Music

This goes to deep for me, any books I should read to clear this up?

You can start with Plato's Timaeus and Proclus' commentary on the Timaeus.

Pythagoras is so interesting in discussing OPs question because his shit was both mathematically brilliant and also (from modern eyes) totally mystical.

I'm undereducated compared to some of the rest of you here; is it true that prior to Pythagoras , music in Greece and Egypt was almost entirely used in ceremony? Like it was a function of ritual and not a recreational thing yet?

Recreation was ritual then. You're projecting Faustian ideals onto them.

FAUSTIAN? I'm here to learn and be productive but please tell me what the fuck that means haha!!

I'm imagining the guy who made a deal with Satan at a crossroads??

Daniel Levitan has an awesome book about how music interacts with the brain. He's a musician, record producer, and all-round "golden ears" expert but his real day job and area of expertise is neuroscience. He's conducted and/or writes about many studies where they monitor the brain to objectively observe brain activity, and how normal speech and sound is processed vs. how music is processed. It's absolutely fascinating to see how music automatically bypasses intellect and consciousness etc. Even in some animals certain music-related phenomena happens the same way it does in humans.

Looking at the history of music with this scientific evidence in mind is really interesting. It's almost guaranteed that early primitive man (and neanderthal probably) had been making music forever. The way birds so automatically discern the song of their species despite all the other birds and noise in the jungle. A million years ago our ancestors would have been wailing, whistling, and perhaps striking rhythms with sticks and stones.

But nobody knows why. Fast forward a bunch of millenia and you have Bach knocking-out mathematically perfect motor rhythms which automatically hit our brains in a stunning and satisfying way because from birth our brains are already lubricated to music.

youtu.be/xVxwuirUX-M

>It's almost guaranteed that early primitive man (and neanderthal probably) had been making music forever.

How do we know this? I know we have recovered flutes from aeons ago, but were these truly musical? I guess it's going to be difficult to discuss this, but is sound-signaling and whistling really the same thing as music?

Thanks user, I'm gonna buy that book.

Wgat is the earliest evidence of music making we have?

Please expand more senpai

we don't know, of course. but if you believe in evolution it's *plausible* that the same bypass wiring that in our brains that redirects music is the same wiring that redirects familiar signals like bird songs and coyote howls amongst the species. there are a handful of examples in the book where they study animals brain activity and the same phenomena happens in their brains when they hear their own species "sing" (if you will) as when we hear music.

owls have a similar hearing mechanism to humans (physiologically in terms in the ear and auditory cortex, and neurologically in the way sound signals are processed) and monitoring the brain activity of an owl shows the same activity as humans. auditory illusions that humans experience as part of the music processing mechanism, like binaural beats, completing the missing fundamental, etc. are also present in various mammals and birds.

you don't, however, ever see animals making "music" or responding to rhythm the ways humans do. we are quite unique in the higher-brained part of it all

Music is actually a spook bro

Why do we consider some soundwaves music, and others not?

Spook

Music is organized sound and this is why it is much more pleasurable to listen to than unorganized noises; those organized things which make more predictable sense in our minds are from where we derive much pleasure. It was inevitable that humans would find music because humans naturally wish to make things more organized.

Stirnarreahs and fedoras unironically think like this.

Bump.

Come on there must be some more views on this subject, share your thoughts guys.

Bump

I think it could be related to language at the root

Or it's just an extension of the evolution of our vocalization and pattern perception neural functions.

BUT MUH FEDORA, RITE GUYS?

The mechanisms responsible for music are behind the veil.

Did Nietzsche ever update this theory once he stopped being a romantic?

>In a metaphysical framework the chorus [music in greek theatre] is the essence of the play and embodies a certain Dionysian consciousness which deals with the primal realms of the human condition. Tragic myth can only be understood as a symbolic picture of Dionysian wisdom by means of Apollonian art.

Animals use sounds for a variety of purposes, so do humans

Repetition, wave form and patterns are strangely comforting.