Re: WmRm2, #1 "Synchronise rhythms now..."

[jondr@sco.COM]

[look mom, no flames.]

jorn barger writes:
>Maybe *emotions* in the brain and body (and breathing) *do* 
>have distinct, someday-scientifically-mappable *rhythms*, so that people 
>can move *into* phase (if their emotions have the same cycle-length) or 
>out of phase (when they don't).

i'd buy this.  anyone who has spent a magical day with a lover where
you're both "in tune" knows this phenomenon.  and similarly, when you
get into a heated fight with that same person two days later and you
say, "i just don't UNDERSTAND you anymore!" you are observing the
phenomenon in reverse.

>So when we listen to emotional music, ***maybe*** our emotional rhythms 
>naturally move *into* phase with it, the better to savor it at full 
>intensity,

this is also acceptable - to a point.  "emotional music" needs some
defining, for instance.  specific case: i don't like happy rhodes, who
is claimed to be a very emotional singer/songwriter by her fans.  i do
like The Future Sound of London - the song "Papua New Guinea" is
extremely moving, for me.  i'm sure plenty of people will think it's
just another nauseating collage of samples with a dance beat, but it
evokes a mood of wistful longing in my brain that is incredibly
clear-cut.  and it is definitely more than the sum of its parts - the
song has a sample from dead can dance in it but i find the DCD track
leaves me cold whereas FSoL just *hits that certain spot* in my head.

as it stands now, your statement makes it look like there are ways to
measure musical compositions' "emotional impact content."  find some
way to restate it without the implicit bias and i'd buy it.

>and our *brainwaves*, or the slow rhythms of our breathing, or 
>our heartbeats, or a billion other sorts of rhythmic biological signal, 
>really maybe might *gently color*, in a perfectly *asimovian* way ( ;^),  
>the physical fieldstrengths thruout the room, including necessarily the 
>*read* mechanism of the stereo as it plays, to any least infinitesimal 
>degree *sufficient to leave a mark*...

well, i was with you up to this point.  i'm sorry, but i just can't
believe this.  the reasons are numerous and have been brought up in
this forum many times in the past.

>(But CDs, see, being digital, can't take *any* mark, unless it's 
>imprinted thru a zero toggling into a one, or back, which, *by design* 
>almost literally *never* happens... )

you seem to be lacking some fundamental knowledge of how a CD player
works.  if you read up about ADCs and digital filters and error
correction, i think you'll find that a CD almost *never* plays back
the same bit-pattern twice...  (unless you're running the digital outs
into a digital amp, but then you've got the amp's ADCs and filters to
worry about.  sigh.  if only i had an SPDIF input on the back of my
head...)

-- 
Jon Drukman (an emulsifier)                                       jondr@sco.com
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