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What is Musicality?

Hello fellow music lovers,

I am upgrading my system like a lot of us who follow Audiogon. I read a lot about musicality on Audiogon as though the search for musicality can ultimately end by acquiring the perfect music system -- or the best system that one can afford. I really appreciate the sonic improvements that new components, cables, plugs and tweaks are bringing to my own system. But ultimately a lot of musicality comes from within and not from without. I probably appreciated my Rocket Radio and my first transistor radio in the 1950s as much I do my high-end system in 2010. Appreciating good music is not only a matter of how good your equipment is. It is a measure of how musical a person you are. Most people appreciate good music but some people are born more musical than others and appreciate singing in the shower as much as they do listening to a high-end system or playing a musical instrument or attending a concert. Music begins in the soul. It is not only a function of how good a system you have.

Sabai
sabai

Showing 1 response by blindjim

blindjim
3,092 posts
 

short answer... it's magic.

Somewhat longer announcement....

It seems to me just from the Ops initial post that experience also plays a significant role and not merely what devices are on hand or could be had if dreams could be handily realized.

Unless one is tone deaf or the easiest person on the planet to please, no ambiguous or haphazard set of audio appliances just thrown together is going to achieve a thoroughly involving level of musicality. Especially right off the
bat.

If such has been a past or present experience, rush out and buy at least one lottery ticket, as it looks like you’re one lucky son of a gun.

The more experience one can attain, be it first handed, by trial or error, or just from the wisdom of other’s, it’s a necessity if the aim is to obtain such an end. Truly engaging, entertaining, and honest recreation of the music one chooses to audition must contain the soul of it’s author. The force of it’s intent. The excerpt has to capture the llistener with some indescribable net that seems woven out of pure magic.

Therefore, I think it safe to say a decent connotation for the term ‘Musicality’ is that it is the sum of more than it’s more obvious and noteable segments .

it is the single most indescribable facet of music. It is life and breath were none could possibly be. It’s the allure and intrigue that simply shouldn’t occur.

It’s that element that compels us to listen further for pleasure than to listen for and await possible anomolies. It’s enjoyable and fascinating. It’s a comfortable invitation to revisit favorable memories and adventure into some as yet unknown with eager anticipation. A quality that reaches well into the mind and touch the soul itself.

It could be put as simply as the “Knee bobbing and toe tapping factor” too, I suppose.

Winston Churchill's quotation, made in a radio broadcast in October 1939: wherein he fielded a question on future events regarding Russia and/or it’s intnetions
"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma ….but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
Musicality might very well be revealed as exactly that… “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma”
Whatever it actually is by one’s definition, it sure is the aim and intended result so many audio enthusiasts ascribe to reproduce.
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