Charles Taylor's 1989 Christmas Lectures 1/5: What is Music?
In this 1st lecture, Charles Taylor explains why some sounds are musical and others are just noise. Music is one of most familiar features of everyday life and in all cultures people have always danced and sung in rituals, in celebrations and as expression of joy. Whenever pressure of air is changed rapidly, our ear-brain system detects pressure changes as sound. Sound travels from source to listener as sound waves, but what are they really like? And why are some sounds musical and some just noise? Answer for simple, single sounds is easy: if vibration is very regular sound is more musical than if it is irregular. As we move to more complex sounds and mixtures that occur in real world of music, difference is far less easy to describe in any scientific way. Musical instruments can be used for sending information but is all music concerned with passing on information? Why do some people love music that other people hate? There are obvious differences in musical preferences of people of different cultures, yet some say that music is universal language. How much of what we like is determined by our experience and how much is from physics of ear-brain system? What part does memory and conditioning play in our appreciation of music? Why do some sounds make us laugh and why can music have such powerful effect on our mood? It is unlikely that we shall find clear cut answers to these questions, nor to general question of this lecture. But we should have fun exploring subject with experiments and recordings and, hopefully, know little more about music at end than we did at beginning. Timecodes: 00:00 - Christmas Lectures 01:50 - Professor Charles Taylor 02:25 - Music & Science 03:24 - Experimenting with Music 04:20 - Faithful Old Man 06:15 - Musical Instruments 08:23 - Mechanism of Hearing 10:17 - Acoustic Stress 11:40 - Sound Propagation 13:35 - Experiment with Audience 14:17 - Introduction to Experiment 14:52 - Preparing for Experiment 15:48 - Conducting Experiment 16:50 - Historical Context of Experiment 17:47 - Telephone Concert 18:33 - Nature of Sound 20:07 - Brain's Response to Sounds 21:57 - Experiment with Volunteers 25:33 - Frequency of Sounds 27:12 - High-Frequency Sounds 29:29 - Whistling & Oscilloscope 30:40 - Creating Musical Instrument 33:55 - Bat Detector & Other Sounds 37:11 - Sound Analysis on Oscilloscope 42:28 - Rhythm in Music 42:50 - Complex Rhythms 43:05 - Role of Rhythm & Harmony 44:02 - Example of Decoding Melody 44:55 - Harmony in 7th Symphony 46:09 - Experiment with Sound Perception 49:30 - Meaning of Context in Music 51:58 - Humor in Music 52:50 - Role of Brain in Music Perception 53:47 - Music & Programming 56:20 - Conclusion Playlists: https://rutube.ru/plst/804000 https://vkvideo.ru/playlist/-235081080_114 #MusicHistory | #CharlesTaylor Original video: https://youtu.be/p-960zzAa78
In this 1st lecture, Charles Taylor explains why some sounds are musical and others are just noise. Music is one of most familiar features of everyday life and in all cultures people have always danced and sung in rituals, in celebrations and as expression of joy. Whenever pressure of air is changed rapidly, our ear-brain system detects pressure changes as sound. Sound travels from source to listener as sound waves, but what are they really like? And why are some sounds musical and some just noise? Answer for simple, single sounds is easy: if vibration is very regular sound is more musical than if it is irregular. As we move to more complex sounds and mixtures that occur in real world of music, difference is far less easy to describe in any scientific way. Musical instruments can be used for sending information but is all music concerned with passing on information? Why do some people love music that other people hate? There are obvious differences in musical preferences of people of different cultures, yet some say that music is universal language. How much of what we like is determined by our experience and how much is from physics of ear-brain system? What part does memory and conditioning play in our appreciation of music? Why do some sounds make us laugh and why can music have such powerful effect on our mood? It is unlikely that we shall find clear cut answers to these questions, nor to general question of this lecture. But we should have fun exploring subject with experiments and recordings and, hopefully, know little more about music at end than we did at beginning. Timecodes: 00:00 - Christmas Lectures 01:50 - Professor Charles Taylor 02:25 - Music & Science 03:24 - Experimenting with Music 04:20 - Faithful Old Man 06:15 - Musical Instruments 08:23 - Mechanism of Hearing 10:17 - Acoustic Stress 11:40 - Sound Propagation 13:35 - Experiment with Audience 14:17 - Introduction to Experiment 14:52 - Preparing for Experiment 15:48 - Conducting Experiment 16:50 - Historical Context of Experiment 17:47 - Telephone Concert 18:33 - Nature of Sound 20:07 - Brain's Response to Sounds 21:57 - Experiment with Volunteers 25:33 - Frequency of Sounds 27:12 - High-Frequency Sounds 29:29 - Whistling & Oscilloscope 30:40 - Creating Musical Instrument 33:55 - Bat Detector & Other Sounds 37:11 - Sound Analysis on Oscilloscope 42:28 - Rhythm in Music 42:50 - Complex Rhythms 43:05 - Role of Rhythm & Harmony 44:02 - Example of Decoding Melody 44:55 - Harmony in 7th Symphony 46:09 - Experiment with Sound Perception 49:30 - Meaning of Context in Music 51:58 - Humor in Music 52:50 - Role of Brain in Music Perception 53:47 - Music & Programming 56:20 - Conclusion Playlists: https://rutube.ru/plst/804000 https://vkvideo.ru/playlist/-235081080_114 #MusicHistory | #CharlesTaylor Original video: https://youtu.be/p-960zzAa78