Experiment - inherent meaning in music

Coming soon... my scientific debunking of:

... some music is PERSONAL EXPRESSION!!!! If you just make a random melody on a keyboard, it doesn't have any SPECIAL MEANING to you, which means it can't really have a special meaning to anyone else: you didn't put any SOUL in it! But you can express ideas through music if you do it right. Music that expresses loss, happiness, concern,... so many things!

Stay tuned.

The premise - does music carry an inherent meaning; can it convey emotional data - specific or otherwise? Can anyone tell a "meaningful" melody from an arbitrary one?

So... a musical Turing test?

We already have one of those, it's called "CD sales."

What the most people find most meaningful, seems to sell.

Granted, that measures what the audience finds meaningful, not the composer, but I think that's more important. A not very good composer could slave away at a piece and think it's really meaningful but it wouldn't make a dent on his listeners. Meanwhile a very very good composer could toss off something short (or write two hours of music in three months under the pressure of a commercial contract) and think that it doesn't have a lot of artistic merit, but it becomes a classic that sells out, is remastered decades later, and the composer can even make an income giving concert tours of that music. :P

If "Serge" reformulated his argument that way (audiences find some melodies more meaningful than others) I think it's airtight. Anyway to me music is an audience-oriented art, like authorship.

But if he insists on stating that "some melodies demonstrate more meaningful intent by the COMPOSER than others" I think he'll be disproven by your experiment :)

Well, isn't meaning in the listener's mind, not the music itself? I would argue it's based in the effect it has on the listeners (the feeling is evokes, etc.), because, well, a phonograph playing a record in outer space has no meaning to anyone.

I think everybody would wholeheartly agree music can carry emotional meaning. But there are so many factors why that piece/fragment of music means what it does to a certain person.

There's no debate that music can be powerful and meaningful to people. Serge seems convinced that people can detect "meaningness" as injected by the composer.

Weca, Qmw and, presumably, any logically thinking being can easily see the flaw ... but nonetheless.

Let's wait, and see how the results pan out. Tonight, I will begin a week-long experiment. Two melodies, one will be a deeply-personal original phrase, the other uninspired and haphazard. Can anyone tell the difference?!

There's no debate that music can be powerful and meaningful to people. Serge seems convinced that people can detect "meaningness" as injected by the composer.

Weca, Qmw and, presumably, any logically thinking being can easily see the flaw ... but nonetheless.

Let's wait, and see how the results pan out. Tonight, I will begin a week-long experiment. Two melodies, one will be a deeply-personal original phrase, the other uninspired and haphazard. Can anyone tell the difference?!

I'm curious to see the results.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY!!!!

Two melodies.

One is an actual piece of my own music. The other...I whipped off just now!!

Which one speaks most to you? Which one speaks most to me?! Which one is THE ONE with the most inherent musical/emotional content?

Let's find out!!

You can see the melodies notated below (or in the survey); you can hear them played in the MIDI's below.

I purposely took out any phrasing, articulations, swing feel, etc ... also transposed them into the same key and had the same "piano" sound perform them. Eliminating any "performer influence" that might taint my results.

...

You have until midnight, November 10th. The entire survey takes about 23 seconds to complete, if you listen to both clips.

melody1.mid

melody2.mid

I voted one of them, but I like the other one better myself.

I voted one of them, but I like the other one better myself.

That's what you have to do!! Vote for one!!

And, as James demonstrated - it may not necessarily be the best melody, or your favorite... Pick the one I spent months working with, the one inspired by something musically important to me - the one with which I tried to convey and express the most power and energy and emotion!!

And try not to share your answers here or anywhere! I'd like people to go in influenced only by the musical stimuli!!

James did it!! Now you can too!!!

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY!!!!

Melody 1 MIDI

Melody 2 MIDI

I wouldn't be surprised if you just whipped out both on the spot and then said "Well, if neither had an inherent meaning, then it should've been OBVIOUS!!!"

I wouldn't be surprised if you just whipped out both on the spot and then said "Well, if neither had an inherent meaning, then it should've been OBVIOUS!!!"

It's what I would've done, certainly.

It's what I would've done, certainly.

Same here.

well, i think music is a language, and as one, its meant to be used to say something. Did any of you every think about what is it that makes u, or anyone else write or play music? If you take away the meaning, we are left with a random bunch of sounds, not much different than the sounds we hear when we walk down a busy street. Making music without meaning is pretty much like writing a novel without a plot, it becomes a big pile of words without any point to it. Everything we do, we do with a goal, an end result we wish to achieve, why should music be any different? Whatever the goal to writing music is, there must exist one, otherwise there would be little that would keep us motivated to finish it or to even begin doing it. I've never written, or even listened to music for the sake of sound, I've written and listened because I love the feelings that I get out of it, I love the places that music takes me, and thoughts it spawns in my mind.

I wouldn't be surprised if you just whipped out both on the spot and then said "Well, if neither had an inherent meaning, then it should've been OBVIOUS!!!"

No, I assure you: one of those melodies is a meaningful piece of actual Robin Jessome original music. The other, is "nothing".

well, i think music is a language, and as one, its meant to be used to say something. Did any of you every think about what is it that makes u, or anyone else write or play music? If you take away the meaning, we are left with a random bunch of sounds...

Making music without meaning is pretty much like writing a novel without a plot....

But, where does the onus lie to insert that "meaning"? Is it the composer's job to inject a piece of music with an inherent and obvious "meaning"... or is it up to the performer to "say something" ... or, can the listener be allowed to simply extract whatever meaning they want from something?!

To continue your "novel" parallel: There's definitely MANY novels out there without a "plot" ... many authors employ a "stream-of-consciousness", free-form approach. And where does poetry fall into this? There's usually no "plot", but poems carry an immense amount of emotional data. Where does it come from?

What about someone who does a very inspired and powerful dramatic reading of a "novel with no plot"? Would it be still impossible to be emotionally moved by it?

:hmmm:

Take my melodies - as a composer: one is special to me, the other is not. I could still, however, as a performer take either of them and produce a very moving and powerful performance of it... How can I add emotion to an emotionless melody?!!

:O

HOLY CRAP!!!

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY!!!!

Melody 1 MIDI

Melody 2 MIDI

Oooh! 12 responses already! ... the data is already shaping up to be quite interesting...

why can't I vote both? :D

why can't I vote both? :D

Because there's only one right answer.

.............

;)

What I think is that the :censored: would be commercially more successful. :P

But, where does the onus lie to insert that "meaning"? Is it the composer's job to inject a piece of music with an inherent and obvious "meaning"... or is it up to the performer to "say something" ... or, can the listener be allowed to simply extract whatever meaning they want from something?!

To continue your "novel" parallel: There's definitely MANY novels out there without a "plot" ... many authors employ a "stream-of-consciousness", free-form approach. And where does poetry fall into this? There's usually no "plot", but poems carry an immense amount of emotional data. Where does it come from?

What about someone who does a very inspired and powerful dramatic reading of a "novel with no plot"? Would it be still impossible to be emotionally moved by it?

:hmmm:

Take my melodies - as a composer: one is special to me, the other is not. I could still, however, as a performer take either of them and produce a very moving and powerful performance of it... How can I add emotion to an emotionless melody?!!

:O

HOLY CRAP!!!

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE SURVEY!!!!

Melody 1 MIDI

Melody 2 MIDI

Oooh! 12 responses already! ... the data is already shaping up to be quite interesting...

I've done the survery, but I wont make the same mistake like some of us here did, and speak my opinion here.

And now on the subject, I think that the beauty of music is in its ability to communicate so many different emotions to so many different people. As long as the composer made something with true love to his art, the art will never fail to reward the artist and the observers or listeners. It's all about putting yourself into it.

Not to rap this up in the veil of mistery, but I think there is something to music that cannot be learned or explained and that is the true intention of the creator to communicate something that cannot be expressed in words. I think thats why human beings started to create art in the first place. Music is a very primal inherent form of communication. It's known that long before we even developed language or complicated social groups we had music used in wars, all kinds of rituals etc... Its just something I think is built in our systems by the long periods of evolution. We learned to reap messages from certain sound patterns.

It's similar to yelling, no matter what language you speak, when you yell at someone, he probably knows you are pissed.

So, a song can mean all kinds of different things to different people, but none of them will be too far from the intention of the writer, at least thats what I learned from personal experience.

...So, a song can mean all kinds of different things to different people, but none of them will be too far from the intention of the writer, at least thats what I learned from personal experience.

Interesting theory.

I suspect, however, that it's probably not accurate.

Should I expand my experiment!!!???

Perhaps a Phase 2: Using the same melodies, I could ask what emotions they each extract from the listener. If your hypothesis is correct, one should evoke a particular sentiment, while the other will evoke...nothing? Apathy?

:dunno: Should I bother?

well it is up to the writer to use all of his knowledge and tools available to tell the story he wishes to tell, sometimes he will succeed, sometimes he will not, that why not everybody is good as beethoven or bach... :) You must first know what it is you wish to say, and then figure out the best way that you will say it, so the others get the message too.

That's no fair. One of the melodies is more like a development of an incidental theme from the film, The Incredibles. I won't say which one, though.

Jessome, you need to stop watching movies before you go sit down to write melodies. :)

I wish I had the power to delete this thread.

I like the :censored: one

Since I'm the one who started this whole awesomely controversial firestorm, I will post which one I think is the one that Robin worked on (how exciting and frightening! Will I be horribly wrong, or right? :O) I think it's the :censored: : it has a stronger pull in it somehow, as though it's trying harder to "take you somewhere" than the other one is: the first one seems more aimless. (How ironic this will be if I'm wrong, haha :) )