Random thoughts about music

I guess one thing I don't find very likely about the connection between human music and birdsong is that a single human male singing for a single female as courtship, seems to me to be a relatively rare thing. I don't think it's ever been a very common practice across time and cultures. In European cultures, love serenades were and probably to a less extent still are a thing, but IDK how significant this kind of practice is.

But that's on the production side of music. On the reception side, and dancing in particular, the connection with courtship behaviors seems much stronger. In fact I'm not even sure you could say dance is on the reception side of music, since dancing and music are so closely linked. Maybe they should be thought of as two different facets of the same thing.

I won't pretend to know what constitutes art or music, but one thing I find hard to get rid of, or am reluctant to get rid of when trying to define art is the question of the intention of the maker. There's art I like and art I don't, and I would even go as far as to say it may be possible to define bad art (which I link to a lack of effort on the part of the artist to learn about their art, to put in the work and to experiment), but I'm generous in giving out the label of "art"... provided that there's an intention behind it. A quest for beauty maybe, and a certain disregard for the immediate utility of the activity in question, be it singing, painting, etc. And I don't think birdsong satisfies these criteria.

It's not even the worse song I've ever heard. It just sounds incredibly lazy to me.

I'd be curious to know why you favor one over the other though, and how you go about differenciating between 3/4 and 6/8 more generally. To be honest, I tend to approach this issue from a pragmatical point of view: I'm sure I've written a few pieces in 3/4 that would have been more adequately described as 6/8 and vice versa, because it works. In fact, I'm pretty sure at some point I've written stuff in 4/4 with every instrument playing triplets.

Are you talking to me? I'm musically illiterate, which is why I ask questions of you and callaina .

I remember, ages ago, talking to someone who knew things about music and saying that a particular song (can't remember which, unfortuately) sounded like 3/4 to me. He said no, it was just divided into triplets. I asked why that couldn't be applied to everything written ostensibly in 3/4, including waltzes. His answer was that if it was really 3/4, you would know.

As unsatisfactory as that is, I can't find a better reason for saying why 'Piano Man' strikes me as being obviously 3/4.

I wish I could remember the song in question. But what he said did make sense at the time to me. It didn't have that thumping undeniably 3/4 rhythm.

Speaking of rhythm (as if I needed an excuse to speak about rhythm), this is the sort of thing you can find in progressive metal, my favorite genre of music:



Polyrhythms and odd meters are the bread and butter of prog metal. My favorite screwy thing is polymeters, but they're a bit less common.

A slightly less crazy example of rhythmical fun from the same band, but this is among my favorite songs from any band or genre (also, the album it's from is MUCH better produced than the one the previous song is from):