Is instrumental music information?

Magical Realist

Magical Realist

Valued Senior Member
I was pondering if it was. With lyrics there is certainly some transmission of information. Something is learned that wasn't known before. But with instrumental music, what is learned from just the music? It may be a new melody we listen to, or one of our favorites. But in what sense is it information, if it is at all?

Furthermore is experiencing art gaining information? MUST art be informational? What knowledge is gained in addition the purely aesthetic feelings it generates?
 
Magical Realist said:
I was pondering if it was. With lyrics there is certainly some transmission of information. Something is learned that wasn't known before. But with instrumental music, what is learned from just the music? It may be a new melody we listen to, or one of our favorites. But in what sense is it information, if it is at all?

Furthermore is experiencing art gaining information? MUST art be informational? What knowledge is gained in addition the purely aesthetic feelings it generates?
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Music is a tune chords baseline harmony structure. It is information of a kind, we can write it down, document it.
I think of it as music rather than information.
Literature is information but it is literature first is it not?
 
That is a view of information in the narrow context of knowledge - things humans tend to express in words.
But words are not the only thing humans communicate; they also communicate emotions and images and even stories.
Music is jam packed with emotional messages and, by extension, imagery and story.

Listen to Holst's The Planets or almost any of the pieces in Disney's Fantasia to get an idea how much can be communicated without a spoken word.
 
DaveC426913 said:
That is a view of information in the narrow context of knowledge - things humans tend to express in words.
But words are not the only thing humans communicate; they also communicate emotions and images and even stories.
Music is jam packed with emotional messages and, by extension, imagery and story.

Listen to Holst's The Planets or almost any of the pieces in Disney's Fantasia to get an idea how much can be communicated without a spoken word.
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If I learn the bass part in Mozart’s Requiem, I have obviously gained knowledge. Music is highly complex information about rhythm, patterns of chords and sequences of pitches.

Potential emotional content is yet another layer on top, of a more subjective kind, which not all music needs to possess.
 
Magical Realist said:
I was pondering if it was. With lyrics there is certainly some transmission of information. Something is learned that wasn't known before. But with instrumental music, what is learned from just the music? It may be a new melody we listen to, or one of our favorites. But in what sense is it information, if it is at all?
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Leibniz: "The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic." -- From a letter to Goldbach, 27 April 1712

So from that view, instrumental music would be quantitative information innately processed. Instead of acquired learning associations connecting words (lyric) to other memories (identification and understanding). Although, musicians -- depending on the level of their background and whether they have absolute pitch -- could consciously or linguistically analyze and relate what they're hearing to the word-expressed concepts of the art. (Identify the key, chord or interval, rhythm pattern, note, etc).

Furthermore is experiencing art gaining information? MUST art be informational? What knowledge is gained in addition the purely aesthetic feelings it generates?
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An art connoisseur may be attaching deeper meanings and scholarly allegory to an instance of craftsmanship which the less informed bystander does not. Still, even the latter may recognize it as a symbol for something, or it may evoke either positive or negative feelings.

A caveman would probably need to first assimilate the general idea of art (as something beyond spiritual or practical significance of depictions on rock walls improving luck in hunting or the fertility potency of magical talismans). I.e., much "art" is probably not wholly native to the brain, the conception must be acquired, though it probably has a precursor that's less developed and pragmatic-belief oriented.
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Is music information? Is this a Max Tegmark approach to reality and math?

Do you mean does music convey information? Define what you consider information and you have your answer.

Is a grasshopper information?
 
Seattle said:
Is music information? Is this a Max Tegmark approach to reality and math?

Do you mean does music convey information? Define what you consider information and you have your answer.

Is a grasshopper information?
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Agree - music is music. Information seems to have gained this mystical quality like energy.
 
Is it possible for two people to imagine or feel, two completely different scenarios and emotions for the same piece of music?
 
foghorn said:
Is it possible for two people to imagine or feel, two completely different scenarios and emotions for the same piece of music?
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Absolutely, otherwise we would all be clones.

I love Kate Bush, my ex described her as "that screeching woman."

I love Jazz, some people hate it. I hate RAP, some people love it.
 
sculptor said:

Without what already exist in your mind; words would be meaningless.
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After over two decades, surely a well-traveled meme by now: "Information has no intrinsic meaning."
_
 
Pinball1970 said:
Dave if you have "dumped" Kate Bush, you have truly lost touch with the universe sir.

I do not think that is the case.
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I'm with your ex on this. I found Kate Bush's voice to be like fingernails down a blackboard.

I'm afraid I could also never take Rick Wakeman seriously after "Journey to the Centre of the Earth". Two dinosaurs fighting, etc.:rolleyes:

(My 70s bands were Pink Floyd and then Roxy Music.)
 
DaveC426913 said:
You mean you could never take the Legendary Father of Science Fiction - 19th century author Jules Verne seriously. -_O

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_Center_of_the_Earth

I see your literary edumacation is woefully wanting... :cool:
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Of course I’ve read the book, if only in translation. As a boy, I found it quite a gripping story. Actually, I think I heard it first as a radio adaptation. It’s Wakeman’s pretentious musical depiction I found risible. Some of these prog rockers did take themselves terribly seriously.

(There was also a cartoon of the story on TV in the sixties that was so terrible it was compulsive viewing for us as kids. The cheapskate animation effects, showing people running diagonally sideways, was so bad and so funny we used to imitate it. A girl I subsequently went out with in the 80s told me they did the same in her family.)
 
I always got the impression that the pretentiousness was tongue in cheek. On The Myths and Legends tour he had knights jousting on ice skates. That's could almost be a Monty Python skit.
 
gmilam said:
I always got the impression that the pretentiousness was tongue in cheek. On The Myths and Legends tour he had knights jousting on ice skates. That's could almost be a Monty Python skit.
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Or something out of This is Spinal Tap:

 
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