"The Mystery Of Sound Is Mysticism"

@mapman: “The mystery of high end audio is way more mysterious than that of music.”

This is like saying the functionality of a Cuisinart is more “mysterious” than the experience eating amazingly good food provides.

a) the experience of enjoying listening to music  
b) the experience of enjoying listening to good equipment

These two things are not alike, and to say b) is “way more mysterious” than a), frankly, boggles my mind.

Smokey Robinson wrote these songs:
- “Who’s Loving You?”
- “It’s Growing”
- “Get Ready”
- “Wonderful Baby”
- “After You Put Back the Pieces (I’ll Still Have a Broken Heart)”
- “Since I Lost My Baby”
- “Way Over There”
- “The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game”
- “Going To a Go-Go”
- “My Guy”
- “Better Late Than Never”
- “Save Me”
- “Ain’t That Peculiar”
- “What’s So Good About Goodbye”
- “Don’t Look Back”
- “The Tracks of My Tears”
- “My Girl”
- “(Come ‘Round Here) I’m the One You Need”
- “Ain’t That Peculiar”
- “Cruisin’”
- “First I Look at the Purse”
- “Shop Around”
- “Little Miss Sweetness”
- “Ooo Baby Baby”
- “The Way You Do the Things You Do”
- “When I’m Gone”
- “Being With You”
- “Two Lovers”
- “Mickey’s Monkey”
- “I’ll Be Doggone”
- “Let Me Be the Clock”
- “You Beat Me To the Punch”
- “My Girl Has Gone”
- “You’ve Got to Earn It”
- “I Second That Emotion”
- “Whole Lotta Woman”
- “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me”
- “I’ll Be in Trouble”
- “Got a Job”
- “Lucky, Lucky Me”
- “The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage”
- “Here I Am Baby”
- “We’ve Come Too Far to End it Now”
- “Malinda”
- “I Like it Like That”
- “The One Who Really Loves You”
- “The Tears of a Clown”
- “Still Water”

Those are hits for the likes of The Temptations, Mary Wells, Bobby Taylor & the Vancouvers, The Jackson 5, Bobby Breen, The Contours, The Marvelettes, Brenda Holloway, The Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, his own group, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, and his solo stuff, all between 1958 and 1981.
That is just a small sample of his mind-blowing catalog of songs.

I’d love to hear a purely science/data-based explanation how one person can do something like that 😉

Happy Holidays!

Music and art can’t be reduced to digits on a page.
At least, it can’t be adequately summarized entirely in that way.

The page that has a bunch of figures and data on it is only tangentially related to music and art as a whole.

mys·ti·cism
/ˈmistəˌsiz(ə)m/
noun

1. belief that union with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or the spiritual apprehension of knowledge inaccessible to the intellect, may be attained through contemplation and self-surrender.
2. belief characterized by self-delusion or dreamy confusion of thought, especially when based on the assumption of occult qualities or mysterious agencies.

I don’t know what to make of the ideas expressed in the OP, and how a strong argument can be made that “the mystery of sound is mysticism,” but I do know that acknowledging the experience music provides without acknowledging the intangible, immeasurable things, and/or ensconcing oneself into a rigid bubble of “science / data, and nothing else,” is folly.

@mijostyn 

Obviously, my point that music, as a thing in human experience, is only partially explained when it is jotted down on a staff, still stands.  
Just because we can read The Brothers Karamazov doesn’t mean we can scientifically explain the breadth and power of that work.  
Just because we can look at Head IV by Francis Bacon doesn’t mean we can scientifically explain why it is such a powerful work.  
Music can indeed be transcribed.  
So what?  
The little figures on a page don’t come close to really describing the human experience of listening to music. 

Music is not a science.  
It is an art.

@mahgister Happy Holidays to you!

Happy Holidays to all!!

I don’t wish to be coarse, but the use of the word “mysticism” in this conversation is somewhat unfortunate in my opinion.
I provided the Oxford Languages definition of the word above, and I will leave it at that.
I am keen on discussing music, and the ways it’s power remains mysterious.
It’s great that academia may aid one’s “literacy” of music, but this literacy only gets one so far.
Bob Dylan, as his recording mate Al Kooper once said, “is a musical primitive.”
He has no formal training of any great significance in literature, either.
Yet, those songs and those lyrics exist.
We could go on and on and on with similar examples in music, let alone art as a whole (the GOAT pop group, The Beatles, a very easy one that jumps to mind, for instance).

In this conversation, I don’t see a necessity in rigid tribalism.
“Science/data!! Nothing else!!” vs. “mysticism/God!! Nothing else!!”
No thanks.
It’s far more complex than that.

@stuartk I love that interview he gave with Ed Bradley in the mid-‘00s.
I’d always perceived Dylan to be guarded in interviews, and in that one he seemed so unguarded and forthright. 
Bradley asked him, “Do you ever look at music that you’ve written and look back at it and say, “whoa, that surprised me”?”  
Dylan said, “…I don’t know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were like almost magically written…
’darkness at the break of noon / shadows even the silver spoon / the handmade blade, the child’s balloon / eclipses both the sun and moon / to understand, you know too soon / there is no sense in trying / pointed threats, they bluff with scorn / suicide remarks are torn / from the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn / plays wasted words, proves to warn / that he not busy being born is busy dying’…
…well…try to sit down and write something like that. There’s a magic to that. It’s not Siegfried & Roy kind of magic, you know? It’s a different kind of a penetrating magic. I did it at one time”

“Try to sit down and write something like that.”  
What a great comment!  
I love that.  
That sums up whatever it is we’re talking about here, whether one calls it “mysticism,” “channeling,” “magic,” or whatever.

I also like that right after Dylan made that comment, Bradley asked him if he thinks he could write something like that again, and he said, “(mm mm)” 😆 (as in, the ‘mm mm’ sound of ‘no’). 
That lack of hubris, expressed so bluntly, is great.  
He’s not sitting there acting like he’s some kind of genius, but instead bluntly saying, essentially, “I experienced something special at one time, but it was a special moment (‘moment’ being the salad days of his creativity, not just that one song) that has passed.”  
He could have said, “Well, Ed, I’m tryin’” or, “I think my new stuff is just as good,” or, “an artist evolves…” etc.  

I just appreciate that he showed that humility, that kind of respect for this thing we’re talking about; the intangible, mysterious forces that seem to motivate these moments in history when artists produce incredible work.