thesis about "sound sources" the title of his book, Akpan J. Essien ...Too much original and too much out of the main common walked road...
This book is astonishing, after being rejected In UK universities it was accepted at the Paris Sorbonne as thesis of the highest interest ...
Very interesting criticizing 2500 years of acoustic theory from Pythagoras to Helmholtz...
And i think he is right...hIs book tell us about the missing link in sound which is the vibrating sources and this book is not far from new hearing theory based on ecological Affordance theory as J. J. Gibson created it for the visual field and based on the non linear structure of the ears/brain working in the natural ecological niche of natural sounds perception in the time dependant domain , excluding any abstract frequencies based theory of hearing as unsifficient as explained by Magnasco and Oppenheim ... Sound sources with their qualities are as real as the physical sound waves they generated and our body is synchonized to them by our ability to produce sound with speech act or with our integral body ...
Western culture in general admit and claim with his reductionist bias on the one hand and also with his Platonic opposite bias on the other hand, disconnected from one another that music is in the "physical waves" or /and in the abstract numerical ratio...( Goethe, Husserl and Whitehead are not in this game for example )
Music is in the vibrating body sound sources and in the productive gesturing body acting on it in some way to let him speak his own language ... Qualities come in time and in pre-conscious sensation way before the reflective post thinking or theorizing conscious moment ...
This drum TALK because the "drummer" a master, listen to his instrument and do not merely play it for another reason other than talking with it...
The source of music is in the productive gesturing body...But it is true even in piano interpretation of written classical music ...Musical time is a dual dimension of his own, completely different of physical metronomical unidimensional time...Pianist must play and interpret or better said EXPRESS themselves and the written score in this dual time dimension where the emotional body live and it is not written in the score how to do it...
Nobody taught the heart how to beat or how to talk ...Human speech gesture is born with music gesture...
As a retired concert pianist I do look at music from the perspective of a performer. I performed classical music which in most cases adheres strictly to the printed page (although there are exceptions.). I gather from your posting that you deal in improvisation, quite a difference, as you make it up as you go along.
I acknowledge this difference but I still say there is no music without sound.
in poetry we have a different aesthetic because words have concrete meaning even if they’re arranged in meter. The case in music is that there are symbols which represent emotions but not in a literal way. You as an improvising performer do approach notes differently. But even so, if these notes are not heard it is not music as we know it.
It's only just occurred to me that it is one thing for a child who has never heard music to "hear" a melody in their head and and another for a child born deaf to do so. A child who has never heard music will most likely have heard the sound of birds, for example.
Music is organized sound by an expressive gesture ( of the musician ) recorded not only a s playing memory in the brain but engrammed in the body as a "wave" of emotion answering by the body gesture of the listener to the playing body of the musician...
Music is sensible meaning incarnated in sound body which live in time more than in space...
it’s as if the music is playing me,
If you hear a melody on a recording and later "re-play" it in your head, does it lose its "significance"?
Is there music without sound? I don't know the answer to this. Can a melody arise in the mind of a child who has never heard music? I suspect it can. Is the melody not a melody in the split second before it is vocalized by the child? I don't know. All I can say is that is that I mistrust the assumption that it is not.
Perhaps you and I define "really significant meaning" differently.
It seems to me you might as well assert that poetry in the mind of the poet is only significant if printed on a page.
A melody arising in the mind of a composer, songwriter or Jazz improvisor has a life of its own. The elements comprising its structure -- intervals, use of space, rhythms, etc. -- possess inherent qualities that have the power to affect and modify physiology, emotions and mental states. While we tend to focus upon the larger aspects of structure -- an entire melody rather than its constituent intervals, for example -- it is those particular elements, occurring moment to moment that are modifying our physiology, emotions and mental state, whether recognized or not.
Perhaps this is more evident to those of us who play instruments.
For example, when playing a guitar solo over a progression, whether in a room with other players or at home to a recording, my experience has been that at a certain point, I’m hearing melodies and reacting to them milliseconds before playing them; it’s as if the music is playing me, or as the Dead put it, "the music plays the band". At such times, I feel the impact of the melody before it rings out into the air and strikes the ear-drums and its’s impossible to pull apart the emotion from the elements of pitch, intervals, rhythmic aspects etc.
Perhaps there exists no corollary for those who do not play but consider this: as a listener, If you hear a melody on a recording and later "re-play" it in your head, does it lose its "significance"?
I don’t know how relevant any of this might be in the context of audio.
It must be frustrating to be a Composer writing works with little chance of hearing them performed. I marvel at musicians that can study and appreciate a full score that has never been performed or recorded
Music is way more than connecting the written notes...
Musical times had two dimensions and two flowing directions not one dimension and one direction as physical time...Thermodynamic dont govern musical world...
No written score can display the method and the means to translate these two interacting dimensions...
The artist must touch the vertical time with his heart , going there or/and coming from there , for the melody to be born and live without dying in the horizontal metronomical measurable time ...
This pianist plays with his pulsating heart sounds coming and going from physical time into vertical time.... The melody surge from his hand/heart not from the written score at all and anyway dont grow in the horizontal time as all Scriabin piano works...very diffricult to play , not so much by the virtuosity asked for but by the pulsating vertical dimension which must be manifested...
For me as i feel it, rythm is in the horizontal time direction but expressive pulsation is on the vertical direction...Rythm flow but varied pulsations dont flow they surge as the playings grow... It is difficult to put in words... 😊 I am not a distinguished musician as the OP but a listener... It is my experience only...
For sure when we live in musical time feeling it, the sound quality dimension is secondary...Music is meaning embodied in sound, as our soul is embodied here...it is better tob have a beautiful body with a beautiful soul...
A music score is only a template for the music. A human performer has to connect the notes so the essence that the composer wrote into the notes may be freed!
Great question and a good one...Thanks for asking...
For me my goal was all along my life , because i love music, reach a more than just good level of S.Q.
Because every classical works in particular, win to be listened at the best S.Q.possible...
For example, one of my favorite works is the eight book of madrigals by Monteverdi...
My favorite version is with Miroslav Venhoda, i listened to it for 50 years... Believe it or not, i only hear it completely with my speakers/acoustic room completed and now with my TOP headphone system...I waited 50 years...
Now i was never in the game of purchasing as many in audio hobby... My hobby was acoustic for 2 years... My journey is now completed...
Music is now my hobby with books and riding bicycle...
With music we dont need S.Q. but it is better with, even with bad recordings because we are able to catch more of the playing "hues" ...
I am happy beyond anything i ever dream about, because i succeeded with a low cost system to reach the top... I come here to discuss with friends but i am not in the audio upgrading game and i never was...Once realized a very good S.Q. music is the only focus...Each evening music session is an ectasy, nevermind the musical choices...
For me at least, there ain’t nothin’ like experiencing music through my own ears. As much as I enjoy playing my musical instruments, I simply wouldn’t do it if I couldn’t hear 'em. It’s a sensual, not an intellectual experience. In keeping with this, the same goes for listening to my steeereeooo.
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