Is Sound-Oriented Music Less Emotional?

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Does music which emphasizes sheer sound (color, texture, timbre, whatever you want to call it) less emotional than music which takes what is probably a more traditional approach, focusing on melody, rhythm, or at any rate, some sort of larger structure rather than the small elements that build that structure? Or maybe a better question would be: is the sheer sound of a particular piece of music the least emotionally affecting element? Sometimes this seem to me to be the case. I like some music that seems very focused on exploring sound, but often it doesn't have enough of an emotional impact to satisfy me. It satisfies the ear and sometimes the intellect, but it doesn't do much for the heart. On the other hand, I do find that certain sounds have a quite powerful effect on me. Even a note or two from the ney does something to me. One of the things that I especially like about much of Sun Ra's work is that he manages to explore sound as sound, and yet create music that is very expressive. (Of course, most of the time he has quite a bit of other more syntactical things going on as well.)

"Sentences are not emotional but paragraphs are."--Gertrude Stein

― DeRayMi, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

is it to do with tension and release, and anticipation vs closure?

(blimey i just realised a fckin great drive-truck-thru hole in b.watson's entire aesthetic: excellent)

― mark s, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Post-rock. Tres emotional. The good stuff anyway.

― Sterling Clover, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Is Sound-Oriented Music Less Emotional?

Probably not inherently so.

― dleone, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

What a good question! I'm listening to mostly experimental music and while it is easy to say that the best is a combination of both sound and emotion I suspect it isn't the answer.

A mention of Ben watson actually prompts me to ask if anybody has read his online novel 'art, class and cleavage' and if answer is yes then what do people think abt his theory in (i think) chapter 6?

A really funny book but i can see why it got'enthusiastic rejection letters'. It has digs at loads of people, I especially like his dig at Simon Hardcore Techno (SHT).

― Julio Desouza, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

D'you have a link julio (esp one which will not bring him here haha)?

AC&C was also the name of his NON-novel published by Quartet: is this difft?

― mark s, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

link: http://www.militantesthetix.co.uk/SK&DB01.html in militant esthetix site (a lot of ben's writing in there including a piece on 'Music and Violence' which mentions the bangs piece you wrote in the wire, Mark).

By the way, I suspect that theory is a load of garbage (even though i haven't heard some of the music but at least it makes you think and makes links in your mind).

― Julio Desouza, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

This is a great question. Maybe it's kind of like the difference between representational and abstract/conceptual visual art.

Traditional melody-based music can bring up more specific emotions because you can associate them with memories of familiar music. They act like snapshots or something.

More experimental stuff brings on scarier, less identifiable emotions - "why do I have a lump in my throat thinking about the pine tree outside the window of my childhood home when I've just been listening to someone whacking a gamelan with a frozen chicken for half an hour?" kind of stuff.

― fritz, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I don't think it neccesarily is, no. Something like the Surgeon remix of "Mogwai Fear Satan" is nothing but texture and yet evokes all kinds oof feelings for me. However, I think it probably a little easier to access the emotions through more traditional structures, just because the emotional receptors are more "tuned in" to these structures through experience.

― Mark, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

oh yeah actually now i think of it i found that piece (when googling my own name!!) and printed it out. i didn't really understand his "refutation" of my argt when i skim-read it, but when i ran into him at the betsey trotwood just before xmas he said my entire piece was "incomprehensible gobbledygook" so i nevah bothered reading his response properly

we are old friend AND old enemies, ben and i...

― mark s, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(i don't mind the gobbledygook argt except BW is world's #1 j.h.prynne fan!! JHP makes me look like Julie Burchill!)

― mark s, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

mark= it only mentiones it. Article was prompted by Sept 11 th.

Abt JHP= harcore stuff (read one of his poems on an article onthat website). Beefheart is easy stuff compared to this.

The book= fiest 8 chapters only. A further four to appear if people show interest. I emailed but so far nothing so this is an appeal to go out there and Email on my behalf.

― Julio Desouza, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The original question seems (imo) to be such a subjective one that all I can say is that it has to depend on the aural beholder. I'm not sure the commonality of our humanness can supplant our individual emotional 'screens'or the way these are stimulated in this case. Plus, there's the whole issue of your individual tastes in music. Those who are attuned to the more experimental are more likely to be open for emotional stimuli than those who refuse to consider music which doesn't conform to what they know from wherever. -jeff

― mxyzptlk, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Maybe one needs more imagination to appreciate it?

― nathalie, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Although I really don't think that sound-based music is necessarily any less emotional than traditional composition-based (?) music, I was just contemplating IDM's often lack of emotion, or maybe just its focus more on cognition (cognitive emotion? the feeling of thinking?) and how the music of that genre that does seem to me to be more emotional (I am guilty of liking the really "stringy" numbers off the RDJ Album) does often incorporate more traditional melody-based (or whatever) sort of structures into it.

I remember reading that infants at birth showed an attraction to melody more than lack of it(ie: staying within a key, or progressing more coherently than atonal music tends to), so, since it seems to me that of all the things we can get out of music emotion is the most biologically tied, maybe there's an element of that in it (biology, that is)?

(I'm in a hurry, sorry this is scatterbrained)

― Dan Irons, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

i may be stating the obvious here, but sound textures are incredibly important in rendering the emotion in structured music. think of the tinny melodic ring of a mobile phone... the traditional song structure is certainly there, but the only emotion it's likely to produce is irritation.

― minna, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It is kind of a big, overly general, subjective question. It's hard for me to discuss specific examples since these days I don't listen to much music that I would consider specifically sound-oriented. When I listened to the most of that sort of music it was older avant-garde stuff, not the newer electronic dance and its offshoots. I am not famliar with post-rock. What little I've heard has me curious, but not curious enough to buy any CDs. (It might be a good thing to look for on MP3 though.) I would say that when I was listening to more experimental music, it generally didn't move me as much as other types of music, but I'm not all that confident in my memory of what my response was.

― DeRayMi, Tuesday, 12 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Ive aint studied music nor any art for that matter.I cant play/sing/write music either so maybe Im missing something. The emotional impact of music on listeners cannot be distanced from their intellectual interest in music itself. I doubt you had the same emotional reaction to U2's music post Sept 11 as the average punter. Still I reckon there is something operating on a very primitive universal emotional level re hard house/ industrial rock all pull the same basic strings yet music that explores sound a little more is more satisfying only for those who have the intellectual capacity/interest to appreciate it. That said exploration clearly does not necesaarily lead to emotional fufilment. Am I just stating the obvious ok Ill fuck up

― kiwi, Saturday, 16 March 2002 01:00 (twenty-three years ago)

ten months pass...

Would it be presumptuous of me to try to revive this thread?

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 10 February 2003 14:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Nope, not at all. But give me an hour or so to catch up.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Monday, 10 February 2003 15:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Intuitively I'd answer the question with "No".

Sounds and textures definitely have an emotional impact on me. But it is different to the influence of melody and rhythm. It is more of a subconscious thing. Irrational in a way. Overwhelming and rendering me absolutely defenseless. The new Massive Attack for example is more about textures and it has a deep emotional effect on me. Different atmospheres like apocalyptic, oppressive, light can be expressed better via sounds/textures than via melodies/rhythms.

Some emotions seem to be reserved to conventional melodic music though. Probably I could never weep listening to sounds but I can weep listening to tunes like All Across the Universe.

― alex in mainhattan (alex63), Monday, 10 February 2003 15:57 (twenty-two years ago)

off-the-cuff answer: Becuz it is harder to interpret in a structured framework -- usual signifiers of emotion, meaning are absent, etc. -- it requires giving over more to subjective response which requires more emotional investment?

So for example, if there are sad lyrics one can stand at a distance and say "this song is a sad one" but if there are no lyrics then you have to say "it feels sad." which means really "i hear this and feel sad." and so if you want to engage and understand you HAVE to feel.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Monday, 10 February 2003 18:54 (twenty-two years ago)

Sterling's on to something. Most, but certainly not all, songs with words attempt to use lyrical content to tell you how to feel. Sometimes, it's even successful. Instrumental music has to work harder, and oftentimes the response is more scattershot 'cause you're not being led by the lyrical hand to be shown the 'true meaning' of the song in question.

That said, i've never wept to a song, 'cept maybe "Feeling Gravity's Pull" by REM (long story) or the untitled track on Neutral Milk Hotel's _In the Aeroplane Over the Sea_" (another longish story.

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Monday, 10 February 2003 19:02 (twenty-two years ago)

It's a little hard for me to relate to Sterling's point since so many of the songs I listen to are sung in languages I don't understand. Still voice itself has immediate emotional qualities that are going to be absent in non-vocal sounds.

(Actually, even though I do love vocal music, generally above all, I also find it kind of liberating to listen to strictly instrumental music, when I find some that excites me.)

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 10 February 2003 19:12 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm curious, what kind of music isn't "sound based"? I was damned-sure that music in all it's forms boiled down to an-organization-of-sounds...

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Monday, 10 February 2003 19:27 (twenty-two years ago)

nickalicious, I'm not sure how to describe it better, but I mean music which, as I said, emphasizes the color and texture of sound, while deemphasizing (to varying degrees), or possible avoiding, harmony, melody, and rhythm. I think much of the more experimental end of electronic music works this way.

Cactus needles scraped against kitchen utensils, run through some sort of reverb device: sound oriented.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 10 February 2003 19:34 (twenty-two years ago)

Sound qua sound.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 10 February 2003 19:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Is "musique concrete" the term you're looking for? I don't know what it means exactly, but I think I've seen it used to refer to the kind of thing you're talking about, music that not only doesn't originate from a score but *cannot* be scored.

― Paula G., Monday, 10 February 2003 20:07 (twenty-two years ago)

"Musique concrete" would be an example of it.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 10 February 2003 20:22 (twenty-two years ago)

I think I've seen people use the term around here, before I did. Of course, a lot of the music people talk about in terms of "sonics" also has some sort of regular rhythm, maybe some minimal melody, and rapping or singing.

― Rockist Scientist, Monday, 10 February 2003 20:34 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm growing to hate the term "sound-oriented" -- it's like saying a certain dish is "taste-oriented." It sets up a false dichotomy, itself a notion that has been gnawing at my brain the past few days, especially w/r/t the way people think and write about music. More later perhaps.

― Clarke B., Tuesday, 11 February 2003 01:17 (twenty-two years ago)

I meant "flavor-oriented" not "taste-oriented" -- sorry.

― Clarke B., Tuesday, 11 February 2003 01:17 (twenty-two years ago)

er, musique concrete can indeed be scored. Pierre Henry et al just didn't throw shit on a tape, they composed.

Emotions are what the composer/player/listener/etc. (i.e. humans) brings to music. I don't think I agree that some music, just as music, has more or less emotion than another.

― hstencil, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 01:32 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm think of the sort of think gareth said, on another thread:

well, it probably wont surprise you to learn that im not really a songs person. basslines, noises, fx, textures, all those things you mention, they are the things that make music nice for me.

Okay, baselines are rhythmic/melodic, but the other things he mentions are "sound-oriented." I wish gareth would comment on this thread, even negatively.

― Rockist Scientist, Tuesday, 11 February 2003 01:48 (twenty-two years ago)

"Farben Says 'No'"

― Paul (scifisoul), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 02:10 (twenty-two years ago)

But Farben uses some moving chord progressions. He, Aphex Twin & their microhouse/IDM peers often use simple 'lovely' music-boxy tunes. The tunes are easy to emotionally hook onto, and then once they've got us listening, the textures do the real expressive work.

Like in an Expressionist painting (any almost any other kind of painting): the subject matter cues us and then the crazy brushstrokes really move us.

― Keith McD (Keith McD), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 02:31 (twenty-two years ago)

(or almost any other kind of painting)

― Keith McD (Keith McD), Tuesday, 11 February 2003 02:31 (twenty-two years ago)

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