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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 พ.ค. 2023
- Get to know avant-garde music composer John Cage, whose work challenged the boundaries between music and noise.
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In 1960, composer John Cage went on television to share his latest work. But rather than using traditional instruments, Cage appeared surrounded by household clutter, including a bathtub, ice cubes, a toy fish, a rubber duck, several radios, and performed “Water Walk.” Most people watching had the same question: is this even music? Hanako Sawada explores the boundaries between music and noise.
Lesson by Hanako Sawada, directed by Héloïse Dorsan-Rachet.
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A four and a half minute piano song made entirely of rests? Finally, something I can play
Hahahaha !
Sonic Youth -- one of my favorite rock bands of the eighties, nineties and early 2000's -- did their own "cover version" of John Cage's 4'33" of silence. They did a nice job, but most people prefer the original!
😂😂😂😂😂nice joke you’ve got
Would be the same as performed by a person capable of playing complex tunes.
Funnily enough, I think you're a mucisian :p. At least where I come from, not many non-mucisians know what a 'rest' is.
For me the difference between music and noise always been the reason explained in the video, both are sounds, if the sound is unwanted it's noise if it's wanted is music. For example you may drumming with your pencil on the desk, you may find it catchy bc you fill the sounds in your head but your roommate after few mins will ask you to stop making noises.
That could be said about a lot of the things we categorize stuff. A lot of our definitions can revolve around perspectives rather than absolutes
So hearing a podcast, audio book, a speech is considered music?
This a valid, and my preferred view of noise: it is an unwanted signal. This definition goes in concordance with information theory. However, not being noise is not sufficient to make something music.
By the way, noise must have another meaning, since people might desire it. E.g. people using noise for relaxation... And calling it noise. I believe in this context what makes it noise is being unpredictable.
@@iannespatrus6956 some post-modern or contemporary music especially the creative underground side of dance/electronic music incorporates non-musical elements like sampled or recorded speech, industrial noises, or natural sounds (ex; sound of a bird chirping)
@@jnielsen1956 I guess what makes the difference between simple talking and music is that music focus not just on words but on rhythm too, Easiest example is Rap
I remember reading a short comic that gives me similar feelings. A cookbook with loose directions in the recipies is trying to be understood by the writer's daughter, who is about to become a mother herself. The reader is a famous, gourmet chef, so this is seen as careless. It is revealed at the end, however, that the recipies were written with such loose directions so that any new ingredients her children wanted to try could be added. This using of unfamiliar ingredients would also mean that she would have to adapt the recipe. So, it is no wonder that the recipies are so loose and vague. They were not made to be followed, but rather, adapted.
it's “kind of love - bun in the oven” right?
@@flamingaish WTF?! This is the second time that I have described a story in the comments section of a TedEd video and someone guesses what it is! For clarification, I'm not angry. I am just surprised and a bit afraid of the sheer amount of people there are on the internet and the sheer amount of information they all collectively hold.
@@writeon2593 lmao yeah, most of us are chronically online so you shouldn't be surprised
also, i love that short comic
@@writeon2593 Have you heard of ChatGPT? That will really get your spider senses tingling.
@@writeon2593It's just how the Internet works. If thousands of people see your comment, in time, someone that knows what you're talking about will inevitably be one of them
The moment noise becomes *meaningful,* then I think it's music
Yes, because Theodore Roosevelt giving a speech in 1937 was music. There's no need to push boundaries, noise is incoherent and has no pattern or flow, meanwhile music does. That damn simple.
Ever heard of Methwitch lol. Some things are hard to be called music so idk... I still love it tho
@@goofyahhgooberprodstructure does not define music. noise is music
Beautiful said, man
@@goofyahhgooberprod Was Roosevelt's speech in 1937 incoherent and without pattern or flow? Because if not, by your own definition, that was music indeed. Language has to be coherent, to follow patterns, and to have a flow. Are you saying language is music?
When your crush talk- Music
When your siblings talk- Noise
@@1.1kSubChallengeWithoutAnyVid what? Bots can make complex sentences now?
@@Comet-2011-W3-Lovejoy i feel only pain when i get replies like this 😭
@@Comet-2011-W3-Lovejoy because it's not a bot.
@@hayekhayek580 mhhhm I don't know, gpt-4 might be writing those.
@@Comet-2011-W3-Lovejoy but then there would be no beneficial gain
It doesn't matter if it's been composed or not, as long as it's music to my ears.
When I was a teenage percussion student playing in a student orchestra, our conductor presented us with a piece by, if I recall, R. Murray Schaefer, called Threnody. The score was very interpretive, but it required rehearsal, and we performed it on stage in front of a thousand people after many practices. It really open our minds to what music was or could be. The piece really came together, recognizably.
Definition of music: Organized noise (sounds). That was the first lesson in my music theory class in college. So true. Great vid !
Yes, there should be a pattern
speech fits this definition
@@fghsingingthe alarm of a car fits this definition
Hi, music major here and I've recently been studying the topic of post-tonal or "modern" music. I'm by no means an expert on this topic so take my opinion with a grain of salt. A lot of what we consider "music" comes from a very Western approach to sound and the way we organize sound. A lot of people say that music is a universal language, but I don't think that's true. A lot of what we consider as "pitch" and "rhythm" come from a Western point of view. These modern composers wanted to challenge this ideas and push back against the musical movemnts that came before the post-tonal one. Music is hard to define because it's an art form and a genre. Focusing on definitions misses the point, in my opinion. The boundaries of music have always been pushed an explored, that's how music and our ideas of it develops. I can understand why some people don't consider this music, and that's okay. Personally, I think these compositions are very interesting and they end up eliciting some sort of response, good or bad, which I think is more important to focus on rather than what is pitch or rhythm or defining terms. I personally enjoy finding enjoyment in the sounds around me, but I understand the apprehension that many people have when approaching these types of works. I don't know if this clears anything up or not, but I've always been curious about this topic so I was really excited to see Ted Ed talking about this topic and exposing these kinds of works to a larger audience :)
Incredible insight.
I have read an interesting paper on explaining music to aliens.
Composition student here. Completely agree with what you just said. It's amazing that the more and more I got into new music, the more I began to appreciate and enjoy the sounds around me. I also began to appreciate a lot of freely improvised music. I realize now that my pattern of listening to music has changed. Instead of simply listening to pitch and rhythm, as I would before, now I listen to many more aspects in the music I listen to: multi-dimensional listening over simply listening to pitch and time. The experiments of composers and their diverse musical styles has dawned us upon a new era in music and I will forever be grateful to them for giving me music that inspires and entertains my soul.
In college I took an elective course in Electronic Music. It was quite different than I expected and focused more on the history of recorded sound and the general definition of what constitutes music, genre, etc. This was a great summary of everything I remember learning about John Cage in that class.
As a person fortunate to be born with perfect pitch I love this so much! Myself and my friend (who also has perfect pitch) always talk about how even in noises like tapping or clicking you can still faintly identify a note to associate with the sound no matter how 'toneless' it might sound at first. In the end, music is all about what we hear and enjoy, and maybe any sound to the right person can be music :)
I think one of my friends might be like that. He said when he used to play guitar, he would tune it by ear. But the person teaching him got really annoyed by that approach and told him they didn't believe my friend. So, he showed them what he did and they tested it out. It turned out to be perfect and the instructor was impressed.
Well, you don't really need perfect pitch to hear that even "unmusical" sounds have pitches. Also, I think it's important to remember that music is so much more than just pitches. Something doesn't need to have a pitch to be musical. Like, percussion music isn't based on pitches, but it's still quite clearly music.
@@thenovicenovelist definitely perfect pitch if the strings are tuned properly
i have a friend like that, stupidly good at bass and him having perfect pitch doesn't help his arrogance (he's a great guy though, love him)
How do you know if someone has perfect pitch? Don't worry, They'll tell you.
@@peirce955 why is this so accurate
Anything that makes a harmonizing resonance and gives a pleasing feel to our mind is music regardless of what object the tones are created.
music doesnt have to give pleasing feels tho?
@@derppy like?
It also doesn’t need to be harmonizing. Sometimes being “off” is a part of the music
@@kiloperson5680 have you always listened to upbeat happy songs?
You’ve never heard a sorrowful or sad song ever in your life?
How about electronic music that some people find annoying
The sound whales make pleases me so much that I smile within the time when heard. It's a soft and elegant speech tone to others that harmonizes with us.
So a language can be a real music to none speaker, very interresting!
That's what nature/field recordings are.
There's also an avant-garde composition by George Crumb called "Vox Balaenae" (Voice of the Whale)
@@vokha3870 Thanks!
Pov: you're shostakovich
or Stravinsky
POV: You wrote Сумбур вместо музыки
Prokofiev
Nancarrow
@@sophiatalksmusic3588 ok stalin
"Everything we do is music." -John Cage
The best definition I've heard for "music" is "an intentional temporal arrangement of sounds and silences". That's it.
As long as it's intentional, it's music.
Random car horns being sounded by angry people in traffic jams isn't music because they're not intending for it to be. They're not pressing the horn thinking "This'll fit in nicely at this point in the piece!". If they were thinking that, though... then yeah, they're making music.
If you record birds chirping, that recording isn't music (presumably! we don't know the birds intentions), but take that recording and play it back on repeat and now it is.
I like that definition. It fits with all instances of music I can think of.
i like him, tbh his music always made me feel more involved in a sense, and it actually gave some sort of feeling to music that you just cant do it often with melodies, you cant just give someone the feeling of pain without simulating something being wrong with the chords or composition
_"his music always made me feel more involved in a sense"_
Yeah, I think that was the entire point of 4'33. The audience becomes the "composer" - it's the sounds of the audience that create the music. My interpretation of it (after listening to some John Cage's interviews) is that 4'33 allows the audience to experience music in the way that Cage himself experienced it. He said that to him, music is just sound, and he simply enjoys listening to sounds. Even silence has its own sound, and if you pay attention, the silence in different places sonds different.
The reason why 4'33 had to be performed is that that's the only way that the audience will keep their ears open to the sounds around them. You go to a concert to listen to music, so your ears are open. So, when a performer comes on stage and is quiet, people will naturally focus on the sounds. But when you are outside of the concert hall, you don't really do that - you don't really pay attention to the sounds around you. And all of the sounds around you is essentially what music meant to John Cage.
The animations are so beautiful!!
When I was researching the different types of music that existed these types of music composers inspired me. I became a music composer for movies, and television. I wanted to compose different types of music as well.
I always had people mocking me for my taste in music and how to most it was just annoying noise ( I loved heavy dubstep , deathstep and rithem and bass) .
So I looked into what is music , music is basically just organized sound in some typically harmonic way .
So it's definitely music , but what makes it good or bad ? I spent ages considering this , standing in other people's shoes , trying to gage their perspective and I came to a conclusion.
Thier is no bad music because if thier truly was , it wouldn't exist. No one would listen to it and so it would die .
Music is for us to enjoy , to feel and get emotional. It's for our entertainment.
The only thing seperateing them is what kind of organised sounds you like :)
Thanks for your comment! I love Classical Hardcores and dubstep, yet everyone is annoyed at me too. Glad I could be represented here 😂
Yup, dubstep fan here, too
I love defending electronic music like dubstep to folks who don't agree that it is music. Especially since dabbling in production and understanding how waves look and sound like, I absolutely agree that music is just how you organize these waves. That nice dubstep "growl" is just a crazy saw wave, and it's not too far off from a violin note. It's why nowadays, you see all these producers able to make any sound they want from any sample-- a snare from a piano note, or a whole synth pad from a bump of a mic. It's all music. Noise is just sounds without context and expecations, just like the video says.
John Cage should have performed his work behind the curtain and then made the crowd listens. If they gave him a standing ovation after the performance right before he revealed his instruments, would they still think differently afterwards?
That would be interesting. There was an Italian musician/songwriter decades ago who was so annoyed by how popular English music became, he decided to write a song that was complete gibberish but made sure the words sounded English enough. It supposedly became popular.
@@thenovicenovelist Not just popular, good! The song is Prisencolinensinainciusol and songwriter Adriano Celentano supposedly said later in interviews that the song was a question about language barrier, where the only theme is lack of communication, hence meaningless lyrics.
John Cage... He is a controversial composer and he also really interesting. Me and my Lecture talk and discuss alot about him (im an Ethnomusicology student). I really like his thoughts on unconventional music😌
Now you should do one on what is art and what is merely an image.
Maybe we can do that :)
@@Psych2go I hope you can!
This is really fascinating, absolute silence causing emotional arousal just like music is supposed to. It’s quite the art work.
More curious as to what Cage's intent even was with the thoughts and emotions he aimed to evoke.
"music is repetition"
this was the most important thing I learned
Thanks for uploading this song! I like it a lot!
Noise is a following tone of irregular and unpleasant vibrations. The pleasant movements of a non-irritable tone even chalk screech in a low and harmonizing vibrations can be music.
My favourite video yet!
Edit: I am dating a musician so this video was really lovely. Thanks, TEDEd.
I am really surprised that Luigi Russolo and its futurist manifesto "The Art of Noises" was not mentioned once despite being the first and main influence on noise as music. John Cage himself was influenced by it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Noises
The unknown words are amended by the graceful resonance of mirthful tones.
New genres of music are created every single day. There would be wide communities that think something is music, and would be a wider community denies that.
In my opinion; music is a collection of sounds, usually placed in a way that people like to listen it. Doesn't matter if majority doesn't see it as music, it's still music.
It's really simple if you like the sound it'll be music to your ears but if you find the sound unpleasant you'll consider it to be noise. But just like beauty is in the eyes of beholder, music is in the ears of listener! Music can be everything we hear the chirping of birds, the movement of wind , the crackling of leaves , the sizzling of food the tapping of foot! To a mother who just gave birth the sound of the child crying would be music and the music would be so emotional that tears will roll down her face while she's smiling despite of the pain!
Music is simply what we enjoy!
A couple of questions. First, the crying of a baby is designed to grate on the nerves and be unbearable for a mother, so that she has to come to his call. Second, there is plenty of music specifically composed not to be pleasant (like the shower scene music in Psycho, for example), and that doesn't make it any less music
my high school choir director always started his intro classes with the simple question, "What is music?" Every class would start out the same with students offering their interpretations or what music meant to them, but the exercise would go on until we finally reached the most rudimentary definition, "Organized Sound." Music at its core is sound, or the lack thereof, arranged intentionally. Anything can be an instrument, anything can be a pitch, anything can be a rhythm so long as the musician arranging it places it with intention. I still think about those lessons from time to time.
Harmony, no matter the instruments or devices. As long as there is some kind of harmony. Something the connects the different Instruments and devices. That is music.
People are saying music needs to be pleasant but many of them would hate screaming heavy metal. But it's still music
This is why I don't worry too much whether other people like the music I make. Music is a totally subjective experience.
the animation here is fantastic
The difference between noise and music is the way people listen to it. Even when you perform a completely silent piece, people will listen to it and pay attention to the sounds if you present it as a piece of music. So, there's definitely a difference between performing a quiet piece and just being quiet. Silence also has a sound, but it's something you only notice if you listen carefully. And I think that's what the point of 4'33 was - to open people's ears to all of the sounds around them. And only a performance in a concert hall will actually make people listen, because that's really the only place where people sit quietly and focus all of their attention on what they hear.
Even something that we traditionally see as music can sometimes be noise. Like, does anyone listen to the background music that's played in shopping malls or lounges or whatever? I think that's noise, because no one's listening to it. It's more pleasant background noise, but it's still noise. Music requires a listener. If no one's listening, then there's really no difference between noise and music.
That's ridiculous. If I started playing "The Box" on an mp3 player and threw it in the woods, that wouldn't become noise. Music is defined by harmony and patterns, all this "experimentation" is pushing it too far.
@@goofyahhgooberprod Do you agree that sometimes music can be just background noise? Like in a shopping mall.
When it comes to your example, this is the classic philosophical question: "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"
_"Music is defined by harmony and patterns"_
There's plenty of traditional music that has no harmony, for example percussion music (but also, a lot of traditional folk songs are monophonic). So I don't think "harmony" is an important part of the definition of music. It is one common element that is used in Western music, but it doesn't define something as music/not music.
"Patterns" is important. But I would say that a composer deciding that the length of the piece is 4 minutes and 33 seconds, but the piece only contains rests, is still a clear pattern.
You can create a piece of music from any sounds. And silence is also one of those sounds. BTW, calling 4'33 a "silent piece" is a bit of a misunderstanding, because complete silence is not possible. I think it's better to conceptualize it as an aleatoric piece, and honestly the concept behind 4'33 is not too different from other aleatoric pieces like Terry Riley's "in C". It just takes the idea of "chance music" to its extreme.
I guess "music is organized sound" is a pretty good definition. There needs to be some kind of a structure. But the structure can be quite loosely defined. Even "4 minutes and 33 seconds of rests" is a structure. There is a beginning and an end to the piece. It's not just random 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence - the performer decides when the piece begins and ends.
But even this definition isn't perfect, because I guess someone could say that speech is also organized sound. Does that mean that giving a speech is a musical performance? So, I think music needs something more than just "organized sound". It needs someone to listen to it as music.
BTW, I think a good example of something that uses musical elements (melody, rhythm) but isn't music would be the recitation of the Quran. I mean, you could listen to that as music, but Muslims don't really see it as music. The purpose of it isn't to listen to "beautiful music". The purpose of it is to listen to the "word of God".
@@MaggaraMarineI’d say for it to be music it needs to sound good to at least some people. Anyone that says random sounds or 4 mins of rests sounds good is lying to themselves.
This video was a waste of time.
@@BlueCardGanks592 Some music sounds intentionally unpleasant. Also, there are bad performances of conventional pieces. I don't think people think a bad performance sounds good, but they would still think it's music - it's just badly performed. So, I don't think whether people think it's good defines it as music.
Wait, y'all just animated the video such that as he developed music *throughout his life*, he aged. And Ted showed that.
Wow!
I find it very interesting and I agree with what is being said
Music is not just pleasant tone of instruments, actually it is something else which makes you feel happy.😊
Music doesn't have to make you feel happy though
Music can make you feel any emotion not just happiness
I think he meant pleasure then.
I really liked the part of this video where I tested myself to see if I could tell the difference between music and noise
Thank you
this video is a really great song
I used to be triggered a lot by sounds bc I have really bad sensory issues, but I started playing instruments and developing an even deeper connection to music (I already have done ballet my whole life) and have learnt to find music in the worst sounds, so they barely bother me anymore :D
same!
Perfect explanation that metalheads can use to explain why we love it
Love how this video is also 4 minutes and nearly 33second long (3second long)
Music in general seems to be influenced by the kulrshov effect, even the lyrics. If it weren't like that, beautiful music wouldn't sound sinister in horror movies. Almost like a two-way bias. So there are two-way patterns. I saw a video in which a boy turned a sequence of numbers into music. Another in which, in order to better understand chemical elements, they symbolically transformed them into sounds, which created a type of dissonant music. such discordant, dissonant detailed sounds are perhaps beyond our appreciation, but who knows, maybe they will be a top hit for future strong AIs. So when you imagine transforming music into something mathematical, like a formula, maybe in fact we are just and in fact returning the music to its original and functional state
the context is decisive
The definition of music -- like the definition of any other art form -- depends upon the culture of the person-- and people of different generations have different cultures. I'm an old Boomer who listened to the usual Boomer hard rock acts -- Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Cream, The Who, etc. -- as a teenager. My father would routinely bust my balls by yelling "That's not music! That's just noise!". He was playing the role of the Angry Dad but, for him, Hendrix's feedback or Keith Moon's drumming really was just noise. He and I lived in different cultures, even though we lived in the same house.
STOMP, that's a performance group that I thought could contribute to the conversation.
"Dedicated himself to shattering our expectations"
Sounded like something Mom would say to her friends.
very thought-provoking
I like listening to drone music. And nothing can stop me
Super thought!
Great video Team. 😍🥰
I think music has a rhythm. Its sometimes repetitive, or like the symphony 5, a transition that makes sense. It should somehow connect with people, get their sub consciousness thinking..
that's traditional and most common people's way of music perception, but others like john cage go beyond that thinking which is amazing
@@ItsTimeToBuildIt Cage called it music, and although I appreciate his experimentation and think some of what he created as music, it doesn't mean that all of what he created must be considered music just because of it's claim that it is.
I think an interesting thought is to think that anything could possibly be considered music if repeated. Whatever sounds produced in one of Cage's "songs" if repeated could be considered one stanza or measure and thus it would then have a pattern if repeated. The time signature may be extremely unique (not 4/4 or 3/4 beat).
@@confusingdot get educated on electronic music before talking about the topic, please, its not "john cage", its something bigger than you think
@@SToXC_. I'm totally willing to be "educated" or even be told i'm wrong about something. You have not referred to anything I have said needing correction but I'm all ears if you have something productive to say.
Well, try Ligeti's Atmosphere or Lontana. No rhythm. Only timbre exists.
It's funny you used car horns as an example, I was once walking in the street as I heard a horn, I believe it was a truck and the noise sent me back to the opening note of 'Only Time Will Tell' by Asia
Whether it is music or noise is relative tbh , cuz the noise can be cacophonous for one and be a euphony for one another. What’s important here is merely about how you appreciate and perceive the world in its fullest way ,bearing in mind that those unpleasant sounds can be just as good as those pleasant ones. The drilling sound of a machine , or your mom yelling at you , they should all be praiseworthy , cuz without the drilling we’ll have no house , and without your mom yelling then there would not be a grown man. And considering the pleasant sounds , best would be to enjoy it with someone you love , and be silent 😊
While I don't personally consider Cage's works as music, I still enjoy them as they are white noises that help me study.
the moment noises sing together is the moment music comes to life. i find it often that i will recognize a sync up in certain noises, even for mere seconds, it will remind me of a real song. so yeah, if noise has pattern then its music. a musical intrument played without pattern, is just noise.
You know it's music when there's a drum beat inside your ear
Only TED-Ed can make something simple to explain complicated.
I mean, I listen to dubstep, so I'm already used to listening to noise.
I listen to hardcore and hardstyle, they just noise at some point lol
If beauty depends on who's looking then music is defined by who's listening.
Noise is just a musical element. If you want to have a carcrash in your track, then you put noise into your music.
But you can also just create noises and call the whole genre noise or noise-music. So really both are music. The futuristic musician Luigi Russolo created a machine in the 1800s, called intonarumori, creating only a roaring noise, sometimes combining these with actual orchestral instruments. It wasn't a hit back then, but what he wanted to represent musically was basically the noises of a city or machines of the future.
Wow that is so cool
I vibe with this... A lot of the time I do recordings for my songs with little to no lyrics and usually end up keeping the first take. I think it has something to do with the purity I feel in an expression coming out once and only once, with perceived flaws and all.
Even when it comes out as gibberish it can feel like a snapshot of how I felt in that moment; It feels genuine and interesting, and lacks too much "trying" and feels more like "being."
Anyone else feel like when they "try" it gets in the way?
You feel music in your soul, that’s the difference.
simple, but effective answer. bravo!
that doesn't mean anything
@@vid2422 I agree, but I think that they’re talking about a psychological difference between listening to noise, and listening to music.
by that definition, there is no such thing as music
@@PeriwinkleaccountI have an emotional response listening to noise music too so that doesn't mean much. "feeling music in your soul" is entirely dependent on you
What some consider as music, I interpret it as irritating noise ie. heavy metal. It all depends on the listener.
Amon Tobin,Murcof,Clark or Neubauten, i love them all;)
(yet to watch) this is a naive question, and I hope this video elaborates saying as much? because literally music is just what we consider music, regardless of if someone specifically made it to be or not.
Trevor Horn perfected the use of noise as music using the Fairlight CMI.
music is one of the most subjective things there is, the way i see it, the only thing separating music from “noise” is whether or not it was intended to be listened to as music
It's the pattern that makes it music. 🎶
And I hate that "emotional response" seem to be the answer to every bad piece of "art". A person might harm or even kill another and trigger a "emotional response" on the family, friends or general public, that however does NOT make it art. 😡
1:07 idk why but always i feel like that sounds are music rather than noise 🙂
Music like all art becomes music, when a human says it is.
I have heard that more rhytmic music that has a quicker resonance count is easier for the brain to process thus it is enjoyed by a majority of people. There are compositions where the brain has to do more work in order to acquire that hit of serotonin and detect the whole beat, like completing the whole circuit. These types of compositions are often lesser known and only a few enjoy them. I don't know how much of it is truth. I am not musical or anything.
Surely an emotional response of being annoyed, frustrated, and insulted intellectually would be the result. Who would seek out an experience like that?
Let's instead ask the question "Is it a house?" A house has structure, rooms, walls, etc. A pile of wood is not a house. In the same way, a blank canvas is not art, and random sound is not music. At least to me. Others may differ, but that is the nature of art. John Cage's exploration is a needed component to push the boundries.
Music Vs noise
Music has notes placed in a pleasing manner to the ear. It is enjoyable to a significant demographic of people
Music may also be any pleasant sounds,a voice,a bird chirping,or even tornado sirens sounding in harmony (look it up)
Noise is irritating, inducing an unpleasant feeling, lacking structure,or variety. Lacking structure means chaotic noise, lacking variety means repetitive noise. For example,Clang clang clang is repetitive and unpleasant
However,how is it that different people and cultures see music differently? Some consider heavy metal as noise,but it is still an art form
Some consider Indian music with minor vibrato as noise,but those of the culture see it as beautiful
The definition of music and noise depends on how it makes you feel,so it should naturally be different for everyone,in unique and interesting ways
Some of the music I find pleasurable/interesting/engaging is definitely not so for a "large demographic". Is it not music then?
@@OAmus large means large enough to be considered a group
Perhaps significant would be more appropriate
Of course,the main definition here is sounds that pleases the ear so your taste of music still counts
Unless idk you like listening to car horns jkjk
That's not a good definition, and it breaks with the most banal of examples: horror film soundtracks.
With a lot of music designed for those films, the express purpose of the music is to be unsettling and unpleasant. Yet, most of us recognise it as music. Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima is horrifying and difficult to listen to, but that's the whole point. No musician is obligated to make their music "pleasant", and sometimes being "irritating" might be a critical part of what the musician is trying to express.
As for "lacking structure", is it even possible for music to lack structure? After all, if I decide to put a single note somewhere in the piece, that act alone has been part of a process of decision that innately leads to _some_ kind of "structure". The fact that the same composer put two notes in a piece inevitable gives it some structure. Also, you mention "repetitive noise" as an example of non-music, but a drummer playing a beat by themselves *is* making repetitive noise! And we still recognise it as music. Also, "clang clang clang" is the backbone of a lot of industrial music, so it is "noise" at all?
If a machine is clang-clang-clanging away somewhere, it might be unpleasant for a lot of people. But what if I decide to dance to it? What if I decide to hum a tune to that beat? On the other end of the spectrum, what about the sounds of an orchestra warming up? Each musician is individually performing little bits of music, but is the total sum of sounds meant to be experiences as music? So it is noise?
Is it fair for us to try to determine a sound as music or noise by itself, as if that's an innate quality of a sound?
@@FernieCanto it's all noise to me.
Politically offensive opinions aside,noise tends to have a higher level of upper harmonics and disorder
The soundtracks you mentioned to irritate people are noise used like art,to emphasize an emotion,but that won't classify as music
All in all,music is subjective and one who hears noise is entitled to their own experience,what we can do is look at the general patterns
The question Cage’s peers asked, ”then where do we draw the line” seems odd to me. Why does a line need to be drawn? No one’s rights are being infringed upon by calling any sound composition music. The line doesn’t need to exist.
This makes me think of the brilliant old vine "guy who likes music" by Gabriel Gundacker.
"Can you tell the difference between music and noise?"
Proceeds to talk the whole video...
If you like the way it sounds, it's music. If you don't like the way it sounds, it's noise.
This reminds me of Ross (Friends) and his musical explorations 😅
I have a good suggestion for a Ted ED video:
How did toccata and fugue, a tune that is basically music unto itself, become the haunting tune?
producer/studio engineer: _"so how many or what random found sound or generated noise do you intend to add in your composition?"_
avant-garde/experimental pop music artist: yes
Composing music is a type of problem related to "generative structures" (Iknow I'm not recalling the name properly) sort of thing. You look to increase the probability in finding something "worth" in a quasi-infinite system with continous variables. In chemistry, there are trillions of possible molecules, but somehow we need to find the ones that are required. In language there's a virtually infinite combination of possible sounds, but we sacrificed MOST of them to have something that we can use and expand upon. Those fields have their own methods to come up with "stable structures", music has a long tradition behind to support it, we don't even know how far it goes. Even music from different cultures seem to have a pretty reasonable set of rules of how to structure sound "properly".
You want to explore outside of those limits, but preferaby in a strategic and graceful way, leading the path and making BRIDGES to new possibilities, not just jumping to a new cascade of narrativeless sounds. At the end, everyone has a different path in music, and well stablished patterns work for a reason we might not even be able to understand.
so its like volts matter to amps. they are crucial for each other.
About to submit my masterpiece consisting of 90 bars of silence as my A Level composition, wish me luck
it's simple to me, if it's unpleasant to hear, it's noise, if it's pleasant then it's music. That's also why my neighbor stop my trumpet practice last night...
3:50
is it just me that hears the intro to Dancing on my Own by Robyn???
wow, I've never thought of modernism in music!
All the comments here tend to confirm what I think is art: something that is created by a human being with the intention of producing an aesthetic experience. However weird Cage's music is, it is music, because he created intentionally with the purpose of creating an aesthetic experience for the audience, even if it is a very unpleasant one. That is why AI's "art" is not really art. It can produce an aesthetic experience, sure, but it wasn't created in that way with that intention by a human. It's only an imitation of art.
Music is simply a recognizable pattern of sounds that is pleasant to the ear.. So music doesn't have to be a symphony.. It could be the rythmic sounds of a washing machine.. Plus, the boundaries of what's perceived as pleasant is subjective, completely malleable and can be acquired through sensitization.. Music can literally be anything sonically, as long as it's perceived as such..
The GE90 spooling up is music to my ears
This makes me think of songs that utilize chaotic sound in certain places within traditional music to feel out of control in contrast.
nice video