It's when a product brings a "HUGE AMOUNT OF EMOTION" into your system....Crimson R.M. Music Link Cables !!..
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
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
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"Musical" literally means "of the music". In general it tends to be used to describe the subjective artistic merit of a musical performance. In my opinion the word has been "bastardized" to hifi. Components and stereos are not "musical" - they are sophisticated electronics designed to reproduce the musicality of the original recorded event - or lack thereof. They should be designed with the explicit goal of reproducing the signal as accurately as possible - not to be "musical", "artistic" or otherwise call attention to themselves. My own opinion is that this term is one of the most overused words in the hifi press. It means little more to me than the reviewer saying "I like the way it sounds". It is not edifying or descriptive as it has no frame of reference. |
I'm with Elescher: pace, rhythm, timing and tone/timbre. If it sounds right and gets my toes tapping, the first word out of my mouth would probably be "musical." If something sounds "real" AND "musical," it's either someone else's or I've stumbled upon a live performance. Have you ever noticed how poor the soundstage is with live performances? Maybe if they put the drumset on stillpoints it would expand the soundstage some. Just a suggestion I read on Steve Hoffman forum. You knew I would get that in there! You knew it! |
Rawinsonde, Musicality has different meanings in different contexts. It may have one meaning for a musician and a different meaning for an audiophile. One meaning does not exclude the other. The music world is big enough to handle both. Being musical applies very well to components and audio systems. |
To me musicality means that I get transported by the music to another place, I can forget where I am or what I was doing and just engulf myself in the beautiful sound that fills my ears and give me goosebumps on certain passages. I have been building my system for 4 or 5 years now and it at this point I am simply loving it, still have a couple more things to change burt almost there. When I am listening I completely forget all of the technical details of the electronics and sources and just enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. People always seem to ask me what is the best amp or preamp or speakers, I think there is a simple response... whatever sounds best to them, whatever allows them to engulf themselves in the music and gives them those goosebumps on certain passages. |
Musicality has little to do with high end systems. Typically, high end systems are about providing the frequency response, detail, dynamics, low levels of distortion and noise levels, and perhaps imaging and soundstage that can reproduce what is in the recording accurately. Most recordings consist of music, but not all. How about sound effects? We know what many of those really sound like from everyday experience. A high end system should reproduce those as accurately as possible as well. Has nothing to do with music, but if it can, its a good omen for when the music is playing. SO a high end or high quality or call it whatever you want system provides a platform capable of reproducing sound and music as needed, but has no musicality itself. THat is a function mostly of how we react emotionally to what we hear. |
Seems to me that everyone is hung up on the word, "Musical", and are not answering the man's question. If you read the original post, he wants to know what makes a system good! He just uses the word Musical for the lack of a better one. So, what makes a system good? That's a very simple question to answer. A good stereo system is one that compels you to listen. One recording leads to another, and another, and you find it hard to pull yourself away from it. Let me elaborate, as a young man, even as a child, I pursued a good stereo! And when I was 16 I had a nice Technics receiver that just impressed my friends to no end. It was quite nice for the time, and for someone my age. But I was always looking for something better. I wanted to move up to a really high end stereo! I went through a few different setups, mostly Japanese receivers of the era, and was never satisfied. And then one day I found my way into a real high end salon! I was officially enlightened. I was still fairly young, not wealthy, and I assembled a system over a few years consisting of an Adcom 555, Adcom pre-, Sony ES CD player, Denon record player, and Vandersteen 2C speakers. This simple little system was musical! In that it got my foot tapping, it could evoke an emotional response! I could easily become so involved that it would bring a tear to my eye. And I played music! I would come home from work, turn it on as soon as I came in. After supper I would play records, one after the other, all night, it would pass midnight and knowing I had a hard day tomorrow and I just had to hear one more record! And many, many times I wouldn't get to bed until the wee hours of 2 or 3am, I just couldn't pull myself away. Well, I have a different life now. I live in a different house, different wife, different job, everything. And I no longer own that little $5 or $6K system, now I've got a system, all used from Audiogon of course! With about $17K in it! It's bigger, fancier, and made up of much better names than that early system, and it sounds fantastic! It sounds amazing, but, for some reason that desire to keep playing one more record, that inability to pull myself away from it, is gone. I often wonder if it's just me? And maybe at some level it is. But I keep swapping gear out, trying to recapture that musicality of the old system. And I'm getting closer! But still. Not quite there. Why don't I just sell it all and buy an identical system to that early system? I'm not sure. But that's not what I'm writing about, I'm writing about what makes a stereo musical! And to me, that is the definition. |
"it got my foot tapping" That's as good an indicator as any. " I often wonder if it's just me?" Its possible. PErsonally I;ve found deciding what to chose to listen to with so much to choose from these days a chore. When that happens, I put my music streamer on random play off my digital music library and let it decide what I should hear. Then I am able to just soak it all in and not have to pick and choose. or I'll put on Radio Paradise or some other good quality internet channel or maybe even add some stuff to my library in AMazon prime and explore some other new horizons that I might not otherwise. Sometimes I'll get teh urge to pull out some old record off the shelve and revisit it, but not as often as used to be the case. Most of what I like is pretty well represented in my digital music library these days. Its nice to just liten and not have to make dcisions, especially when so much to choose from these days. |
If you read the original post, he wants to know what makes a system good! OP stated that: "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." He was not asking about good equipment, but rather stating fact that some people are very musical by nature and don't need great sound to enjoy music. I'm not one of them - being unable to have ANY enjoyment listening to symphony orchestra on tiny pocket transistor radio. In fact it would annoy me knowing what I'm loosing. That's logical brain speaking. I wish I could turn it off. |
"some people are very musical by nature and don't need great sound to enjoy music" Yes, its a very interesting and valid point. Just one more reason why pursuit of the absolute sound is mostly a technical endeavor of little interest to many music lovers. TEchnical perfection helps but is not a pre-requisite for enjoying music. It can put you in a better position perhaps to enable enjoyment if needed, but alone accomplishes nothing. You need a "musical person" in order to cohabit effectively. How hard is it really to enjoy music? Aren't we all programmed for that to some extent, each perhaps a bit differently? Hence all the variety in how we all go about to achieve the desired results. |
Sabai, I stumbled unto this thread only now unfortunately, being intreaged about your use of magnets on a new thread of yours. To my mind a system is felt to be musical, if it allows a listener to be deeply touched by what he hears. A system, which lets "the soul of the music" come through. A musical person is generally also a music lover and not necessarily just an audiophile. The two do not always and at all occasion necessarily coincide and this fact makes the definition of musicality difficult in our context here. A system itself can never be musical. It is just a collection of machines. Nor can the software, we feed our machines with be musical. It is rather in the interplay of software, machine and ear that we deem one system musical and another not. I find the fact interesting, that even with a system which we on one day experience as musical, on another day with the same music playing we find as sounding awful. So there is more to it, than just "ear". The high end industry strives in part due to the fact, that we often enough question our systems. Is it really as good as we think? Shouldn't we rather get product B, because our product A does somehow not keep its promise? And so on and on ad nauseam. Compare that to our going to a live concert. Unless we sit in a really lousy seat, would we ever criticize the sound as unmusical? The interpretation of a given piece, yes of course, but the sound itself? Hardly, I would contend, unless again, we are seated in an acoustical unfortunate place. So, live music, even if it is perhaps not pleasing to us, IS by definition musical. And hence I am thinking, that perhaps the late Harry Pearson was right, when he tried - at least in his beginnings - to judge systems in comparing them to what he called "the absolute sound", namely that of live music. And yes, to be a good critic of how a given system sounds, you must necessarily be a "musical person" who, if he is a music lover, would also enjoy music from whatever source it comes from. If the source is more important than the music, I would call that person an audiophile, a sound lover, translated, but not a true lover of music. Just my two cents..... |
By the way, I brought up the same question about a decade ago with a lot of very thoughtful replies to my thread. Here is one, which I consider one of the most thought provoking and certainly should be recalled here: 04-28-01: Ozfly Detlof, this has been an inspiring thread. IMHO, and borrowing liberally from Katharina, Frogman and others, musicality cannot exist without, first, the highest level of artistry. Whether the art is in physics (Djjd) or the creation and performance of music, the artist must have a natural emotional and intuitive understanding of the craft. We've all heard it -- it's what keeps us going and stirs our souls: The performances that are so seamless that is seems the artist is transparent and only something greater, the music, exists. Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughn come to mind in the blues genre. Once that happens, our amps and speakers are called on to deliver it in our homes. I don’t know whether the delivery of musicality occurs because of accurate nth harmonic reproductions, the accurate capture of natural echoes, a totally black background or just the right soundstaging. But it does require enough subtlety to capture the nuances that differentiate the great performances. Presumably, the audio reviewers use the music that stirs their souls when they test systems. So, since the musicality was already there in the performance being evaluated, the system can be tested for the faithful reproduction of the subtleties that define great musicality. As many suggest, it is simply a matter of whether you feel you are there -- you are sharing in the mastery of music. Maybe I'm rambling, but a system can get in the way of musicality but it cannot reproduce it if it isn't in the performance first. Great performances are differentiated from average ones by great differences in emotion and talent that are funneled to us in many small ways. The accurate capture of those small things is what counts. Since we are dealing in nuances and each system has tiny imperfections, we are guaranteed a life of tweaking and searching as audiophiles. But, it’s a happy search and there are a lot of gems found along the way. Again Detlof, thanks (I’ve pretty much left “musicality” linked to my emotional response – now, I’m wondering whether there aren’t some things that can be grasped more analytically so I can improve my system more intelligently. Not to worry, I can’t give up the emotional response :-)) Ozfly (System | Threads | Answers | This Thread) |
Musical Magnets anyone? |
Detlof, Thanks for your thoughtful and sensitive posts. For me musicality is a combination of a high level of artistry on the part of the performers, a deep appreciation for music and great sensitivity on the part of the listener, and a system that is good enough to reproduce performances well. This leaves a lot of leeway for interpretation. I believe that we are looking at a continuum here, not a single standard that can be written in stone and defined by absolutes. Nevertheless, there is a point at which one may say the performance was not moving, or the system was not up to reproducing the performance with sufficient nuance. As for the listener? How do you begin to talk about sensitivity and music appreciation without opening a Pandora's Box? |
Sabai, thank you for your kind words. Pandora's Box indeed, judging from some of the remarks here. There is no society on earth without some kind of music. In the old Chinese dynastes there were of the opinion, that if the music was "good", the state was in order. A good point perhaps, because music often seems to reflect the "mood" certain strata of society are in. Just think of jazz developing from the 30 of the last century onward. Everyone knows that music can have a deep influence on our state of mind, but actually nobody really knows how this connecting of mind and organised sound is possible. |
Mapman, one answer to your question might be that emotions, while a part of music, are not all of it. Otherwise, we wouldn't talk about "musicality" as something separate from "emotion." Sometimes a composer wants a completely non-emotional effect, and there are many different types and ways to create them. The ability to create these effects would also be considered pre-requisite for having good musicality. So while the latter part of your question is a big part of the initial attraction to any given piece of music, ultimately I think the former part of the question is actually closer to what constitutes musicality. I didn't go back and reread the rest of this thread, by the way, so this may have been already mentioned, but generally when musicians use the word musicality they are referring to phrasing, or one's ability to make nice musical phrases - again, not necessarily an emotional thing, though of course it often is. Having a good sense of rhythm would also be a very obvious pre-requisite for musicality. Ultimately, music is the organization of sound in time. Just some thoughts on your question. By the way, most certainly the bells would be considered music, and musical. |
I think Mapman is right, when he says, that it is impossible to quantify musicality. That is also the reason that psychology generally shies away from this problem. Learsfool, I think, makes several excellent points, although I disagree, that "emotions are part of the music". Humans, also higher forms of mammals have emotions. Music per se has not. It is sound, which however composers as well as their interpreters can shape cleverly, if they so chose, to arrange in such a way, that they can evoke all sorts of feelings, images and emotions in the listener. Maler and Richard Strauss were masters in this about 200 years ago, Prokofiev and Shostakovich in the last century just to mention a few. Strauss in fact was famous for saying, that if need be, he could put a glass of beer into music. There is a whole bag of tricks, as musicologists will point out, which by clevery arranging notes and the voicing and combination of instruments, by which you can evoke almost any state of mind you wish for in the listener. You might say, that music is able to manipulate us, as for example Stalin and Hitler very well knew. However, it seems to me,that there is more to it: Bach's music is basically pure mathematics and with a bit of a jump in time also Schoenberg's. But they can and do evoke deep emotions in a listener, if he has the ear for their music. I also fully agree with Learsfool, that what we call PraT and phrasing, are used to evoke something in the listener, who then, listening to a given piece, if he likes it would probably call "musical". Bascially though, I think that Mapman has hit the nail on the head: As little as you can quantify what makes up a human being, you cannot quantify what makes for musicality. You can certainly identify parts, as we try to do here, you can examine the question through musical education, historically, aesthetically, sociologically, psychologically, musicologically, but the whole is always more than all the parts and at least for me it remains a mystery. |
Hi Detlof - I think you misunderstood me slightly. I did not mean to equate music exactly with emotion. What I meant is that almost all music is expressive of some emotion, which is not the same thing. In fact, music can be much more expressive of emotion than words. Also, a great deal of musicality can be quantified, but one has to be somewhat versed in music theory to do so. Music is a language, that has a great deal of logic and "grammar", and all musical compositions have some sort of form, whether it is a simple song form, or a complex very large scale work. Mastery of all these things is fundamental to creating music, and therefore must be a part of "musicality." To speak to Sabai's comments - almost all music is highly intellectual, though you are certainly not alone in not wanting to think about it in that way. One of the major criticisms of Schoenberg, to pick one of the composers Detlof named, was that his music was too intellectual, despite much of it being very emotionally expressive. He was accused of composing by the mathematical tables, filling in notes according to a formula. |
Excellent posts and refreshing to see musicality discussed as it relates to the music and not just some abstract, and usually mistaken, description of the sound of equipment. A couple of thoughts re some recent comments: I think that it's important to remember that music affects our emotions in two different ways. There is an important distinction between perceived emotion in music and emotion that is felt. For instance, sometimes a performance is so rapturous and heart-felt, or so in-synch with what the composer intended, that the listener cannot help but be moved by it; it is felt. Then there are works and/or performances that are intended to evoke a certain emotion (fear, for instance) and the listener can understand this, or perceive this without actually feeling that emotion. I do agree that, as Learsfool points out, emotions are part of music. Once a work leaves the printed page (in the case of non-improvised music), the performer's emotions are an integral part of it; it is not simply organized sound. At that point listener personality becomes an important component of the "mix". Listeners of certain personality types react to certain music and certain performance styles differently than other listeners; and react (or not) differently to the expressed emotion in a performance. |
Frogman, with all due respect and fully agreeing with the distinction you make between perceived emotion and emotion that is felt as well as apologies for being a nitpicking old curmudgeon, I still insist, that emotion is NOT in the music. It may be in the composer, who translates it into his score, it may be in the interpreter, who through his training, his artistry, his concept of the score and perhaps, but by no means always, by his being moved emotionally by the composer's score, translates it into sound, which again in the listener may or may not cause emotions. In a way, I don't like what I am saying, I love music, but I also try to stand for what I at least think is precise. To be honest, it is only when I envisage this amazing chain of events, of how the magic of what is music evolves, that I stand in awe of the mystery what music is and what it can do to us. |
Detlof, I think I see where you are coming from now. What I think you mean is that music, on the page, is nothing without the performer(s) to bring it to life, and you are also saying that it is the performer who imparts emotion to it. Yet, you also say that the composer can translate emotion into his score. Here is where I am not certain you can have that both ways. I think it is clear that very often a composer is intending to project a definite, specific emotion through the music. So in this sense, emotion is indeed part of the music, and this is what Frogman is saying in his post. |
In my original OP from 2010 I was not so concerned about the quality of reproduction. Since then, my system has evolved to a much higher level. It provides much more listener satisfaction than it did back then. As a result, I have come to appreciate how much the quality of a good audio system adds to enjoyment of the music. Learsfool, But, of course, music is far more than a language. It is processed by the brain in a unique way. For instance, lyrics are not processed by the brain as words. They are processed as part of a musical whole. And, of course, there is an intellectual side to music. But that is not what most of us are concerned about when we listen. Frogman, As you rightly point out, much of what we perceive musically is dictated by our own personality. To that we can add our mood at the moment and our personal memories. What is felt and evoked in one person may not be the same as what is felt and evoked in another. Just as we cannot know how each person feels when he tastes vanilla we cannot know how each person reacts under the skin to any given musical piece. Detlof, When all is said and done, music does indeed remain a mystery. As it should. |
Learsfool, Yes of course. I do not discount what you point out. As in all art, in poetry, in painting, and in music, which we talk about here, there can be emotion transmitted from artist to recipient. What fascinates me is, that the medium of transmission per se is dead. It is our mind, soul, psyche, "us", which in a sense put our emotion back into what we hear, see or read. We then call the medium emotional, because it triggers something in us, which you rightly say, may be intended by the composer as well as the interpreter of his/her score. You put the emphasis of this process on the medium, I on "us". We're probably both half right. But I'll stop now flogging a horse which is half dead. We're already way out of what this thread intended. Geoffkait, I am at a perdition. I ever motorise Google's translator. My nativity mouthing is a subdialekt of Klingonian. Many Cheerleaders to you too. detlof Sabay, apologies, won't do it again. At least it's not intellektual, I think, probably not even particularly funny, but I just could not help myself. The music was too emional and I too full of good wine. |
****I stand in awe of the mystery what music is and what it can do to us.**** I think that says it all. It is mysterious; and certainly re what (and how) it does to us. ****What fascinates me is, that the medium of transmission per se is dead.**** I suppose; and we are probably saying much the same thing. Music, in a score or recorded in some medium needs a recipient (listener) with some degree of intellect and capability of feeling emotions. I will say that I was always amazed when my pet parakeet would sing along only to Mozart :-). I personally like the mystery of it all and sometimes our search for precise answers causes us to lose a little bit of the romance and emotion of it all. |
Let musicality be a measuring factor of Music. You can't define any units of measure similar to kilogram or meters per second, but rather find it as a combination of scales, notes, rhythm(s) intervals, chords, harmonic maneuvers, sophistication, level of challenge of performer or band or orchestra. In general as an example, we can subdivide to three sizes just like we often used to see t-shirts in the department store: Small, Medium, Large, XLarge, XX, etc. Size will depend on most of factors mentioned and combined above. The largest musicality usually found in classical music and the best musicians usually classically trained. |