Is Musical Truth Abstract?

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 15 Apr 2011, 00:59

Ranganayaki,
A twenty seven year old, you say? In my dreams! Grandson numero uno is half that age! If I sound that young, shame on me, golden girl, not acting her age. Well, I'm younger than the golden girl of CM (Parassala Ponnammal), actually

As for spring cuckoo, he has so many facets, he thinks deeply about things, has many interesting things to share and is capable of bringing forth a gem of an idea every now and then--and, he has a sense of humor too.

Mahavishnu,
Most accomplished? I'm not, evn after donkey's years. Thanks for your, should i say, 'perception' of me?

Mon ami,
Topping will stop in his tracks if he reads your version of his writing! Amazing piece of cheeky work there!

Nick,
You say things in your unique way and it makes me happy

Now, has anyone heard Topping play? I could only hear a few notes of his playing.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 15 Apr 2011, 04:46

Ranganayaki, I agree I should not have used the word 'defense' in referring to what you wrote.

I complied with your suggestion and went back and read again what you wrote. That all makes sense... I empathize with your frustration when others ( like me ) misunderstand what you wrote!! It often happens here and that is why further discussions of this type help to un-muddify those things. And you have managed to do that in your detailed response.

You do have an interesting take on how you understand these things. If I understood you correctly, you are OK with any number of interpretations as long as it does not contradict what the author meant. Two questions.

1) Does that presuppose that it is known ( or possible to know ) what the author meant?
2) Do you allow for the possibility that in your framework, it is possible to understood only a sub-set of what the author meant while still not contradicting what the author meant?

Item 2 is interesting because in all these discussions about the meaning of what the author said, we have not accommodated for what the author said about 'distilling the styles'.. We have only focused on that still center.

Arasi, I understood what you wrote about music flowing out from some subconscious depths. Not that it has happened a lot, but a few rare times it had happened it was quite startling, in a pleasant way.

Ranganayaki · Post by **Ranganayaki** » 15 Apr 2011, 08:53

vasanthakokilam wrote:Ranganayaki, I agree I should not have used the word 'defense' in referring to what you wrote.

I complied with your suggestion and went back and read again what you wrote. That all makes sense... I empathize with your frustration when others ( like me ) misunderstand what you wrote!! It often happens here and that is why further discussions of this type help to un-muddify those things. And you have managed to do that in your detailed response..

Thank you SO much, VK, that's a kind response!

vasanthakokilam wrote:You do have an interesting take on how you understand these things. If I understood you correctly, you are OK with any number of interpretations as long as it does not contradict what the author meant.

Yes and No. I am ok with any number of interpretations, but not ,as you say, as long as it doesn't contradict what the author meant. I am ok with (theoretically) any number of interpretations as long as the text in question does not contradict the interpretation. But you do agree that it is rare and unlikely for a text to be able to afford too many vastly different interpretations. Most often it is just a question of nuances of meaning.

Interpretation goes beyond "meaning". It can be a collection of impressions, moods, feelings, ideas... It is really the reader's response to the author.

vasanthakokilam wrote: 1) Does that presuppose that it is known ( or possible to know ) what the author meant?

It may be possible to know what the author meant. The author may be a writer who explicitly made commentaries on his own work. He has a right to do that. That is always taken into consideration. Sometimes, that is really all there is in terms of "meaning". But sometimes, the words may speak to a reader in other ways, beyond what the writer says.

vasanthakokilam wrote: 2) Do you allow for the possibility that in your framework, it is possible to understood only a sub-set of what the author meant while still not contradicting what the author meant?

Of course, nothing prevents us from understanding less than what the author wanted to convey. It's just not interesting, generally speaking. A good interpretation must account for the totality of the work, or at least recognize a problem with a part of it.

vasanthakokilam wrote: Item 2 is interesting because in all these discussions about the meaning of what the author said, we have not accommodated for what the author said about 'distilling the styles'.. We have only focused on that still center.

I think I have addressed what the words about the styles meant to me. But I do feel that the metaphor of the process of distillation is intrusive and really does not help better convey what he is trying to say. After all, he is a musician and not necessarily a professinal writer with a claim to good writing. In the absence of any other information, I would just put it down to a poor choice of a metaphor.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 15 Apr 2011, 09:57

Very good. Thanks Ranganayaki. I think I have reconciled and come to terms with the statement "Music that is arrived at by the distillation of style cannot but be real." I am comfortable with your interpretation '"deep common experience underlying the style, or rather, beyond it. no matter what the style or genre." I can readily see that common "substrate" experience in rhythm in spite of many outward dissimilarities. That is in line with Mahavishnu's experience with the Brazilian group.

Such a search for underlying commonality/substrate is quite universal. The most fascinating of all such endeavors is us. "We" are the styles here and we have to 'distill' ourselves to get to that commonality. In that inner stillness, we all have to be the same.

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 15 Apr 2011, 18:15

VK,
You say:
In that inner stillness, we all have to be the same.
Now, 'that's' a quote!

Ranganayaki · Post by **Ranganayaki** » 15 Apr 2011, 18:51

vasanthakokilam wrote:Very good. Thanks Ranganayaki.
......

In that inner stillness, we all have to be the same.

Thanks, VK.

About this sentence.. for ME, I would have said that the "inner stillness" is and waits to be discovered. So we all ARE the same, and do not have to be the same. We don't need to strive to be the same. We reach the sameness that already is. (This is starting to border on philosophy!!!) For me that part about the inner stillness is descriptive, rather than prescriptive, is what I'm trying to say.

I really don't mean to nitpick there, but since we have paraphrased my interpretation, I just want to be clear about the rest of my view.

I really appreciate you, VK, and agree with Arasi.. you do take the time to try open your mind and understand a point of view.

(that's an Arasi-smile from me, not a wink).

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 15 Apr 2011, 19:43

Ranganayaki,
Thanks! Also for saying that the wink I use really is a smile (for want of a genuine smiling face).
However, a wink is fine by me.

My grandson tells me a joke,
I see a wink in his eyes

He makes a doggie face
His tongue hanging out,
His lips lost in that pose
But his eyes have that wink

He comes running towards us
As we arrive at his door
He's excited, our joy
Reflected in his face,
Which
Materializes
Into
A

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 15 Apr 2011, 21:19

Nice imagery Arasi.

Ranganayaki: Point well taken, yours is not a nit-pick. My 'have to be' was not prescriptive and not even descriptive but a 'conjecture', but based on strong conviction ( along the lines 'it has to be that, what else can it be' though we do not know for sure ).

I think I get the essence of what Topping says now. Distill the styles to get to that "common thing that is even beyond the styles". Distill us to get to that common stillness in us. And he says such a 'distilled' music created and experienced at the 'distilled' inner stillness is the genuine music. It is a state of minimal or zero information loss. Truth!

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 15 Apr 2011, 21:33

Ah.. and that is MVI's Shadjam!!

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 15 Apr 2011, 22:02

arasi
You are a lucky happy person who also spreads sunshine among others around you!
That is concrete and isnot abstract
..though I am at a total loss in this thread in spite of VK/Ranganayaki (spare Ramesh) discovering
new pearls of wisdom every moment in those Topping's scribbles

I know of a medical joke where the patient took his doctor's prescrption to the bank and cashed a big amount and then did all his groceries on the doctor's credit and paid off his mortgage and finally got a cushy job using it as a recommendation letter

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 15 Apr 2011, 22:08

VK,
Toppig is not ''toppling'' at all, it seems! We seem to get the essence of that stillness he's talking about

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 15 Apr 2011, 22:17

Arasi, I was going to ask you if you had grown old enough to wear purple and red yet

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me...

Then I realised that, as an Indian woman, you probably combined such colours in your youth, even still perhaps, and that they would have suited you very well

Western "taste" has yet to properly appreciate colours, as India does.

(But it is a great poem, anyway

)

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 15 Apr 2011, 22:51

Nick: I loved that poem. "make up for the sobriety of my youth"

I probably know one or two who fit that description to a tee, not anyone in this forum!!

Children and old people can have a lot in common. Norms? What other people think? Do not have to care. Children do not know any better and elderly people know but do not need to care. What a great luxury! And people in the middle put up with both and even enjoy them as long as the mischiefs are in enjoyable limits

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 15 Apr 2011, 23:00

CML,
I don't know what old men wear when they are old, but you too are an incurable optimist.

Nick,
I do wear those colors, still. Yes, those are indian colors. I do notice as I walk around in wintry weather, reds and purples in coats and clothes in London. In our days, the gray landscape of winter was dotted with gray and brown clad men and women, housewives walking down the High Street solemnly. Now, even the shops look festive with pastels and bright colored merchandise, the smell of curry pervading the air!!

VK,
Don't get carried away and say rash things. Even optimistic seniors will tell you that this stage in life is a not a luxury! Yes, you hope every day is going to be a sunny day and think how many more such days are going to be your bounty. Well, I'd leave the aches and pains well alone!

Thanks to Topping, we had a good lounge hour or two! Bless him!
Now, back to my housework, wearing my purples and pinks

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 15 Apr 2011, 23:08

In another thread, I've just accused CML of pessimism!

Keep up the bright colours, Arasi. Yes, the colour of a British town centre has improved hugely since 1950s

Ranganayaki · Post by **Ranganayaki** » 16 Apr 2011, 03:46

:^) |(

:^) :^) :^) ;( ;(

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 16 Apr 2011, 06:59

It is not right for our forum to not have a separate thread for the renowned Vidwan Sri. Kalpathy Ramanathan. I have created one now and moved some posts to that thread. Please continue the related discussion in that thread: http://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=16219 That thread starts with a picture figuring his grandson and slowly segues to the vidwan. I will take the liberty to assume that the grandfather would only be very glad. The flow and the segue have worked out great. Check it out.

Ranganayaki, let me know if you want me to take care of your emoticon post now, if what you were wondering about was the detour.

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 16 Apr 2011, 09:17

NIck,
I just realized that you have given the link to the poem as well. It's something! Has so many layers to it. Oh no! It's not as great a poem as An Ode to A Grecian Urn or anything like that--just a sweet little poem--and I like it, that's all

Ranganayaki · Post by **Ranganayaki** » 16 Apr 2011, 09:26

vasanthakokilam wrote:Ranganayaki, let me know if you want me to take care of your emoticon post now, if what you were wondering about was the detour.

Oh, no, VK!! The detour was great! You can certainly take care of the emoticon post if you want, I'm not particularly attached to any of my postings

.. But I was expressing my unnamable emotion

at discovering that no one had understood more than one or two posts in that entire conversation, even you said so!! I've seriously learned to shut up

.. Is it really that hard to understand? It's actually elementary..

Well, it can best be described as "muttikkanum pole irunthuthu!"

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 16 Apr 2011, 09:30

>even you said so!!

I think you are taking those statements too literally. Well, at least in my case, it was meant in jest!!

btw, In the split, those comments by veeyens went to the other thread, your emoticon post has lost its context

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 16 Apr 2011, 11:34

>Well, it can best be described as "muttikkanum pole irunthuthu!"

In some forums, there is an emoticon for that! Like this:

mahavishnu · Post by **mahavishnu** » 16 Apr 2011, 17:39

muttikkanum pole irunthuthu!"

That's what poles are for.

Ranganayaki · Post by **Ranganayaki** » 16 Apr 2011, 18:34

Perfect!,

! Thank you SO much, VK!!

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 16 Apr 2011, 21:12

Correction
"muttikkanum pole irumbAnathu"

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 16 Apr 2011, 22:08

'pOl' irumbAnadu,
talai adaRku virundAnadu
kAlgaLO, marundu tEDa viraindadu

grammarians, apologies for not saying virundAyina--poetic license on my part, if these nonsense verses can be called poetry.

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 16 Apr 2011, 22:49

arumbAna kavithayO karumbAnathu!

harimau · Post by **harimau** » 19 Apr 2011, 11:31

To Tug Hearts, Music First Must Tickle the Neurons

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/scien ... 1&src=dayp

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 19 Apr 2011, 20:51

Harimau,
A big thank you for your bringing this to the forum. I am going to read this again to understand more of what is said here. The studies are fascinating. I do hope the experts on Rasikas.org explain the findings with examples. I can only 'empathize' with it! It all makes sense to a mere listener like me. It seems as though the findings have made an impact on research in several universities--has captured the imagination of some performers both in classical and popular music.

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 19 Apr 2011, 21:32

Indeed, it is fascinating.

Whilst much of my response to music is in the emotion/spirit part of the spectrum, I have always felt that many of those "moments" in music evoke an almost physical response; there is some kind of actual sensation involved.

VK RAMAN · Post by **VK RAMAN** » 19 Apr 2011, 21:44

harimau - thanks for sharing the article.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 19 Apr 2011, 22:07

Interesting article. We have heard of Levitin before in this forum when the mainstream press carried the previous findings of his lab. Arasi, Mahavishnu is the natural choice to be our guide in explaining things along the lines you have asked for.

BTW, the article has this quotation from Roasanne Cash which is awesome.

.."She (Rosanne Cash) said she learned from her father, Johnny Cash, “that your style is a function of your limitations, more so than a function of your skills.”

That is quite a statement and it rings so true.

“You’ve heard plenty of great, great singers that leave you cold,” she said. “They can do gymnastics, amazing things. If you have limitations as a singer, maybe you’re forced to find nuance in a way you don’t have to if you have a four-octave range.”

Mull over that one.. It speaks to me.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 20 Apr 2011, 01:23

Article says.. "“The difference between a B and a P, for example, is a difference in the timing involved in producing the sound,” said Aniruddh D. Patel, a music scientist at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. “We don’t signal the difference between P and B by how loud it is.”

This forum is ahead of the main stream press. Mahavishnu already introduced us to Sri. Ani Patel's work

http://www.rasikas.org/forums/viewtopic. ... el#p186335

The benefit of having insiders among us

mahavishnu · Post by **mahavishnu** » 20 Apr 2011, 04:03

Harimau, thanks for posting the article. And VK, thanks for making the connection to our earlier discussion on Ani's work. I will try to summarize the paper and situate it in the context of this thread and our forum.

The NYT article, of course, is trying to give an impressionistic tour of what is going on in music cognition research at various centres. In a sense, this is the state-of-the-knowledge of what we know about the brain and Music. The article is very well written and quite accessible to the general readership.

There are four main players. Dan Levitin's group at McGill, Ed Large in Florida and Nina Kraus at Northwestern & Ani Patel in San Diego. Dan's presence in the music cognition community has served the purpose of popularizing the science as well as bringing in mainstream musicians into thinking about science. Dan is a very impressive guy and can keep an audience of > 5000 glued to the seats when talking science. We call him the rock-star of music cognition. Dan has wonderful associations with people like Bobby McFerrin & Yo-Yo Ma in addition to his rock n roll rolodex.

For those interested a link to the original work of these scientists can be found on Dan Levitin's site here: http://www.psych.mcgill.ca/labs/levitin/othersites.htm (this also includes a link to lab website of yours truly).

The article can be broken down into four parts

1) Expectation: What makes a musical piece unique, emotionally communicative and not just a collection of notes (so as to tug at one's heart)? Dan's lab has shown that the the "canonical average" or "technically perfect" is not what people respond best to but it is actually to music that has slight imperfections in timing, stretched long notes. The so-called "human" elements of the music.

Jamshed Bharucha (formerly at Dartmouth) has shown that what makes us appreciate music is the "expectancy" structure that is not present in non-musical communication forms. I can write till the cows come home about what this is, but a quick demonstration by Bobby McFerrin can show you what this is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk, where he shows that the pentatonic scale (seen in mohanam/hindolam & has a predictable musical structure).
In the video, the guy in the blue shirt is Dan and the Indian-looking guy (can't miss him) is Bharucha. Jamshed is now the provost of Tufts University.

2) Mirror neurons and movement: Ed Large's work has shown that the areas of the brain that are active when listening to music with an expectation structure (in addition to the usual suspect areas that process auditory information) are the ones that are in-charge of making the music themselves. Simple example, if you watch a batsman hit a ball on TV, the same areas of the brain that orchestrate the stroke-making, are active even when you are sitting on the couch and watching the match. These neurons are called "mirror" neurons, for obvious reasons. In a sense, music is always produced by human movement. In listening to music, we are passively simulating this movement with these neurons in our heads. Thus the movements/gestures that are the most human-like with all their imperfections have the best response from the brain.

3) What makes the brain of a musician different: Nina Kraus at NWU in Chicago has studied a the brains of tens of thousands of musicians using complex scans. Her major discovery was that musicians can hear subtleties and detail in the presence of noise. What this means is that the brains of musicians has gone through an enormous amount of change (plasticity) that gives them the ability to listen to details in sound, that are otherwise not detectable by non-musicians (or people with no special musical training). The best part about this research is that the recordings were done on the brainstems of the musicians, so their responses were spontaneous or not related to attentional functions of the brain.

4) Music and expressive timing: We have discussed this to some extent elsewhere. The big question here is: what is it about the temporal structure of music that listeners lock into? (even in music with no direct timing structure like raga singing/Gregorian chants). The article focusses on what aspects of timing provide the brain with clues about expectation structure and Joseph LeDoux at NYU compares this to the process of depth perception. The retinal image is only 2D, yet the brain is able to extract features of the world in 3D. Similarly, these timing cues provide very important pieces of information for the brain about the emotional content in music.
The example of the bilabial plosive the basis for the /p/ and /b/ sounds is a good one. We can tell the difference between the two based on the timing of the onset of voicing and not the loudness or timbre or other qualities of sound.

5) The unknown: Paraphrasing the article: "Of course, science has not figured out how to measure other elements of musical expression, including tone, timbre, harmonics and how audience interaction changes what musicians do. While there may be some consensus about what makes music expressive, performers say it is hardly immutable".

Now, how is this related to this thread?
Ineffable musical qualities are perceived by us. This involves distilling some aspect of the musical sound, something that moves us (the whole "heart" analogy is unscientific, since we all know that the heart has completely different physiologic functions). I guess what we mean by the "heart" is the emotional tug we experience when we hear music. Scientists are trying to understand the basis of that. Currently, we think that the clues lie the the ideas emerging from the discoveries in 1 through 4. We have a lot of work left to do in 5. That is my 1 Rupee summary. Hope it is of use.

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 20 Apr 2011, 04:19

That video is simply mind-blowing !!!

I also wonder if this expectancy is why we are dying to guess the raga and then everything seems "sweeter" in terms of listening experience. Till that point we are on pins and needles because our cm conditioning is unable to set that expectation ?

Arun

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 20 Apr 2011, 07:08

Mahavishnu,
Are we glad you are on sabbatical!
Fascinating stuff. Yes, of all art forms, music seems to involve us more, at least to this lay person. Our brains are on active duty (from what I read from your much more than a rupee's worth of summary)--along with tugs of the heart, of course! I am now thinking of how I usually react on seeing for the first time a masterpiece: i am moved, I see myself standing in front of it, awed. My heart wells up, but how much? Then, I see a magnificently crafted temple, it tugs at my heart more, my reacting to the craftsmanship (along with my mind's association with the Gods within?). Music goes one step further. It's the most absorbing of all experiences in the arts, at least for me. Have studies been made about how visual arts elicit responses from us? Have they been compared with our response to music?

Arun,
Seeing 'Expectancy' made me think of rAgam-guessing too! I hope the scientists have an explanation for it. Is it a cultural thing?

--like my associative memory about the Gods in the temple? I don't know!

mahavishnu · Post by **mahavishnu** » 20 Apr 2011, 18:36

Arun, Expectancy is fascinating. I have often felt that too with ragam identification. Yes, our CM conditioning forces us to categorize a melody. The processes preceding this categorization are certainly those related to "expectancy". Of course, even after we have it identified and in the bag, the expectancy process continues to ensure that the melody conforms to an expected one. I was just listening to TMK sing Abheri with D1 the other day and was thinking of your discussion on the topic. Although I understood that it was technically correct, because of the number of "priors" of listening to and even learning the D2 dhaivatam I felt that it sounded weird and defied some internal "anticipation" mechanism. Have you ever experienced this?

Some say, that the musical discrimination process is a kind of "Bayesian" inference making; essentially generating expectations based on priors. Hema (on this forum) has developed stochastic models of raga recognition. Not sure she is reading this. Of course, everyone is not on sabbatical.

I like your usage of the word "sweet". A guy named David Huron (from Ohio-State) has released a new book called "Sweet anticipation" where he talks about expectation under multiple contexts. http://www.amazon.com/Sweet-Anticipatio ... 0262083450. The nice thing is that the book has supplementary materials on the web with demo pieces.

Arasi, thanks for your kind words. I am very happy to be on sabbatical as well; sadly it will be over in a couple of months ;(
There are a lot of studies of the perception of visual art (mostly paintings). However the time scale of their influence of the brain is a bit different; music has an immediate effect and also long-lasting effects. Evidence suggests that aesthetics in the visual modality operate slightly differently. However, the visual areas of the brain also have strong connections to the emotional processing centres, and can hence "tug the heart". VS Ramachandran at UCSD has written a good bit on it.

Interestingly, the buzz in educational circles is that early training in visual and musical arts leads to higher IQ and better analytical skills. Both in the short and long term. The finding this is based on is called the "Mozart effect". Listening to a day of Mozart (used generically) makes you better at spatio-temporal reasoning. However this is very controversial and there is a lot of republican opposition for funding studies that support this idea.

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 20 Apr 2011, 18:56

The Mirror neurons and movement stuff is very interesting. A while back I heard about another phenomenon often reported by basketball players. The defender, who is also an offensive player, knows ahead of time if the ball is going to make it or not, even before the ball leaves the other player's hands. It may be these mirror neurons in action. I remember hearing this on PBS, so it may be in the context of brain studies.

The Bobby McFerrin stuff is amazing. Nice to see Mr. 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' in action!! He says he can make this happen with every audience. Incredible. Especially for a large audience to coordinate together under his body command. It just sounds too perfect both in terms of swaras and laya. Non-music teachers out there, you should try this with your class!!

Mahavishnu, do we know what happened at the gathering prior to that? Was there any preparation of the audience?

mahavishnu · Post by **mahavishnu** » 20 Apr 2011, 19:19

Yes, the mirror neurons would be involved in some aspect of the predictive process. Although there are other well-identified predictive mechanisms that the brain has at its disposal.

RE: the McFerrin video. There was no prep with the audience at all. After introducing them to 3 notes in a scale, he is able to get them to extrapolate the other frequency intervals. He claims to be able to do this with people with no musical training at all and even children. I saw a 60 minutes special on him some years ago. Fascinating man! He has been doing wonderful work on promoting music to underprivileged children etc.

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 20 Apr 2011, 19:43

The defender, who is also an offensive player, knows ahead of time if the ball is going to make it or not, even before the ball leaves the other player's hands.

It maybe that we need VKV's take from the world of sub-atomic particles here!

Mahavishnu, of course I took the rest of your post seriously, and with interest, but can't help asking --- if I go to the shop to buy music, is "generic Mozart" cheaper?

Somehow, I missed your earlier post, which is jam-packed with good stuff, including the link to the pentatonic video.

musicians can hear subtleties and detail in the presence of noise.

My mridanagam teacher would use cassette tapes of lessons and compositions and songs for us to learn the accompaniment. Sometimes they might be tenth or twentieth or goodness-knows-th generation cassette copies made on cheap portable cassette players. The first thing that goes is the melody, which gets flattened out, particularly if it was a bad recording in the first place. from then on, the sound diminishes into a mixture of thuds and hisses. None of this seemed to matter to him at all! However much the music seemed, to me, to be just about gone, it was always there for him.

re timing and expectation, can you compare music with comedy (of the ha-ha variety)? Comedy is not a rhythmic form, and yet, whenever the great comedians are spoken of, one will always here mention of their sense of timing. Conversely, those who cannot get a laugh in a party may be told that it is not the jokes that are at fault, it is the way that they tell them. Comedians deal in timing --- and they deal in expectation, although the best jokes often work by denying our expectation and providing something else entirely, at, of course, exactly the right moment!

Perhaps there are parallels between a good alapana and a good joke?!?

arasi · Post by **arasi** » 20 Apr 2011, 20:36

Spot on, Nick!
Timing, the very essence of comedy! In AlApanA, neraval line and sometimes in svaram singing too.
Bob Hope is a perfect example. Even if the joke wasn't up to par, he pulled it off with his timing. Others too, but Bob Hope went on until he was ninety and that's why he comes to mind immediately. Ah, the expectation factor was there not only in the audience but on his part too, staying with the pause, however brief, waiting for the audience to burst into laughter. Another example is Robin Williams, with his meaningful pauses too, but it will be lost on us in his rapid fire style of delivery at times. For those who favor movies more--good old Ollie and Stan are examples...
Your guru's turning a deaf ear to the dead old tapes but still listening with his inner ear makes sense.

mahavishnu · Post by **mahavishnu** » 20 Apr 2011, 21:10

Nick, the humour connection is indeed interesting. This is also related to expectancies, although of a slightly different kind. Ramachandran (whom we spoke about earlier), suggests that humour has its neural basis in expectation and predictability. He argues that despite their surface diversity, all jokes and funny incidents have the a similar logical structure. You lead the listener along a garden path of expectation, slowly building up tension. At the end, you introduce a twist that defies the build-up of this expectation. Brain imaging evidence suggests that timing of the discrepancy between the expectation and the mismatch afterwards leads to the highest "amusement" response to a joke.

It is funny what scientists study these days

arunk · Post by **arunk** » 20 Apr 2011, 21:33

mahavishnu wrote: I was just listening to TMK sing Abheri with D1 the other day and was thinking of your discussion on the topic. Although I understood that it was technically correct, because of the number of "priors" of listening to and even learning the D2 dhaivatam I felt that it sounded weird and defied some internal "anticipation" mechanism. Have you ever experienced this

Yes indeed. I think perhaps this happens a lot - say even when anytime a artist renders an unexpected phrase within an established familiar context (i.e. raga is known). Depending on the phrase (i.e. a slip, or otherwise), it can have pleasantly surprise a listener, or can cause a furrowed brow

Also, the effect of obvious (thus predictable and "expected") patterns in swarams (e.g s r2 s s , d2 d2 p p , in Arabhi) is perhaps enhanced because it somehow matches our expectation which are being subconsciously, continuously set as we hear a performance???

Arun

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 21 Apr 2011, 12:47

Which "Man" are you asking?

mahavishnu · Post by **mahavishnu** » 21 Apr 2011, 18:21

Nick, you pass the test for British humour with flying colours. At least now we know you aren't spying for the Germans

rshankar · Post by **rshankar** » 21 Apr 2011, 19:19

Nick H wrote:I go to the shop to buy music, is "generic Mozart" cheaper?

Sure, and not just in the monetary sense of the word....

Nick H · Post by **Nick H** » 21 Apr 2011, 23:38

thenpaanan · Post by **thenpaanan** » 26 Apr 2011, 14:08

vasanthakokilam wrote: .."She (Rosanne Cash) said ....

“You’ve heard plenty of great, great singers that leave you cold,” she said. “They can do gymnastics, amazing things. If you have limitations as a singer, maybe you’re forced to find nuance in a way you don’t have to if you have a four-octave range.”

Mull over that one.. It speaks to me.

Isn't this also true at many levels? For example, for me what differentiates "classical" music from popular music is the preponderance of rules and restrictions in classical music. What makes classical music interesting is perhaps that the restrictions _force_ a different treatment of the musical material. This is clear from the "semi" classical film songs composed by the maven Ilaiyaraja. The distinction between his compositions and the pure Carnatic idiom is that he gets to break the rules when he sees fit -- but by minimizing those breaks Ilaiyaraja appeals to the classically minded among us as well.

Carnatic music is quite the place for singers with limitations in that it places so little emphasis on voice qualities of musicianship that matter a lot to other musical systems. This has the effect of not only uniquely allowing a class of singers with "broken voices" sing at a very high level of achievement but also giving us a breathtaking view of what one can do with limitations. With no disrespect intended, B. Rajam Iyer's 'jambupathe" in Yamunakalyani is an example where nuance matters more than plain brilliance and he delivered a stunningly moving piece moulding his limitations into nuance. Singers like TKGovinda Rao and RKSrikantan to mention just two contemporary voices have revelled us in their highly nuanced singing and I would argue that while their abundance of nuance may not be forced it is at least shaped by vocal limitations (in comparison to, say, a BMK or a TNS).

Thanks for pointing out a thoughtful point that I had missed on my own reading.

-Then Paanan

vasanthakokilam · Post by **vasanthakokilam** » 26 Apr 2011, 22:58

Than Paanan: Very thoughtful points. Those are the kinds of things that occurred to me as well. The rules need not necessarily be restrictive, even fuzzy and flexible boundaries serve that purpose. Your example of IR is spot on. IR can even think of extending those rules mainly because there are those rules in the first place.

I guess we can even say that a musician with no obvious restrictions in vocal range, tonal clarity and timbre, still needs to carve out their own restrictions and evolve an 'architecture' for their performance. They are so blessed with a wide bandwidth on those parameters, that they can evolve different 'architectures' by applying different restrictions in different contexts and performances.

P.S. This issue is quite pervasive in many fields. Architecture, including building architecture, software architecture or musical systems, has a lot to do with restrictions. Restrictions define what path they take. The restrictions, chosen or imposed, define the color, characteristics and usefulness of the product/system. That is why I do not have much sympathy with arguments about comparing systems based on limitations/restrictions since the limitations are the distinguishing characteristics of each system. For example, "fixed tonic indian sysem" vs Others. Since CM is fixed tonic ( a carefully evolved 'restriction' ), graha bedam is a big deal but in other system where there is no fixed tonic, they are free to move the key around and it is not a big deal. Does that mean that CM making a big deal about graha bedam silly? No, it absolutely is not. In fact, if it did not make it a big deal (and rare ) given the fixed tonic 'restriction', that will be quite surprising.

Applying another well known maxim to this context, probably a stretch: "Without Scarcity there is no Economy"

Steve Topping · Post by **Steve Topping** » 27 Apr 2011, 06:58

Hello,

someone directed me to this forum and this topic, which arises from Arasi quoting from the liner notes of my CD Time And Distance.
It was originally written as a sort of credo for that album (from 1997).

I was very surprised about the discussion, and read it with interest.
Thank you Arasi for what you have said about it, and to others who have commented.
I am full of admiration for the quality of your English, which shames many of the natives of this island!

Anyway, I would like to post a reply here.
I hope it will clarify what I thought I meant (with bad punctuation or not)

The original text is quoted in full after this (coloured blue).
It began: "about renewal" ... which is a big clue as to what I was trying to get at.
Arasi didn't quote this heading and there were some other small but unimportant discrepancies.
A few people here have said it more or less as I meant (especially vk ) but not absolutely.

The ersatz and shallow are not new phenomena in art. They are the unwanted by-products of genuine artistic process in our cultures.
But my little credo was about the cumulative corrosive effect of globalisation and mass communication, which has lead to simulacra on an epedemic scale.
In the West now it is the norm in so many schools that teach popular/'improvised' music to teach the surface of things.
This official force-feeding of idioms/styles/genres is almost designed to "educate the music out of you" (to use an old phrase) ie. to deafen you to your own self.
This is all led by money of course, and plenty of decent talented people are involved in it ... but it's ramifications are remorselessly negative.

When I wrote I did so in a deliberately paired down, and probably too arid form.
The aim was clarity. The polar opposite of florid (nonsensical?) utterances of someone like Santana.
But when I said "our engagement in pre-existing contexts is only legitimised when distilled - through the small voice inside" ... the use of the word distilled, while applicable to the artistic process, is not the best choice... and not to be taken too literally.
Then I compound it by saying "Music that is arrived at by the distillation of style cannot but be real" ... which most certainly is questionable!

Talking about style and substance inevitably strays into philosophical aesthetics.
Style can most definitely be the substance. And vice versa.
It is not clear, and it is good that it is not clear.
And I didn't go there

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

...about renewal...

Musical truth is abstract - in its genesis, and in its experience.
The engines of it's meaning are not represented on it's surface - the source of it's renewal will not be found there - in style.
Music that is arrived by the appropriation of style cannot be real.
The vast cultural legacy exerts such a centrifugal force that it tempts us to go shopping in a candy store of styles - but our engagement in pre-existing contexts is only legitimised when distilled - through the small voice inside.
Music that is arrived at by the distillation of style cannot but be real.
No matter how simple the technical means or manner of expression, it is only through this process that we can ever hope to convey our interior experience, with which, at its still centre, music is joined.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

By the way, I would not call myself a jazz musician.
If anyone is interested then please visit http://www.overdown.com to hear the music I compose.

I'll finish by adding a short poem I also included in the Time And Distance inside sleeve notes, which describes the feeling behind the title track of the album.

Time has travelled through me and away
To here and now
It brushes by...this daily dispossessing flow

Once I was homemade, and
I feel from there
The past evolving as I gaze

Time is travelling through me and away
To here and now
It brushes by...this daily prepossessing flow

Once I was homemade, and
I see from there
The future ebbing back to me

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Steve Topping

cmlover · Post by **cmlover** » 27 Apr 2011, 07:07

WOW! Welcome to our humble Carnatic abode. We are honoured by your taking time to clarify your ideas which some of us found too complex and are trying to digest. Pl feel free to participate in our discussions on different musical genres as well as educate us in the appreciation of Jazz vis-a-viz our CM...