Musical Archetypes?

Hi all!
This comes from another list and thought it applied so much to this
one i am forwarding it here. I believe the ideas behind some of this are
in kin with many of Wilson assumptions. especially the beginning and
end. all in my opinion
Re: [Music Theory] modes again
Date:
Sun, 28 Nov 1999 10:38:19 -0800
From:
Ted Davis <ted@teknova.com>
Reply-To:
MusicTheory@onelist.com
Organization:
teknova
To:
MusicTheory@onelist.com
References:
1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

in the language instinct pinker argues that when children learn to speak
they all make the same types of errors and those
types are relatively few in number compared to the number of grammatical
rules and exceptions inherent in any human
language. moreover, they rapidly begin to
speak at an age far too early to understand the abstract rules of
language that we later struggle
mightly to learn in school. chomsky's symbolic formulation of language
and subsequent mapping
of diverse languages into a very simple scheme argues strongly for an
organic origin of
language structure.

one can view music in a similar light
for instance:
there are far more similarities between musical styles than differences.

most folk music styles are essentially composed of pentatonics.
if you listen to recordings of music from "primitive" cultures it is
immediately recognizable
as music and you can pretty much tell where it is going.
pop music in most cultures is very easy to recognize as such.
etc..

obviously people imitate each other etc... and there are good reasons
why indian pop
music sounds like american pop music.

what is not obvious is why we play what we play and not something
entirely different.
when we attempt to be radically different it is termed "experimental
music"
and very few people enjoy it.

the above arguments merely suggest that there may be an organic tendency
towards
certain scales and musics as there probably is for language structure.

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com

in the language instinct pinker argues that when children learn to speak they
all make the same types of errors and those types are relatively few in number
compared to the number of grammatical rules and exceptions inherent in any
human language. moreover, they rapidly begin to
speak at an age far too early to understand the abstract rules of language
that we later struggle
mightly to learn in school. chomsky's symbolic formulation of language and
subsequent mapping
of diverse languages into a very simple scheme argues strongly for an organic
origin of
language structure.

one can view music in a similar light
for instance:
there are far more similarities between musical styles than differences.
most folk music styles are essentially composed of pentatonics.
if you listen to recordings of music from "primitive" cultures it is
immediately recognizable
as music and you can pretty much tell where it is going.
pop music in most cultures is very easy to recognize as such.
etc..

obviously people imitate each other etc... and there are good reasons why
indian pop
music sounds like american pop music.

what is not obvious is why we play what we play and not something entirely
different.
when we attempt to be radically different it is termed "experimental music"
and very few people enjoy it.

the above arguements mearly suggest that there may be an organic tendency
towards
certain scales and musics as there probably is for language structure.

Distracted Genius wrote:

> From: "Distracted Genius" <distractedgenius@hotmail.com>
>
> That's what I suspected. Thanks for clearing that up. I can recall a few
> different bird calls and none of them fit perfectly into our chromatic
> scale. In fact a lot of bird and animal calls that I can remember involve
> some pretty imprecise sliding pitches.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Kraig Grady
> To: MusicTheory@onelist.com
> Sent: Sunday, November 28, 1999 2:09 AM
> Subject: Re: [MusicTheory] modes again
>
> Messiaen was quite aware that birds did no sing in 12 tone temperment, he
> choose
> the nearest notes. I just read that today in fact
>
> -- Kraig Grady
> North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
> http://www.anaphoria.com
>
> > MusicTheory onelist.