[huwg]

There are many albums which I've enjoyed from the first spin, but typically after 5 plays I'm through with them. They simply don't have the staying power to offer anything more than a great tune that sounds good for the first few listens but becomes boring after a few more plays. They have provided me with entertainment but leave me wanting something more.... I need another quick fix or a 'grower'...

The 'growers' must have something in them that grabs my initial interest, to make me want to play them a few times and not give up. I could swear that the music changes with each play; where there was originally chaos, there is now a nice tune. It certainly did not sound like that 5 plays ago. Maybe it is the "I paid for this CD, and I'm gonna play it till I like it" syndrome, perhaps I just keep listening because reviews from sources I trust tell me it is a classic.

Either way, when I play any album, it is usually the growers which I enjoy more and get the full (often repeated) play.

The instant hits do get outings and provide enjoyment for the duration of some of the songs, but I do find myself reaching for the 'skip' button. They are great for a quick thrash around, but then that is it, they have done their job (often very well indeed).

I would say on balance, about 90% of albums I play on a regular basis are 'growers', I could not see what the fuss was about until it 'clicked' - Not good for when your mates borrow your iPod.

So what do you generally prefer...
An album which takes time, is sometimes challenging but ultimately very rewarding (even though they are typically lonely headphone jobs) ...
or
Something with a bit more immediacy, to have a quick blast of then leave alone?

Maybe I am just odd?

[karkus30]

Originally Posted by huwg

There are many albums which I've enjoyed from the first spin, but typically after 5 plays I'm through with them. They simply don't have the staying power to offer anything more than a great tune that sounds good for the first few listens but becomes boring after a few more plays. They have provided me with entertainment but leave me wanting something more.... I need another quick fix or a 'grower'...

The 'growers' must have something in them that grabs my initial interest, to make me want to play them a few times and not give up. I could swear that the music changes with each play; where there was originally chaos, there is now a nice tune. It certainly did not sound like that 5 plays ago. Maybe it is the "I paid for this CD, and I'm gonna play it till I like it" syndrome, perhaps I just keep listening because reviews from sources I trust tell me it is a classic.

Either way, when I play any album, it is usually the growers which I enjoy more and get the full (often repeated) play.

The instant hits do get outings and provide enjoyment for the duration of some of the songs, but I do find myself reaching for the 'skip' button. They are great for a quick thrash around, but then that is it, they have done their job (often very well indeed).

I would say on balance, about 90% of albums I play on a regular basis are 'growers', I could not see what the fuss was about until it 'clicked' - Not good for when your mates borrow your iPod.

So what do you generally prefer...
An album which takes time, is sometimes challenging but ultimately very rewarding (even though they are typically lonely headphone jobs) ...
or
Something with a bit more immediacy, to have a quick blast of then leave alone?

Maybe I am just odd?

Apart from you being odd

This is common, so I will forward my own personal opinion on this one. There are three things that are important.........

1) We all have a representational system that we prefer. Some are visual, some audio and generally the rest are kinaethetic (touchy,feely,emotional preference). High visual people (these are generally the people that you find working away with the radio on, or are easily distracted by movement) generally like simple music. High Audios have a preference for audio communication (these people find music a distraction when working and find noises distracting in general, they look away slightly when talking to someone so they concentrate on the audio information). High Ks seek the emotional content in music, sometimes leaning towards the physicality of the bass, often they are the ones that will talk about the great time they had at the gig because of the atmosphere/emotion and their mates.

2) Next is more contraversial. All humans are pattern seeking. We seek order in chaos and reason where there might be none. Some of the greatest patterns are found in maths and there is a close order between maths and music. Those that seek simple patterns are satisfied with simple music, those that have a greater need of more complex patterns will want more complex music. Something on a subconscious level will decide a pattern is present in a piece of music even when the conscious mind might have dismissed something as just noise, it brings that information up at odd times (you find you hum bits) until you have to replay the music. At that point you have fathomed the pattern of at least some of the music and it starts sounding 'normal', you might find that other parts are still difficult to interpret, but eventually your UC mind solves the puzzle.......and if it is too easy you get bored.

Combine these two structures and you can find a sliding scale of musical and artistic appreciation. You can see the same thing happen with art, with some people trying to resolve a complex abstract painting, where others just give up. Read a poem by someone like William Blake and you will struggle to make sense of it on a conscious level, but somewhere it evokes change.

Quite often I use language patterns and metaphors to achieve results with people, these are aimed at the unconscious mind, because the conscious mind just gets in the way. Its easy to overload the conscious mind with information
at which point you begin to go into a light trance and into a learning state which allows the information to go straight to where it can be understood on another level. This is the way with music.

These are my own conclusions so dont take them as gospel.















did you wonder about the third

[huwg]

Makes sense, but in which camp would you say the majority of your listening lies?
and the third point?

[overkill]

Coming back down to Earth with a 'plop', I take up Huwgs argument, and I have to agree with it.

Agree with what you may ask? The finely interwoven play of words that just danced across the screen as I attempted to absorb his post? Or the simple fact that music is offered in distinctive forms? The easily absorbed, and easily disregarded, and the harder to accept, and thus requiring of more thought as well as plays....

On balance, and I had to meditate over this, I prefer the music that requires thought, has depth, and results in long term enjoyment.

[huwg]

Originally Posted by overkill

The finely interwoven play of words that just danced across the screen as I attempted to absorb his post?

It does take a few reads before it finally clicks.

[karkus30]

One last time just for your edification. Those who dont like trancy feelings turn away now......

"I know you know....you know.....it makes a lot of sense because I can see it in your eyes and that means you are changing things on many levels, all the time, simply because you have to.......create new learnings, integrations and insights, and you can can't you. People can......you know....thats the major difference between learning this way and as you sit there, looking at these words, listening to the sounds around you, you're unconscious.....can make all the integrations it needs instantaneously or maybe even quicker than that. Do you realise this is something you can do ? I remember several years ago, being at a seminar where the trainer mentioned that a friend of his had worked with Milton and his client had said that his budget dictated that he had to change in just one session and he said thats right....write the right amount on the cheque.......it's ok with your unconscious......knows that hypnotising hypnotists can be difficult so speaking to you as someone who knows it can be easy....does it"

I'm on the side of the 'grower'. The more complex the better as long as it has a true pattern (something that is fundamental in classical music, you can also notice that classical music evokes emotional states).

[huwg]

This thread has turned into 'Newsnight Review'

[soundstory]

this is hurting my head

[karkus30]

Originally Posted by soundstory

this is hurting my head

The reason it hurts is that it makes very little sense on one level, which is the conscious mind trying to get a grip on all the ambiguities and lost performantives etc within the text. The conscious mind quickly fills up with this input (it can only handle a few chunks of information and is easy to fool, which is why some illusionist drawings are hard to figure out) and to all intents and purposes switches off. Important unconcious commands can then be embedded in the wording (difficult to demonstrate without actually hearing the spoken words).

I suspect this is the same with musical content, probably why classical music can have such an emotional impact on people. As mentioned in a previous post, bands such as Tool construct some songs using the Fibbonacci sequence, often referred to as the Golden Ratio. This is a natural sequence of numbers 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 which is pleasing to the human mind as it mimicks how nature constructs things. This same ratio can be applied to buildings (Greeks and Romans stuck to it), art and even rumoured to be useful in setting up your hifi speakers ! You can do this in music simply by altering the word count/syllabel on each line, or by changing tempo/note count etc.

[huwg]

Originally Posted by karkus30

bands such as Tool construct some songs using the Fibbonacci sequence, often referred to as the Golden Ratio. This is a natural sequence of numbers 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 which is pleasing to the human mind as it mimicks how nature constructs things.

[youtube]BecH8JOXDwo[/youtube]

Over thinking, over analysing?

[karkus30]

Originally Posted by huwg

Over thinking, over analysing?

No such thing as over thinking, plenty of underthinking things.....they are called veg...e...tab..les. There is plenty of wrong thinking, the human mind generalises, distorts and deletes in order to cope with the avalanche of information from every nerve and cell in our bodies, where this happens most is in verbal communication.........so, it is sometimes difficult to analyse a simple line such as

..........speaking to you as a child........ is that speaking to you as if you were a child, or speaking to you as a child might speak to you ?

........all the pretty girls and boys........are both the girls and boys pretty or is it just the girls (good one if you are doing a presentation. My highly regarded colleagues and bosses ).

If you analyse song lyrics you will find the same difficulty, you can only understand by using the 'key' which is the original writer and drilling down using careful questioning to establish what is behind the song. Most of Tools songs contain ambiguities like this.......over thinking over analysing.......is a perfect example. Sometimes the message is delivered in the text in such a way as only the unconcious mind can make sense of it, this is how metaphors work. As an example try understanding the work of the brilliant William Blake.

Blake wrote really clever stuff that ties the concious in knots but you get a sense of what he means somewhere in the deepest recesses of your mind. As an interesting aside and to keep slightly on topic, Blake wrote a poem in which he used the line

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite. --William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Aldous Huxley took it as the title for his book about taking the drug Mescaline (it is supposed to clear the mind and allow connection with the unconcious directly, the Indians took it as Peyote). If you ever saw the film The Matrix, it is mentioned during the first 10 minutes or so and aludes to alternate reality (as of course the Matrix is..........a prisoner in your own mind).

Anyway, The Doors (band) took their name from Aldous Huxleys book, equally experimental as a band.

Thats my ramble over, hope you can sleep on a night knowing that you cannot actually know what the world looks like because of the limitations of your own mind.......fun eh

[huwg]

I can't see how anyone could not fail to not understand any of that.

[karkus30]

Originally Posted by huwg

I can't see how anyone could not fail to not understand any of that.

Who's been doing a bit of reading up then

[soundstory]

Originally Posted by karkus30

The reason it hurts is that it makes very little sense on one level, which is the conscious mind trying to get a grip on all the ambiguities and lost performantives etc within the text. The conscious mind quickly fills up with this input (it can only handle a few chunks of information and is easy to fool, which is why some illusionist drawings are hard to figure out) and to all intents and purposes switches off. Important unconcious commands can then be embedded in the wording (difficult to demonstrate without actually hearing the spoken words).

I suspect this is the same with musical content, probably why classical music can have such an emotional impact on people. As mentioned in a previous post, bands such as Tool construct some songs using the Fibbonacci sequence, often referred to as the Golden Ratio. This is a natural sequence of numbers 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21 which is pleasing to the human mind as it mimicks how nature constructs things. This same ratio can be applied to buildings (Greeks and Romans stuck to it), art and even rumoured to be useful in setting up your hifi speakers ! You can do this in music simply by altering the word count/syllabel on each line, or by changing tempo/note count etc.

ow ow ow