On Thu, 2007-01-11 at 13:58 +0000, thor wrote:
> But this is of course just a conceptual mess where we are using
> different
> language games (cf. Wittgenstein) to talk about phenomena that are
> related (and which we conceptually put under one hat).
Yes you're right, the term music is rather loose. Here I was using it
to describe the whole feedback process from musician, through instrument
into sound and back to the musician as percepts via ears. I find this a
useful way of using the word, but apologise if it's wooly.
> Consider the word "book" for example.
>
> - A stack of printed papers could be called a book.
> - I could have an idea in my head and call it a book.
> - The laws of physics could be called "the book of nature"
> - 3 printed books in one volume could be called "one book"
> - Tibetans have strips of paper (ca. 35*8 cm) unbound and they call
> it a book.
> - We could imagine a software that generates text and call that a book.
> - And we can argue whether any of this is a book or not.
We can identify where music passes during musical activity, and also
where it gets frozen as a recording, score or piece of code.
> I like your arguments Alex, especially this one: "The code (with
> revision control)
> is a recording as much as an mp3 -- just much better compressed! :) "
The difference is that the revision control files contain a symbolic
recording of the music whereas the mp3 is a recording of sound pressure
over time. The former is much more useful. We say mp3's are 'lossy'
but compared to code, even .wav files lose all sorts of data, leaving us
just with stupid samples of soundwaves.
Also we don't *have* to save the code changes, we can just play with it
in transient memory. That is, we don't have to take a recording of the
code. We can play with the music as live code and then close the
editor, the sound stops and the music lingers only in our human
memories. Code only becomes a recording when we save it to disc for
later recall.
> but note that you use the word "recording" and not "music" here.
> recording of what? ... the music? so what's the music then?
A human activity, I suppose.
alex
Received on Thu Jan 11 2007 - 21:48:37 GMT