Musical Language was:(Re: DIPLOMACY: Memetic Morphing)

From: Max M (maxm@maxmcorp.dk)
Date: Mon Nov 16 1998 - 07:26:19 MST


From: Patrick Wilken <patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au>

>There was a recent article in Nature/Science suggesting that music training
>in childhood permanently raised verbal IQ. I haven't read the article so
>can't comment, but it seemed to have surface plausibity. The argument that
>similar (same?) areas of the brain are used by both.

As a long time musician (+15 Years) I am absolutely convinced that music is
no more than a stylised abstraction of the human language!

Music consists of rythm, tone and pitch. When I hear my kids learning to
speak they don't say the words right at first, but the rythm, tone and pitch
is in place long before that.

My youngest girl is called Clara and when she tries to say her name it comes
out as ara or aha.
My oldest son is called Magnus and she pronounces that as arhus.
When she tries to say "thank you for dinner" (tak for mad) it comes out as
"ak or ad".
In fact everything she tries to say comes out as a "musical" version of the
right words and sentences. Even when it's all garbled the rythm is usually
right.

It would also explain what a musical genre is. A dialect of a musical
language. When the dialect becomes too different from it's root language it
becomes a new language.

Any music we don't know ususally seems boring and superficial. That is
probably because we don't understand the "language" and "dialect" of that
genre. Thus we cannot enjoy the details, which is what usually defines a
genre.

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