the Kingdom of Leisure

Studio Diary - Ponderings



Why do I even have to describe what I do to anyone (anymore)? Maybe it's that I don't understand what it is anymore.



Is it that I aspire to make music or complicated sound patterns? Sometimes I use the word "music" to describe what I do. Whatever it is I do. Art. Whatever art is. Knob turning, sampling, stealing, amusing.



Some sounds are appealing, some not. But this is a case of individual differences... "Dissonance is my harmony; chaos is my rhythm."



Can you feel that baby

It's called Funkadelic music

It will blow your funky mind

Yeah!



Twenty questions from a course in Music Cognition:



Why do people make music?



How do composers know what to write?



How does music give pleasure?



Are musical preferences related to personality?



Why do we need so much music and so much musical variety -- why don't we limit our listening to just the dozen best works?



Does music always have to involve sounds?



Are there certain life experiences that contribute to a person's understanding of music?



Why are melody and rhythm so important in music?



What makes something "musical"?



How are musical memories stored in the brain?



How does repeated listening to a work change our experience of it?



How does music evoke emotions?



How is it that some people are able to improvise music?



Is music a spiritual phenomenon?



Are there musical hallucinations?



Can drugs enhance musical pleasure?



Are there brain structures specialized for just music?



Does a music tell us something about the people who make it?



Are there different ways of "listening"?



What is the relationship between music and the other arts?