analogue v digital

[Steve]

An interesting thing about what happens when people listen to music - I often enjoy listening to music while reading, but my wife cannot. Conversely I cannot read while a spoken word programme is on (Radio 4 or 5) but she can.

I've written some of my best software with music playing.

Now what's going on there?

[Liam Schwilik]

Hi Steve,

Hmmmm, my wife studies & teaches educational practice. We talk about how there are different types of learning and teaching. Get it wrong and it's futile. The education system, the curriculum, the individual? I fear I'm digressing?..

The same can probably be said for how we function as individuals. Our aural and visual traits, and how we perceive the world is often a reflection of how we learn. We're all individuals!

P.S. I love noodling on the guitar whilst watching the news. Keeps my fingers nimble, and I digest some news without it dominating my life. My wife hates it!

[Steve]

Digressing a little maybe, but it is all about perception.

(Ooh, Bruce is playing Whole Lotta Love on 6 music... Love it )

Maybe it someting about the subconcious mind. No, on reflection, I think it must be about the subconcious.

You know how a thought pops into your head sometimes? Just our of the blue! Sometimes when I am trying hard to think about a tricky problem at work my mind will wander and an embaressing moment from 20 or 30 years ago will pop up. 

There is a theory that the consious mind is a thin veneer on top of the sub-concious. The mind works on lots of stuff woithout us realising, then bits of it appear in the concious mind .

There again it might all be the acid...

[Steve]

Rats. I hit post without spell checking that. Hope the (other) pedants don't notice...

[Sandra]

Same here Steve (on both your observations).

I find music helps me to concentrate, and can listen to and appreciate music at the same time as doing other things, whilst my husband just cannot concentrate with it on.

The other thing (and please don't laugh) is that as someone who has always been interested in dance and movement I very often 'see' music in terms of movement and choreography, especially when listening to it carefully, which gives an added dimesion. On the other hand, maybe it is just because and I am a bit batty, or its a hangover from the sixties.

Sandra

[Steve]

Same here Steve (on both your observations).

I find music helps me to concentrate, and can listen to and appreciate music at the same time as doing other things, whilst my husband just cannot concentrate with it on.

The other thing (and please don't laugh) is that as someone who has always been interested in dance and movement I very often 'see' music in terms of movement and choreography, especially when listening to it carefully, which gives an added dimesion. On the other hand, maybe it is just because and I am a bit batty, or its a hangover from the sixties.

Sandra

Hi Sandra

Batty is good.

And if you are like me in this respect, and your husband is like my wife, then it can't be a male/female thing. Hmm.

Similarly I really enjoy driving and listening to music or talk radio. I have no problem at all concentrating on driving at the same time as listening. But I can't hold a meaningfull conversation while driving. Hmm.

Now being a bloke, and an engineer bloke at that, I can't get the hang of dance/movement etc. Sometimes a good piece of music will make me feel like dancing, but if I try it comes out all wrong.  Or at least it feels wrong.

   Ah, the Pope has died. May his God go with him.

Back to the topic - well sort of - there can be strange connections between the senses. There is a human phenomenon where sounds invoke colour in some people. I can't remember the name - think it has 'synth' in it somewhere. When a person hears a certain note they see a certain colour. Does anyone have this (I don't)?

Steve

[tony the roundhead]

Ah, the Pope has died. May his God go with him.
Steve

You reckon Dave Allen's waiting to greet him at the Pearly Gates then?

I have no problem with background music as such. I was just saying the analogue tends to concentrate the...concentration...more.
I've recently put a good quality cd/minidisc micosystem in the kitchen. The logic is this. I can put on a cd and listen to it whilst cooking. It not only affords me more time to listen to music but encourages me to spend more time in the kitchen preparing real food. Two advantages for the price of one then. 

[Steve]

Sounds like a good plan Tony. Does it work? in the kitchen that is...

Let's be carefull about 'background music'  Not the same as muzak!

[tony the roundhead]

Sounds like a good plan Tony. Does it work? in the kitchen that is...

It works fine. Acouple of months ago I couldn't cook for my life. Today I prepares lunch for two visiting friends. I popped a cd of medieval music on the minisystem and spent the next hour preparing vegetarian carrot and onion soup with cucumber, tomato,and feta salad, served with fresh wholemeal bread. Good food prepared with good music.
You could argue that the sound of the onions frying interfered with the purity of the cd, sound but..hey..it's all part of the experience.     

[David Andrews]

Hmmmm, my wife studies & teaches educational practice. We talk about how there are different types of learning and teaching. Get it wrong and it's futile. The education system, the curriculum, the individual? I fear I'm digressing?..

I do similar things to what your wife does, then.  Amongst other things.  I may be the only producer ever to consciously use personal construct theory to help a band to get something on tape.  The personal constructions (essentially ideas, but somewhat more!) we make about our world are at once guided by and guide our learning... which is why the simple notion of "get it wrong and it's futile" is a truism: this has implications for how we respond to music.

The same can probably be said for how we function as individuals. Our aural and visual traits, and how we perceive the world is often a reflection of how we learn. We're all individuals!

I think you're observation here is absolutely accurate, Mark.  Like I say, though, the influence is actually a two-way one... it's an interactive process in that the way in which one part of the system behaves influences the behaviour of the other.  My professor at the University of Oulu was strong on organism-environment systems theory (which, during an invited lecture course I did there, I referred to as Järvilehto Theory... in front of Järvilehto, my then professor!), and I go along with that sort of interactionist-developmental perspective (you may see this come out sometimes in the Autism Awareness thread in the Arms).  As to whether I believe as solidly as most do in the idea of traits... nah... but I do see biological influences on behaviour (which traits are supposed to link to... but in fact only very poorly!) as I do situational influences (again... the link here is very tenuous).  About 68% of the variance in human behaviour comes essentially from the interaction of the biological and the situational influences.  And that is as true for appreciating music as much as it is for learning.  And learning influences musical taste to quite some degree... partly through reinforcements unwittingly given by those in our social environment.

At this point, I'm getting into professor mode myself, so I'll stop now, before I really start to bore **** out of the rest of the forum members.

[David Andrews]

I've recently put a good quality cd/minidisc micosystem in the kitchen. The logic is this. I can put on a cd and listen to it whilst cooking. It not only affords me more time to listen to music but encourages me to spend more time in the kitchen preparing real food. Two advantages for the price of one then. 

Nice logic.  And if you find that you do spend more time in the kitchen preparing real food (as opposed to this very convenient, but not really that healthy things that I myself get...), then the logic has lead to a very good solution to a problem.  This is a logical/rational-experimental way of doing things (yeh... some psychologists see living as a series of "experiments" that we do to test basic hypotheses)... a behaviourist would take ages to think of a solution like that... because they are all data-based, not rationale-based.

I should do the same thing myself.

David
- not a behaviourist

[David Andrews]

Also, I DO like to have music on in the background whilst I do something else (I suppose this is what David means by  'passive' listening).

That's getting very close to what I think I meant, but has some way to go, possibly...

I think I'm getting more at this idea of just "being entertained without involving oneself in that process" as opposed to being involved in one's own entertainment"... even that isn't as clear as I wish it was.

Bugger

But it was heading there, Sandy... nice one.

[David Andrews]

There is a theory that the consious mind is a thin veneer on top of the sub-concious. The mind works on lots of stuff without us realising, then bits of it appear in the concious mind .

Yeh... the Freudian model of mind, as a system with three interlocking parts... id (driven by the need to be pleased by things), super-ego (driven by the duty to please others) and the ego (not driven by anything but, rather, coming about as a result of the resolution of conflict arising from the needs driving the other two parts of the system).  And there is no doubt that this bit of Freud's theory is actually surprisingly accurate.  The thin veneer you refer to is the "iceberg tip" that remains in conscious thought, and contains all three of these parts; whereas the un-conscious mind contains mostly id elements.  To some extent, these bits and their interactions can influence music appreciation, as well as what we do when we listen to music, since their interactions can affect our perceptions of that music (and perception differs from sensation, since it is how the mind. such as it actually can be said to exist, actively constructs an organised gestalt from the mass of sensory input we get during any small interval of time).

Here ends the first lesson in the course Psych106: the psychology of music at the FolkCorp University.

*Realising his having slipped into prof mode AGAIN, David quickly gets down from the dais and buggers off right fast to the snug at the CorpArms*

[Shane (Skirky)]

I do enjoy saving David's posts up for a sunday. It's like having a whole extra supplement delivered with the papers....

[Steve]

I do enjoy saving David's posts up for a sunday. It's like having a whole extra supplement delivered with the papers....

Yes, they do make for a good read. Keep it up David 

[David Andrews]

I do enjoy saving David's posts up for a sunday. It's like having a whole extra supplement delivered with the papers....

Yes, they do make for a good read. Keep it up David 

Thank you, gentlemen....

I'm always scared that I use too much science stuff... I was always into sciences as a kid (autistic, high IQ... what else would one expect?), and my peers hated me for it.

Nice to know that people find it in such a positive light here.

Again, I thank you both.