Music is, as Payzant says, "entirely phenomenal... [it] actually appears, and its appearance is the kind of actuality is has." In other words, that "coherence" that we recognize as a song is something that we abstract from the actual music.

This is both obviously true, and also more than a little unsettling, since most of what I hear when I listen to music, and most of what I am seeking when I listen, has to do with the sense of a song that is behind the one I can hear. I am hearing content that is implied by the recordings contents; or, to use Payzant's terminology, I am interested in what I can abstract from the sounds I am hearing.

It is usually the excellence of those perceived deeper implications, and the quality of the communication transmitted through the music from another human soul who somehow found and adapted their experience into art, that matters to me, much more, apparently, than what I am actually hearing.

Huh? I thought music was about sound. Or is music just a convenient vehicle for other things, like the words (if it's a "song") or the performers hair style?

Sorry, I don't follow. Payzant was talking about Glenn Gould. And Gould had a thing about recordings vs live performance. Still, a recording is music played on loudspeakers. Live performance is quite something else.

Music is (or should be) all about sounds. All the rest is propaganda (or marketing).

Satie wrote some admirable (and puzzling) piano music. But when Debussy orchestrated some of them they took on a very new persona or dimension. Like someone had just turned the light on. The notes are there on paper, but the sounds ... that's what it's all about.

Bad recordings (aside from bad performances) obliterate the sound. Put the microphones too far away from the orchestra or piano, and the sound is lost when played thru the speakers in your living room, or thru the buds in your ears. Combinations of sounds the composer slaved over to get right are lost.

Good mic placement and crisp production values removes as much of the barrier that separates live concert hall performances from a reproduction in your home. Still, a bad performance of great music recorded terribly is still a bad performance, even if it does sound great!

No, music IS sounds. That's all it is. Music is not a language (John Cage said that). You can't order a beer with music. Words do that. Music is just

sounds.

I think I'm in the camp opposite yours. Although the content behind the recording or performance is important, if the recording or performance is flawed it doesn't matter how good the content is, I won't want to listen to it.

I've got a general example and a specific example for you. I love live performances and recordings because they can really add to the power of a song. Certain production decisions made during the creation of the "benchmark" recording on an album or a single can be cast aside and the artist can show their current interpretation of the song or the one they hoped they could get recorded.

However one often finds poor quality recordings. I don't care how brilliant a performance is, if it is poorly mixed, muddy or bad in any way I generally won't listen to it. Even if the performance transcends the original "benchmark" version, it's not worth anything without a good recording.

As a second example I'll talk about live performances themselves. Even if the venue and mixing provide a perfect listening experience, the artists might not be up to providing an excellent performance. I recently saw a band I used to love 20 to 29 years ago and left after three songs seriously disappointed. The sound quality was reasonable, but the band was smaller than it used to be and had different members so the music didn't have the magic it used to have. In addition the lead singer has lost the quality of his voice so the songs were not sung well. In this case the songs they were performing had nothing in them for me to enjoy. It was a case of blissful memories being dashed on the sharp rocks of cold reality. It made me thankful that I did see the band many times during their prime.

Additionally, I disagree with the concept of making a silk purse out of a sow's ear. It may work for the general public, but it doesn't work for me. I generally don't care for music that has mass popularity. It isn't because it sounds bad in terms of quality of recording, its because there just isn't anything I like in the song. To me a lot of popular songs are still sow's ears and I generally avoid having them enter my ears.

I think you're right. Most of the time when I listen to music, I tend to not listen to it the first few times. I hear it but I'm not listening. I'm seeing if the sound is pleasing or not. If not I don't play it anymore. If I do like the sounds I'm hearing I then decide to listen to the music. That's when I pay atention to lyrics, countermelodies, rythyms, harmonies; the things that make me not only want to hear a specific song/recording but listen to it and maybe sing along.

Sorry if this isn't what you wanted in response. It's been sort of hard for me to wrap my head around the definition of music discussions we've been having the past few weeks.

so, richard, you make no distinction between one sound and another? it seems to me that the sounds in a j.s. bach (baroque composer) piece are better organized than the sounds in a piece by j.r. bach (rodeo clown). I am not talking at all about the quality of recording (a different subject which I'm looking forward to tackling sometime), I'm talking about the quality of the writing (music and/or words).

my observation is that there is a paradox involved, since I agree that music is just the sound, but my evaluation of that sound is based less on some technical evaluation of the so-called fidelity of the sounds, and more on a human evaluation and reaction to the piece of music as a whole.

tony - I agree that a bad recording/performance can obscure the value of a piece of music, but I was also making the point that, if you agree that music is sound and that the piece or song is abstracted from the sound, then it opens up space to appreciate records, or performances, that excel in sound only, even if they have no worthwhile content otherwise. the sound is the content.

and thanks for your comments basmnt - seems like you absorb the sound first to see if it draws you in, then you begin to evaluate the elements that apparently exist outside of the sound. in other words, you listen first to see if you like it, then you listen to see if it's good.

something like that.

interesting views, all...

Wow good debate here. I'm going to give my 2 cents on this subject. Richard; I agree with you to some extent. Sound is everything. But sound is chemistry too. Whether its a sounds from our environmental world of everyday life. Or carefully crafted musical sound from a recording studio or a live recording of music.Think of it from this standpoint. A lyrical song starts with the writer. Sometimes that writer like myself is better at writing lyrics than he is writing the music that goes with it. So what I do in that case I attempt to play what is in my head on guitar or piano just to get the structure to stand up. So so far my formula looks like this. L= lyrics + M=melody. Then I'll take this song to one of my networks who can actully write music. That would be my guitar teacher. He takes what I
have in chord structure and writes the notes. The two of us will work on this written music together making changes where they need to be changed. You see;my biggest peave is good lyrics and weak music. Case in point that song Hey There Deliah. Cute and catchy lyrics. But music behind that song have no substance. Its superficial. Thats just my opinion. Un-trained ears could learn to play that song. Alright so much for my snobish attitude. So the formula now looks like this L+M+Cfor(Composition)=S for structure. Then we'll take this structure to the studio. We'll write in the the music for the bass and the drums and other instruments that suits this piece. Then we record without the vocals. This is where the recording engineer or sound technician works their magic. They probably studied physics in school. Sound is frequency range (hz)and (Khz)so
they must control the vibrations from the intruments that musicians use which are an extention of their voice. So they have to communicate clearly.
Once the music is established we bring in the vocals to sing the song. That is why a song is more than sound is truly chemestry.
Once again that is my opinion.

I'm not sure what you guys are talking about but I can assure you that a bad performance or rendering of any composition no matter how great is not a good thing. I used to have a copy of Handel's Messiah, I can't remember the conductor or orchestra but the performance was so bad that you could actually make people leave your house if you put it on, handy if you want them leave. I have since destroyed this 2 disc set so that others may be saved. This is a tough topic because either way you look at it you can find exceptions. I think I'll stop now because after thinking about this I keep coming up with more thoughts on the subject and I don't have time to write them down now.

Just to clarify, there is a context in which music lives. And it always helps to be aware of that context. For example, going to a John Cage concert expecting to hear J.S.Bach is going to result in some confusion, altho it might be educational.

I had a lengthy and heated discussion once about why I didn't like Rap music. After a while we both realized that I was talking about the music while he was talking about the lyrics. Again, the music was, to him, merely a vehicle for the lyrics, and all its social, political, and poetic implications.

I'm only talking about the music. And the context.
And of course one differentiates between sound the way our taste buds differentiate between lemon and lime.

Or, maybe I just done care for the lyrics.

I'm just beginning to check out thescope ofthe Pandora genre and I don't want to appear too naive, but I'm blown away by what you have accomplished via your web site and I will continue to be spoiled by the versatility aspired by myself.

Interesting thoughts so far. MZ- I agree with you and those you quoted to a certain extent. I'm not entirely sure how this entry turned into talk of recording quality and the like but I'll suffice to say that I appreciate quality audio just as much as anyone else.

As for the song vs. music debate(debate?), I find the relationship very interesting. I agree that music is the sound produced and it "actually appears." There should be no doubt as to the veracity of that notion because when music, be it Bach, Brahms, Snoop Dogg, or Britney Spears, is played in your vicinity, you hear it. The phenomenon of music appears into where you are. What I believe to be the point the original author was trying to make is that there is a very clear distinction between the music (that which you sensationally hear) and the song (that which is only represented by the sounds and is left up to us to draw some semiotic meaning).

I agree that there can be a great recording with a terrible song, listen to top-40 radio on any given day and you will hear mostly formulaic music that you can tap your toes to any time. These recordings, with the absence of song, are downright good. Careful consideration is given to their mixing, sampling, levels, whatever. They do, however, lack the song.

"...that "coherence" that we recognize as a song is something that we abstract from the actual music."

The music by itself has no meaning because it's simply noise. It is a symbol and it is up to us to draw conclusions from what we hear. In this process is where we derive the "deeper implications" of music and begin to translate it into songs. I think we can largely agree that we prefer the song to the music as it is our creation of the song from the music that determines how we feel as these frequencies, pitches, and decibels fall upon our ears.

I must disagree with Michael when he says: "It is usually the excellence of those perceived deeper implications, and the quality of the communication transmitted through the music from another human soul who somehow found and adapted their experience into art, that matters to me, much more, apparently, than what I am actually hearing."

Perhaps I am misinterpreting but in order to best translate from the music to the song, I think there should be some sort of careful consideration given to the quality of the communication's medium. Granted, it is not possible for every artist to convey their message with a several thousand dollar recording budget, but I think when possible, the quality of a recording becomes very integral for the way in which I experience a song. This is, however, a tough debate and one that I think is completely different from what Michael originally intended.

In summary... Music=sound. Songs=meaning derived from sound. While the song is more meaningful, I feel that the music often, but certainly not always, greatly contributes to my experience of the song.

Hopefully this comes together with others as it did for me. Very interesting points, Michael.

You REALLY need a spot devoted to recieving suggestions for new features. Since I don't know where else to put this here it is:

It would be really awesome if we could specify a specific segment of a song that we like, so that it would match only those qualities instead of those of the whole song.

well,well the music is amasing expression from heart and soul.Pandora is the way the singer and people like me listening just in my computer.Thanks PANDORA for share the music.

When copyrighting a song, there are two forms available from the Library of Congress. One is the Form PA, for the performing arts, which covers the song itself, or the actual essence of the song: the melody and chords underlying it. The other is Form SR, which covers the sound recording, or the form into which the "song" was recorded. The song itself is a silent and invisible enitity until it is commited to sound waves which involve structure, arrangement, instruments, etc. I think what the original author was referring to was what Form PA covers: the original, silent, formless song. I once wrote a song, when a member of a songwriting team, and we did a demo, but all agreed the song sounded too boring. It was in 4/4 time, like a ballad, and a rather slow tempo. So we redid the song, this time as a reggae song, with a faster tempo, and reggae rhythm. It sounded much better like this. So, the song was the same, but the music completely different in the two versions, at least to an untrained ear. The chords and melody remained the same. But in one version we liked it, in the other we didn't. So, to get to my point, I think the musical sound and the song itself are inseparable, at least to the degree of how much you like a song. Even though you may feel or sense the underlying song, regardless of the musical presentation of it, I think the musical presentation of it is part of the whole perception, and if it was presented a different way, you may not like the song as much as you first thought you did.

When I read, "Music is...", I cringe. Music is very subjective. Probably no two people perceive it exactly the same. We can describe many experiences in life which can be combined and result in pleasure to the soul. But for me, music is a direct path to the soul. It doesn't need any other mechanism to get there. In fact, music creates paths to other pleasurable experiences, such as relationships and visual input. It can direct us to past or present love affairs and friendships. It can bring back memories of experiences in nature. It can make us more aware of life. It can be life, in a real sort of way.

I just noticed that there is a comment on this blog that has my name on it and it's not my comment. As a computer systems analyst this bothers me because there is obviously a bug or glitch in your system because this should not have been possible. To be quite honest I have to admit that the subject of this blog is way too complicated, I tried to explain my thoughts on this subject but I wound up writing a book and still didn't reach a definite conclusion. I can't believe that Glenn Gould would make a statement like the one we are discussing because it is clearly incorrect. I think we are discussing content as opposed to execution and I know that sometimes lack of content can be excused because of brilliant execution or at least decent, look at most pop music. I think that the opposite has a lower success rate, it is more difficult to enjoy a good work if the execution is bad, sometimes impossible.

hey scott - the poster's name is added below the post and below a horizontal line, which sometimes makes people think that the next post has been attributed to them -

as for your points and comments, I think that not reaching a conclusion is probably a good state of affairs, since categories and concepts like these are best when they are still mutable and in motion. hopefully they stimulate some new ways to listen and hear the music.

Fascinating discussion. What I haven't seen mentioned is that music has been around a lot longer than our ability to make recordings of it!

That said, recorded music is really just a way to bring the performance to listeners who couldn't be there in person. And all an artist does when adjusting, editing and enhancing a recording is try to make the listener's experience of the performance as close to the original, or to the artist's ideal conception of it.

The point is that the quality of the recording is either good enough to ignore, and allow focus just on the music, or is in some way diminishing the experience. This should, I hope, put the quality of the reproduction in perspective - it is a vehicle only.

Then, one can pay attention to and evaluate the real content: Composition, arrangement, and originality on the part of the composer, and quality of performance, emotion, character, technical ability etc. from the performers.

(I should mention: I am a classical musician and play professionally - bit I listen to almost every kind of music - and Pandora is terrific! I'm waiting for the classical stations...)

i joined pandora in feburary 2007. i love everything about it. i have even created three radio stations .my soul is so blessed ,i just love god so much. and i thank the creaters, of the station. what a great why to bring people to god.THROUGH HIS WORD BY MUSIC. [ STAY BLESSED ] JEANELLE, A CHILD OF GOD.