Think of the first sounds we hear while we are in our mother’s womb...swishing of water, gurgling of fluids in the intestines, beating of her heartbeat maybe that is why some people feel at peace by water and are drawn to the beat of a drum. Just don’t know how the passing of gas fits in.Lol

Well music has always been perceived as a very integral part of evolution. It's so innate with every being, that without sound life wouldn't have been possible. The concept of music is growing as our consciousness expands enabling humans to better understand ourselves and our surroundings. Music is sound, which is perceived in different frequencies by different life forms which can be observed as communication. Music gives depth to our existence, and as we know that all matters are made up of sound vibrating in different frequencies. The harmony of sounds create consonance and dissonance which evoke different spectrums of emotions among humans and other sentient beings.

Music is the companion of for each and every activity we perform ranging from a mundane level to a deep level, depending on the level of our consciousness and perception.

For concentration and relaxation, also meditation there is binaural beats, for work where you need focus there is atmospheric as well as drone music. And for exercises and other fun activities there is music which mostly is vocal oriented, as personally for me music without vocals help in deep concentration and meditations.

Music is everything.

Look up Michael Bull's work on "auditory culture", iPod ("Sounding out the City" and "Sound Moves", etc for a theoretical perspective.

From a personal and professional point of view (I'm an artist working dance and sound in performance mostly using improvisation) the music palette gets used in different ways depending on which role I'm taking. So if I'm performing 'dancer' I'll pay attention to the sound and shift my relationship to it in different ways. Sometimes thats purely accompaniment (where that sound gets used to trigger and structure movement), sometimes that'll be a direct dialogue with the musician (like a conversational call and response type of thing for example), sometimes that'll be a more chance like operation where the music is largely ignored whilst I pay attention to another event in the room like my own activity or the audience etc - this can generate more synchronous moments. I don't often produce a lot of sound deliberately in this role can sometimes vocalise or use percussive loud body movements.

If I'm in the musician role I'll sometimes 'soundtrack' the dancer and create a mood, or tone or some kind of proposition for them to use or even ignore. Sometimes I'll just play in a sound palette because its fun and I get immersed.

So in performance its a rich spectrum of relationship and experience.

That said I also like listening to Daft Punk or Phillip Glass at the gym!

It is interesting also to look up (if you haven't) at the Futurist Lugi Russolo pioneering work in the first half of the 20th century with his creation of an ensemble of instruments 'intonarumori' to reproduce the sounds of the everyday life, and the author of the 'Art of Noise' manifesto; Karlheinz Stockhausen and John Cage interesting approaches to music and sound are worth looking into. These composers and their work changed the way people perceived music and sound. If you want to have a more musical information, per se, and the way people perceived music throughout the times, then some theory of music periods helps. Most recently the works of Wagner, Debussy, Richard Strauss, Schoenberg and their disciples, will sure give an insight on the revolutionary way of listening to music and understanding music.

This does not exactly follow this thread, but it was a "Physics of Music" class that began my friend's climb to the top. He was a guitarist and took the course to fulfill a requirement. He won Lockheed-Martin's top research award a few years ago. Just something for you music educators and physics teachers to consider--and a great excuse to bring analog into the classroom as a complement to digital (who cannot be excited by how George Martin "composed" the calliope music used in "For the Benefit of Mr. Kite"?

Perhaps there are some extremes of musical listening that can help us recognize the importance of this process in our lives. The work (TRANS 10 (2006) Music as torture / Music as a weapon of SUZANNE G. CUSICK) on the use of music as a weapon and torture is interesting. On the other hand, the discovery of the activation of a neuronal complex, the service of the complete neural mechanisms of the human being, based on a minimum requirement in musical listening; pleasure or musical taste, which had been ratified by (SALIMPOOR, VN, BENOVOY, M., LARCHER, K., DAGHER, A., and ZATORRE, RJ, "Anatomically distinct release of dopamine during anticipation and experience of the maximum emotion to music ", Nature Neuroscience, Vol. 14, 2011, pp. 257-262.) This team demonstrated that there is even an anticipation of the perception of impulses are whatever the neurotransmitters such as dopamine. Finally both are sounds and activities.

Hi Jacob,

I was recently presenting at the Australian Anthropological Societies anual conference focused on the theme "a new anthropology of automobility" and there was a paper presented in this panel entitled: Put some music on: listening to the radio in the car Simone Dennis (Australian National University) Part of the abstract read "In the US, and indeed across the western world, the car is the place where the largest percentage of people listen to music. Ford recently released its 2017 study (ahead of the release of its new, high end audio system to be installed in selected models from 2018) announcing the result that seven out of 10 people between the ages of 13 and 24 and nearly 8 out of 10 drivers over the age of 45 listen to music in the car to justify its enormous investment in the new system."

I didn't see the presentation, as I was presenting remotely from Chile on my work on freeways, but it might be worth a look/listen for your field of research.

Regards.

Dear musicians and music lovers,

let me confess my thoughts about music. I voiced some of these thoughts in https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_rational_thought_exist_without_language

However, taking advantage of a happy opportunity, I would like to duplicate it in order to receive suggestions and recommendations.

1. As you know, conservatories began to appear in the second half of the 19th century and by the beginning of the 20th century almost all classical music was created. Thus, we see the following situation: the conservatories release musicians who, at best, perform music that was created 150-200 years ago. In other words, musicians have become consumers for the performance of music of previous centuries, they themselves do not compose anything. How do you think: What is the main reason? Why am I talking about this? In my opinion, our community is developing in the wrong direction,  creating consumers with clip thinking, not creators. To create, we probably need special spiritual atmosphere and this atmosphere was in the 18-19 centuries. Now there is no such atmosphere.

2. I look with great regret at the master classes of famous pianists on how to perform Beethoven’s "Appassionata"

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiecYi7MRLI

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14dwegqniNg

I look and think "Is it possible to explain music with words". No hours of great masters explanation will not add understanding, if you do not understand from the music itself. For example, the most brilliant performance of this sonata I heard from Svyatoslav Richter, and after performing it, any other one causes me squeamish rejection as an imperfect performance. However, Richter studied at the Conservatory formally; he came there already by a fully formed musician. However, Richter was an excellent artist and painted pictures. He drew musical images in own brain and created his brilliant interpretations.

3. When a musician performs a composition, only a very small part of this composition can reach the consciousness of the minds of listeners in the hall, and especially from electronic devices through sound waves. The great sacrament disappears, which can come only with the touch of fingers with a musical instrument. Listeners are deprived of this sacrament. That is, only the simultaneous contact of fingers with a musical instrument while simultaneously extracting sounds can detect this mystery. That is why I believe that society is musically developing in the wrong direction,  because it is necessary to turn passive listeners into active listeners in such a way that they enjoy the masterpieces of classical music through their own performance on musical instruments. However, not everyone can be musicians and perform music. How to solve a problem?

Most recently, I met an amazing family:

Father - Alexey Grigoriev - composer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ahtD7xa6rQ

Mother - Maria Bessonova - violinist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_8Lmg3juqs&list=RDi_8Lmg3juqs&start_radio=1&t=39

The oldest son Ivan Bessonov - pianist, composer and winner of the competition (First place) "Eurovision of classical music 2018" in Edinburgh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqlahEMriRs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tz3zt_12XvM

The middle son of Danila Bessonov is a violinist and a winner of competition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ns2Ux-PNSk (performed by Sarasate - Gypsy melodies with his elder brother)

The younger son Nikita Bessonov - the violinist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8tBRNjB2R8 - brothers perform their composition

According to the father, a new renaissance must come, because new classical musical compositions are necessary. In a narrow family circle, this family performs only its own compositions.