Leaderboard

Nice!! As I've said before, I love the harmonisation. I also think that the timpani's really cool, not much, but really added to the sense of dramaticness. I thought it lost a little of it's driving momentum near to the end, and it became a little lost on where to go next. It is brilliantly mixed and sequenced though - the only nitpickable section is near the end. For example, at 1:45, I don't know why, but those strings erk me :s . 2:12, it all seemed a little chaotic (though maybe you wanted that) I don't think the timpani was sequenced very well either at this point, not enough changing of volume to hammer in the sense of rush. BTW, is this meant to be looped. If so, you probably shouldn't fade it out, since it'll instantly jump back to full volume. Overall really awesome stuff, blew my composition out of the water!! I bet teh developer will be pleased with your efforts too :D Thanks for sharing!!

No, that culture is what is observable and hence the "proof" that something is going on on a cognitive level, etc. The other way around. Just like the emergence of hammers is sourced in having hands to actually use any kind of tool and intelligence enough to figure out how to make one, the faculties MUST come first. That all has to do with evolutionary path and, yes, genetics. Culture is nothing but a byproduct of our various cognitive capacities and mechanisms, such as symbolic interaction. Animals that do NOT have these capacities don't have what we call "culture," though they may have a primitive form of symbolic interaction or be capable of constructing context around artificial symbols (chimpanzees have been observed to do this, for example.) But that's still a long way to go before they have our highly specialized language centers and so on. It's not a huge conclusion, it's the only reasonable one. As for practical basis, it's actually quite practical indeed. If we know that genetics are responsible for the formation of our brain functions then it's an understatement to say that they're important in studying these brain functions. This all goes back to evolutionary theory as to understanding what was the reason that certain things evolved like they did, among which was our crossover from the language centers into our musical ability. Musical ability also must have an evolutionary source, but we're not exactly sure of what it is yet but there are fairly good hypothesis on the subject. Understanding all this brings us closer to actually seeing what happens on a neurological and cognitive level. And, even IF we entertain the thought that culture is the byproduct of some social value--that too must have an evolutionary source. Hell, cognitive capacities themselves are result of evolutionary adaptation. Again each time I mention evolution, I'm talking strictly about genetics, as that's how this whole thing works. We have genes for music, and hence we have music. Key question then is, why is that? And that's where current research is at.