Music Theory and Culture

octatonic

monquixote said:

octatonic said:

monquixote said:

Danny1969 said:

To be fair it's not clear whether we invented maths or whether it was there to be discovered. 

Maths is a fundamental property of the universe.

We are straying into philosophy here, I guess.
You're right but without a brain to understand it does it have any meaning?
A lion can't understand maths- it doesn't even know that it is a lion.

If you wiped out humanity and all human knowledge and another sentient species evolved it would develop maths and it would be the same.

I'm not you can say that without knowing how many orders of sentience exist.
If sentience develops in the same way that ours does then sure.
Our current understanding of maths isn't a fixed thing- it is just how we understand it right now.

We are massively off topic now though.

Cranky

jpfamps said:

Also by stating "but the next level of this is when one set of culture-knowledge claims superiority over another, or even over all others," are you advocating cultural relativism? I think that is a very slippery slope down which to go, for example if a culture thinks it's acceptable to persecute homosexuals is this OK? 

No, that's not what I'd say.  It's not my take on "cultural relativism" either.  I just mean that the human process of symbolic communication is always going to produce culturally-specific knowledge, classification schemes, etc.  In many cases, the differences are irrelevant.  Like being geocentric, for example, doesn't really affect daily life at all.  And the notion that being heliocentric makes a culture superior to another is kinda silly.

I think something I could have been more clear on is, in the video and in the modern era more generally, the words "culture" and "race" were used practically interchangeably.  That's really the problem.  Because historically that logic was used to the point where some groups were described as being completely devoid of culture altogether, aka "one with nature".  Whereas nowadays we know that one's race plays no determining role in what culture they grow up in.

Every culture has its own way of uplifting and degrading "types of" people, too.  To that I'd say that no one form of degradation is worse than another, and no one form of uplift better than another.  So, no, persecuting anybody isn't acceptable.  I think Amin Malouf's In the Name of Identity covers this pretty well.

jpfamps

A lion can't understand maths- it doesn't even know that it is a lion.

How do we know that?   

viz

jpfamps said:

A lion can't understand maths- it doesn't even know that it is a lion.

How do we know that?   

Anyway sometimes it’s standing up

octatonic

jpfamps said:

A lion can't understand maths- it doesn't even know that it is a lion.

How do we know that?   

Now we are going to go really off topic.
The question of animal consciousness has been hotly debated for years- centuries really.
The notion of animals having consciousness was rejected for centuries because it was thought that allowing for any consideration that they may have would impact the field of religious thought- the closer animals get to humans the more it questions the idea that God made the Earth for man to live on.

A lot of research has been done on animal consciousness since then though- there are a number of challenges in doing the work though, mostly because it is hard to prove a negative.
Let me adjust what I said above.
A lion probably can't understand maths- and it probably doesn't even know that it is a lion.
I suggest we leave it there unless anyone really wants to talk about the 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness and the Hard Problem of Consciousness.

WiresDreamDisasters

What did Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat say? Talking about music is like getting kicked in the dick by Liu Kang on a Friday night out down Yates's.

Something like that.

At the end of the day, we're all going to put our own subjective perceptions onto music, regardless of any given set of rules or structure. The map is not the territory, and music theory is not music. It's the observation of music, and historically was written down to avoid the inherent problems with human memory.

The crux of this topic seems to me to be "X culture teaches music this way... I want to use that as a way to demonize said culture" ... when all cultures will teach all sorts of things in a specific way. Vedic mathematics is an approach to mathematics that is different to traditional "Western" approaches. Doesn't make it inferior as a standalone fact. You still need to figure out how accurate a methodology it is.

jpfamps

octatonic said:

jpfamps said:

A lion can't understand maths- it doesn't even know that it is a lion.

How do we know that?   

Now we are going to go really off topic.
The question of animal consciousness has been hotly debated for years- centuries really.
The notion of animals having consciousness was rejected for centuries because it was thought that allowing for any consideration that they may have would impact the field of religious thought- the closer animals get to humans the more it questions the idea that God made the Earth for man to live on.

A lot of research has been done on animal consciousness since then though- there are a number of challenges in doing the work though, mostly because it is hard to prove a negative.
Let me adjust what I said above.
A lion probably can't understand maths- and it probably doesn't even know that it is a lion.
I suggest we leave it there unless anyone really wants to talk about the 2012 Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness and the Hard Problem of Consciousness.

Sorry I was joking!

jpfamps

Cranky said:

 Like being geocentric, for example, doesn't really affect daily life at all.  And the notion that being heliocentric makes a culture superior to another is kinda silly.

That's the Sherlock Holmes attitude to the issue:

"What the deuce is it to me?" Holmes interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”

Regardless, I was not making a cultural judgement about geocentricity or heliocentricity, I was trying to point out that certain knowledge is empirically superior to other knowledge.

Cranky

jpfamps said:

Cranky said:

 Like being geocentric, for example, doesn't really affect daily life at all.  And the notion that being heliocentric makes a culture superior to another is kinda silly.

That's the Sherlock Holmes attitude to the issue:

"What the deuce is it to me?" Holmes interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”

Regardless, I was not making a cultural judgement about geocentricity or heliocentricity, I was trying to point out that certain knowledge is empirically superior to other knowledge.

Yeah yeah, I get that, sorry I'm just bantering about culture and what it is, it's kinda my thing.  I don't think anyone's being judgey.  That's a good Holmes reference, kinda sums up how I feel about a lot of things we fill our heads with.  Makes me think of that Gang of Four song: "He fills his head with culture
He gives himself an ulcer".

GuyBoden

I mostly agree with Adam Neely. IMHO, the continued dominance of 18th Century European Classical Music Theory can stifle musical creativity, but you have to have a reasonably good understanding of music theory to even realise this.

Personally, I think that Adam Neely's youtube channel is on the whole a very educational channel, but he does embrace a bit of controversy and conflict to attract more viewers, but that seems to be the aim for a lot of Youtuber's.

Interestingly in another video, Adam Neely says that one of the books that most Influenced him was "Twentieth-Century Harmony: Creative Aspects and Practice by Vincent Persichetti" published in 1961, which covers some more modern compositional techniques.

https://www.questia.com/read/3652325/twentieth-century-harmony-creative-aspects-and-practice

WiresDreamDisasters

Whitesplainin' to Herbie Hancock.

thing

I think there can be an element of reverse snobbery at work in musical circles too. In a lot of conversations with modern musos there's an undercurrent of 'Classically trained musicians=snobs, narrow minded'  Not in all cases but it's certainly there.

Most of the classically trained musicians I meet (I work with about 80 of them) are brill, open to any types of music and willing to learn from 'contemporary' musicians like me, just as I am from them. They are all invariably fabulous players/arrangers in their own right too.

@ WireDreamDisasters

My understanding of how music is made in the modern world is pretty limited too! I leave that to people who know what they are doing.

WiresDreamDisasters

thing said:

I think there can be an element of reverse snobbery at work in musical circles too. In a lot of conversations with modern musos there's an undercurrent of 'Classically trained musicians=snobs, narrow minded'  Not in all cases but it's certainly there.

Most of the classically trained musicians I meet (I work with about 80 of them) are brill, open to any types of music and willing to learn from 'contemporary' musicians like me, just as I am from them. They are all invariably fabulous players/arrangers in their own right too.

@ WireDreamDisasters

My understanding of how music is made in the modern world is pretty limited too! I leave that to people who know what they are doing.

Actually this is all true too, seen it a lot myself.