Reply To: The Challenges of Horror and Dissonance
I just have to look at myself, I remember my “listening history” quite well…
Same here. Most of my landmark memories seem to involve learning to respond to some type of music in a way that I previously hadn’t.
from my first encounter with music
Oh… well, that’s certainly better than I can do. I’m told that I was a fan of Top of the Pops in my first few months, but I can’t say I have any memory of that.
On the other hand, there is also a visceral component, and immediate “gut reaction” to music, that seems to be more “universal”.
My first impulse was to reply to this with disagreement (or, at least, scepticism) but, on reflection, I may have been over-interpreting what you wrote. I certainly agree that there seems to be a (more or less) universal disposition in humans to try to process musical sounds, and to develop an ability to get gratification from them. And there are surely certain basic qualities to sounds (e.g., being loud or quiet) whose visceral effect is quite universal in nature; a sudden orchestral fortissimo tutti will probably have a startling effect that is independent of any learned musical syntax.
My scepticism kicks in when it comes to more specific components of music (intervals, chords, cadences, melodies, keys/modes…) and higher level structures built out of them. I don’t see any reason to postulate innate (rather than learned) aesthetic responses to these.
That would be good. Because already now the mathematics of music make it easy for AI to “calculate”. There needs to be a little Human mystery and extra within…
That should work out okay, then, because if there truly needs to be human involvement, A.I. won’t be able to replace it; and if A.I. can do it, that will mean that the human component wasn’t essential after all!