9/13/01

Do you listen to the music, or the notes? Music is a complex form of subtle neural programming through abstract emotional response. It plays on links with aural processing and ones emotional and sometimes intellectual or even experiencal responses. It is much as with subliminal programming, where even though the conscious mind is not aware of the words, the unconscious mind is, and is thus affected by them.

Modern electronic music takes more full advantage of this than any other form of music man has yet created. The closest parallel is the clasical orchestrations we have known culturally for centuries. Classical music operates on much the same principle. The movements and orchestrations trigger responses, move us to new places and experience. The progressive movement began recapturing this technique in the 70s, and has continued today in the form of electronic music.

The techniques have become more refined. Artists are more consciously aware of what they are doing with it, and the instrumentation is infinite. It is now possible to do on a midi board what would have been impossibly challenging for a traditional orchestra to simulate. Some of our modern composers are even able to take advantage of this, producing mindscapes of music that would keep even the masters of old in thrall.

But as always, I look at how it works. When listeneing to the ever more complex scapes created by such modern composers, one must listen abstractly in order to fully experience the intended result. If one listens discretely to each note, each layer, and tries to map the music, one has a completely different expereience. Indeed, some music is intended to be listened to this way, highly complex intelligent techo which will captivate the mind as it attempts to digest every detail, losing one within it.

Ambient works, however, abstract progressive works, can be very different. If one listens to the notes, one misses the song. For these musics, one must step back. One must allow the music to pass through the intellect, and follow instead the response this sound causes. Rather than examining the source, examine the destination. Music is reflected from our consciousness by our response to it. Watching this response results in the music becomming an experience, one that can affect more than just the aural senses.

Take Disney's Fantasia, for example. The opening sequence of abstract dancing baselines, proof for many that old Walt dipped a little into the acid in the '60s, is a perfect example of this. Here, he attempted to visualize the experience that music can cause by following the experience of it. Another example is in David Brin's Uplift Cronicles novels. Here, geneticly advanced dolphins listen to music that creates entire landscapes aroud them. Near full VR, just from sound. This is possible because of the high level of processing dolphins use for aural input. Humans use quite a bit as well, more than any other sense. So, it is not unreasonable that sound and music can take us to specific places, psychedelic or not.

A lot of modern music takes advantage of this. There is the ambient Future Sounds of London, the highly progressive Orb, and even the strangly psychedelic Psychic TV, just to name a few. Listening to these artists as background music is small in impact. Listening critically can be either disappointing or utterly involving. Listening intently and fully, yet passively, focusing on the experience caused by the sound, can be near trancendental in experience.

Music is a form of programming. If you let the program run, and pay close attention to its output, the expierence of it may be more than you could ever imagine.