WEEK3 - Forum - Making Music or Mayhem?

After the session today, I'm convinced the contemporary definition of music has something to do with rhythm and beats to the bar. During the rehearsal of David's piece today, the removal of a regular beat produced a hysteria almost requiring a straight-jacket in the guy sitting next to me. Am I presuming too much? I could find no other real reason. Percussion, guitars, keyboards, voices - familiar instruments. What was the difference? No beat! That was it. Read: No Beats to a Bar. People played their parts as required, making decisions based on the sounds around them, and perhaps the sounds they were anticipating. This has to constitute some kind of forward motion, just not the four beats to the bar variety. Unless you're attempting to cram what you're hearing into regular bars. Just for fun: the bar lines are drawn at ten second intervals and the clock is your metronome ... but you still have 15 (or whatever) seconds to play your one note. Does it change the decision? Do you stop reacting to what is going on around you and begin concentrating on the clock?

As with Stephen's presentation on originality, this one also left me with more questions than answers. A lively, inspiring forum once more, concluding with some robust debate regarding what manifestation of noise constitutes music. Perhaps music is just a word; the brain does the rest.

This website throws up a few more ideas:

http://whatismusic.info/download.html

Finally, from the Virginia Tech Multimedia Dictionary:

"Any rhythmic, melodic, or harmonic grouping of sounds that is specifically composed and that forms a unity so as to convey a message, to communicate, or to entertain."

http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/ - accessed Sunday, 18th March, 2007

and the beat goes on ... or does it?