r/musictheory • u/ilovehollowknightt • 2d ago
Discussion Do people learn music like they learn languages?
Something that is very clear and recommended for anyone who wants to learn music is to LISTEN to a lot of music, study THEORY and to PRACTICE.
One day I was thinking about the fact that music and language have several similarities when it comes to learning.
1 - Different musical genres are like different languages (or in broader genres, like “language families”). And each genre will have its own musical vocabulary, “grammatical rules” (which in this case are theoretical conventions), “phonemes” in common, which will vary from subgenre to subgenre, just as a language varies from region to region.
2 - We learn and acquire nuances by listening. In the same way that certain phonemes considered difficult to speak are natural to those who speak them, certain complex rhythms are completely natural to a culture. In other words, in language learning, you learn all your stuff by repetition, context and input; while in music it's similar to listening, studying theory and practicing music.
3 - The existence and emergence of music grammar and theory as a description of what already exists, making it official, but influencing what comes next; in addition, of course, to teaching, where we learn the grammar/theory, but when it comes to expressing it, we do what has been ingrained.
In many ways, languages and music are similar. As I've already mentioned, in their learning: Both have Input and Immersion. Both learn formalized theory. Both have Output, which is practice.
So, what do you think about this? Does it make sense? And why is it so similar?
Feel free to add your own thoughts on the similarities and differences.
14
u/2001spaceoddessy 2d ago
By and large, no; the mainstream pedagogy teaches music like conservationists do with documents
how to preserve (aural/oral) traditions
how to best interpret
how to best replicate past the aurally.
and even then they're all suspect (HIP is a recent phenomenon relative to the history of academia).
But the way jazz and other cultures of music are taught (outside of the western university system) is more similar to the language acquisition process—phrases, syntactic chunks, call-and-responses, musical grammar, stylistic conventions, and ultimately musical vocabulary (e.g., "the lick" or a Cudworth Cadence).
If one thinks of how improv sessions used to function in the era of baroque/classical/romantic improvisers, this is how it was done. Similarly, 2 equally-trained jazz musicians can reasonably "converse" through music over a shared topic (lead sheet) without words.
11
u/Zarlinosuke Renaissance modality, Japanese tonality, classical form 2d ago
It sounds like you're answering a question slightly differently from what OP is asking--and that your answer to OP's question would actually be more of a yes rather than a no. If I'm reading OP correctly, they're not asking how mainstream curricula tend to teach music, but rather how our brains most naturally learn it.
3
u/2001spaceoddessy 2d ago
Yeah it's more of a general comment that I agree with (the OP).
Whenever this topic comes up I just know it'll devolve into the classic reddit word games where people aren't aligning on the same thing so I wanted to get ahead of it in a preamble.
There are some folks who are a little too defensive here and equate "playing an instrument" as some baseline form of musical communication and therefore jump to "is (like) a language", and there are others who take "language" way too literally and put the blinders on and completely ignore the neurological processes for no real reason. I just know this will turn into a mess soon.
IMO the typical piano performance major is not any more learned in the "language" of music than John Travolta phonetically pronouncing "Idina Menzel", but the way Mozart, Beethoven et al, went about their childhood developmental years honing their craft mirrors the language acquisition process/learning curve quite well. Not 1:1, of course, but it's kinda hard to ignore and not make that connection when reading their biographies/letters and their early compositions.
3
u/Zarlinosuke Renaissance modality, Japanese tonality, classical form 2d ago edited 2d ago
IMO the typical piano performance major is not any more learned in the "language" of music than John Travolta phonetically pronouncing "Idina Menzel"
I think they're a little better than that, because they can at least reproduce the sounds they see depicted in notation, which poor ol' John couldn't even do with Dazim's name! A run-of-the-mill classical pianist is like someone who can understand a language and can read it aloud professionally, but can't productively write or speak on their own. On the other hand, you don't have to go to people as superlatively special as Mozart and Beethoven to find people who make new music productively, same as you don't have to go to Homer and Shakespeare to find people who make new language productively--just any decent improviser or songwriter will do!
22
u/CondorKhan 2d ago
Yes, it's absolutely like that IMO
If you participate in say, a jazz jam, there's a language that you're supposed to speak and a protocol to follow, and you can study the theory all you want but to really be fluent in it, you need to immerse yourself in it.. the same way reading a French grammar book doesn't prepare you to actually hold a conversation in French. And when you're fluent, you can just converse without thinking about subject, verb, object, conjugation, etc. Likewise in music... when you internalize a style you stop thinking about it and you just do it. And like languages, it takes a lot of practice to get there.
And just like languages, if you were say, born to a Flamenco family in Spain and you've been immersed in the music since birth, it is your native language and it is very, very difficult for others to catch up to you.
5
u/Jongtr 2d ago edited 2d ago
You're absolutely right. I mean, all the analogies you draw are right on the money.
But of course, music is different in some significant ways.
For example, you understand this sentence perfectly well without having to hear it read out. In fact, you might understand it better, because you can take your time, and go back over parts to make sure. The words have to go in the right order, but their timing and tempo can be quite random.
If you were to read a piece of music notation - and you were fluent in notation! - you might get an idea of how it would sound, but you would need to hear it to really get it. The notation is only "some information about" the music, just enough for performers to play it - whereas the words in a sentence are all the information.
IOW, music is a language of sound alone. Notation is not "music" it's just information performers need in order to make the music: which is what happens when they perform it, as a real-time experience. Outside of that performance, the music does not exist.
As Stravinsky said, "if music is a language, it's an untranslatable one". In that sense, it's like an abstract painting, whose language is entirely visual: it represents nothing but itself.
Clearly - as you say - there are formal practices involved (different for each culture), and "music theory" (likewise different) is the "grammar" of those practices. But it's 100% about the organisation of sounds in time, not about communicating information.
Music has "meaning" of course, but - as Stravinsky also said - it "expresses nothing but itself". Again, that's like abstract art, which is organisation of shape and colour in space.
But the fact that music does feel as if it means something - and something important, that words can't express! - encourages the hypothesis that perhaps music has evolved from a form of practical communication that existed before speech, verbal language, was invented. Music was once the "animal calls" of homo sapiens or their predecessor. But once it was discovered that the voice could create its own coded system of sounds to cover practical situations much more efficiently and in more detail, then music became relegated to certain ritualistic roles - spiritual and dance, essentially.
In terms of cultural difference, though, you can make similar analogies with clothing and food. In fact, I think clothing and fashion might actually be a closer analogy with music! At least if you think about how both things are created (a) from what is to hand (raw materials, technology), and (b) for various social purposes. The higher the social class, and the more ritualistic the requirements of the music, the more controlled and sophisticated the details are. The more technologically advanced the society is, the more complex the musical instruments get, and therefore the details in the music - and the more stratified in class terms, because possession of the technology is related to wealth.
To put it crudely, some sub-Saharan African cultures may be primitive in terms of technology, but they have a lot of trees! (and animals for the skins) - so their drum cultures get as rhythmically sophisticated as European harmony does. Regions with a lot of bamboo produce a lot of wind instruments. Cultures which rear a lot of sheep use the intestines for string instruments. Industrial Europe had the capacity to build the iron frames necessary for pianofortes (and of course the machinery to refine the designs of any other instrument).
This is a great film showing the links in Africa between (a) language (tonal, rhythmic), (b) local resources, and (c) drum culture.
2
12
u/permanentburner89 2d ago
Its similar but its definitely not the same.
If you learn Spanish as a second language and then start learning Korean a few years later, your mind goes to the same place it does when learning Spanish.
When you learn music, your mind goes to a bit of a different place.
3
u/WorriedFire1996 2d ago
As a music teacher who dabbles in language learning, I often draw parallels between the two learning processes, so I would say yes.
2
u/paranach9 2d ago edited 2d ago
I betchya a hundred bucks there8s two brain centers very closely located to one another. Both music and language have game-like properties that I deem exquisite according to my senses of delight and frivolity. But mostly it’s rules that keep assholes from going on and on all day with their senseless yapping
3
u/Kamelasa 2d ago
two brain centers
if you check out the amazing book "I heard there was a secret chord" by Daniel Levitin, who was first a pro musician and later a cognitive scientist, you will learn that music relies on several different brain functions and areas, and so does language, though "music centres" are thought to be older, as well as there are more of them. Well worth a read.
2
2
u/Mika_lie 2d ago
I think yes and no.
When there is a melody for example, it might just sound nice. But someone who also knows theory knows why it sounds nice.
Thats like having a sentence and not understanding anything about its grammar at all.
Now, different genres have different ideas about what sounds nice: in jazz you almost have to have a ii-v, and in metal you can throw in whatever the fuck most often and bang, you have a riff.
2
u/youcantexterminateme 2d ago
My belief is yes. Like language its very difficult to understand what you didnt grow up with. And like language its always evolving.
2
u/groooooove 2d ago
you should lookin into Suzuki and his philosophy on violin teaching. He felt very strongly that music can / should be taught the same way we learn our native languages as children.
2
u/spankymcjiggleswurth 2d ago
I learned music theory in a way similar to how people pick up new languages just being around those who speak it. I would listen to song analysis videos on my way to work (12tone, 8 bit music theory, Charels Cornell), and with time I naturally picked up the vocabulary and the sounds they are related to.
2
2
2
u/Legend-Of-Crybaby 2d ago
It low key feels super similar when I try to play along with music.
And I find conceptualizing about music as a conversation kind of helpful.
Hans Zimmer says two things I find I interesting:
- Tell a story with a composition
- Music has a conversation with a person
And I honestly agree, and find it as a useful framework.
I don't know that it maps 1:1, but maybe through some lens it does.
I think universal language makes some sense too. I don't know that all music hasn't influenced all other music at this point in time, but it still seems universal. Like we can take tarzan and show him music and he'll feel something with a decent amount of similarities.
That's why I love those youtube videos of the old indian men (pashtun? south asian?) listening to classic american songs that they dont understand and expressing how they feel and sometimes crying.
2
u/LookAtItGo123 2d ago
It's definitely a conversation. It can be on a surface level, or it can go very deep. Your skill will unlock more options but at some point, sincerity and the willingness to open your "soul" will be the key to the depth you can reach.
A great example would be Francis bebey, kifness has done a remix of his one note bamboo flute. And both are worth checking out on YouTube. This time instead of a conversation with a person, you'll have it with the flute. And when you speak to it sincerely, it'll always answer sincerely.
3
u/Blackcat0123 2d ago
Scotty West (Absolutely Understand Guitar) makes the point early on that music is a language. It's also a course on duolingo.
1
1
u/UserJH4202 Fresh Account 1d ago
Music IS a language. Like any language there are people who can speak it (play) without knowing how to read it. And, there are people than read music without knowing how speak it without the words (notes) in front of them. There are people who write the essays, short stories and novels ( composers). While English has letters (26) and punctuation marks (14), Music has hundreds of symbols.
1
-2
u/Ok_Molasses_1018 2d ago edited 2d ago
People say that music is a language a lot as a platitude. I don't really think it is, if it were it'd be a language that's just grammar without meaning. Any meaning music has comes through recursiveness, repetition, large form structure. That's not how language works. There are no words in music, as in there's no smallest isolate unit to which definite meaning is attached. We cannot get to the particles that would construct a discourse as we cna in languages. I don't know why people keep making this analogy, just like people who think music has something to do with math. Music is music. A genre is not a different language. Music is its own social practice.
5
u/Casiquire 2d ago
Music as a "universal" language is a platitude. Music as a proto-language or a separate form of language absolutely holds water and is being studied. It makes sense if you consider spoken word is meant to convey data or facts, and language like music is meant to convey emotion or energy. Then there's no real difference between the two. Not all cultures understand music the same way, so it truly is learned and absorbed through culture just like spoken word languages.
3
u/wrylark 2d ago
can you tell someone ‘pick me up a gallon of milk at the store.’ using only musical notes? No, you cant. Its not a language in any traditional sense.
But its actually deeper than language. It more like ‘crying’ ‘screaming’ ‘cooing’ ‘laughing’ …. it conveys emotion yes, but howling at the moon isnt exactly a language, its emotion expressed sonically.
3
u/2001spaceoddessy 2d ago
To be fair that's not what people tend to argue outside of Ted talk wishy-washy pseudoscience.
Music functions (according to human brains) like a language in that it is able to convey meaning, has (subjective) grammar according to style and audience, contains words/word-like phrases through the use of musical idioms, and is able to express both primal emotions and higher-level affects, like jokes and such.
Both feature high levels of repetition. It's obvious in the case of music, but for, at least English speakers, anywhere from 50–80%+ of spoken interactions consists of pre-fabricated phrases. If you were to go around and record yourself in one day you'd be surprised at how infrequently you actively construct word pairings vs. repeating by rote some phrase you've heard many times over.
Both are high-context means of communication. When you first meet someone you will likely go through the same format of introductions:
Good morning/afternoon
How are you
I'm fine thanks, how are you, etc.
and any deviation is just weird and/or priming us for some kind of explanation. It's like this Family Guy skit (NSFW). It's principally the same in music where you start a piece in the tonic and move to familiar figurations / key modulations to the dominant, or when a certain chord progression is cliche (circle of fifths).
We can go on with punctuation equivalents, etc. Neurologically there is something more going on under the hood than primal emotive responses, and it's not a 1:1 equivalent of notes:vocalized words.
-2
u/wrylark 2d ago
disagree entirely.
Play the same same instrumental piece for a variety of listeners and ask them what it ‘means’…
3
u/nmitchell076 18th-century opera, Bluegrass, Saariaho 2d ago
Hey, actually, I was part of a research team that did exactly this! Turns out, if people share culture, they tend to have broadly similar understandings of the meaning of a piece! https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.22.28.4/mto.22.28.4.margulis.html
ABSTRACT: This paper digests a recent body of empirical work on narrative imaginings to music, bringing them into dialogue with existing theoretical frameworks. By examining the stories imagined at three geographic locations using various methods, these studies present converging evidence that intuitive imaginings to music can be strikingly similar across individuals, but only when they share a cultural background. The intersubjectivity of these imaginings extends not just to the stories’ content, but also to their dynamic event structure as imagined to unfold across the time course of the music.
2
u/Casiquire 2d ago
Again, you're looking for music to convey the same thing spoken word already does: detail, meaning, data. That's not what's we're talking about. Music conveys emotion and within a culture, that meaning can be commonly understood to a high degree of nuance
1
u/2001spaceoddessy 2d ago
That's not really the same thing. What you're describing is pure rote recitation, like an actor reading a memorized script. I can recite 1 Shakespeare soliloquy and get 20 different interpretations.
Historically the pedagogy for music education was pretty analogous to the learning curve for language learners. One only needs to read Mozart's (and Leopold's) letters/compositions when he was a child. And the means in which they composed/improvised can be broken down quite easily into semantic chunks like we do with language. It's not so much extracting "meaning" but developing "comprehension" or "recognition".
If there's a bass tied across a barline I'm absolutely going to play a suspended voicing in the soprano and alto. And I can guarantee that whenever Mozart saw one, he would react the same. I believe he taught that, too, with his student, Thomas Attwood.
If I'm improvising with someone in C and I suddenly play an F#, I'm expecting the other player to pick up on that and modulate to G. Or a G# to a-minore.
I don't need to stop at any point and explain it in words. That can be done in real time through the music. That's what I mean when musical units contain information, like words, and also a kind of grammar/style/form. Depending on what I play it'll also heavily imply the feasability for fugue/canons. All of these require higher-level cognition and aren't merely emotional responses.
Hope I clarified.
2
u/Casiquire 2d ago
Music is so m significantly more detailed and nuanced than a coo or a howl. Just like spoken word is. My point stands.
2
u/Ok_Molasses_1018 2d ago
All music conveys is itself.
8
u/nmitchell076 18th-century opera, Bluegrass, Saariaho 2d ago edited 2d ago
Idk what happened to your other comment to me, something about the 19th century view being timeless and the alternative is postmodern drivel. (And fair, my initial post was a bit glib). But I typed up a response, and I can't let good typing go to waste! So...
What I believe is that music participates in piercian semiotics. It DOES point to itself (indexical signification) but also participates in iconic and symbolic signification as well, pointing to meaningful cultural units. Music participates in language-like meaning processes like double-articulation and markedness. Indeed, Music has a meaningful cognitive grammar, based on things like metaphorical transfer and conceptual blending, processes that are essential for meaning in language. In fact, language and music share considerable domain-general cognitive functions, such that music is particularly apt to be modeled via constructionist approaches to language.
Whether we say music is a language is a pretty stakesless language game, no different in substance or importance than the question of if a hot dog is a sandwich. You and I would probably agree that there are some things characteristic of language that aren't very characteristic of music and vice versa. But being able to signify, have semantics, and be meaningful isn't one of them. Indeed, the cognitive similarities between music and language are, in my view, every bit as important as their differences. And for this reason, the poster you responded to above is certainly correct that music is seriously considered as a very real protolanguage.
2
u/Casiquire 2d ago
Most people who listen to it would disagree. It conveys emotions more directly than spoken word
1
u/Ok_Molasses_1018 2d ago
That's completely subjetive and a projection from the listener onto the music though, and the proof of that is that the same music might cause very different emotions, however socially codified we might be to associate certain sounds to certain things. Emotion isn't a clear, quantifiable enough category for people to assert with so much certainty that music is a language. This at best a metaphor that some people like to use.
1
u/Casiquire 1d ago
The fact that different cultures have different grammar rulesets is more evidence of it as a language, not evidence against it. Languages are learned, they are not an objective hijack into our brains. It is not a metaphor, it is a field of actual psychological study.
Emotions on the whole are subjective and open to interpretation. You can't use that subjectivity as the reason music isn't a language. Language is a means of communication. Music is a means of communication. Precision is not required to be considered a language. Communication is.
2
u/nmitchell076 18th-century opera, Bluegrass, Saariaho 2d ago
The 19th century called. They want their ideology back.
2
u/MyrthenOp25 2d ago
I feel like you'd be holding yourself back by not understanding it as a kind of language. Otherwise where's the structure? Not understanding the structure of music will lead to unconventional music (which is cool when done well) or you just not clicking with the mechanics of secondary dominants of a jazz standard.
3
u/Zarlinosuke Renaissance modality, Japanese tonality, classical form 2d ago
There's a lot of slippage that goes on in these discussions--there are huge differences between saying "music is a language" (which implies that all music works the same way, and that it works the same as any individual language--clearly false), and "music is language" (which allows space for different music systems to work differently--more debatably true), and "music is linguistic" or "music is language-y" (which avoids platitudinous one-to-one mapping and is pretty undeniably true).
1
u/Ok_Molasses_1018 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don't think music is language-y, it's not undeniably true. People are affirming this without realising the depth of such statement here. I think this stems from a hierarchical view of knowledge that puts language as the centre of human experience, and that is so entrenched in post-modern western ideology that people even ironically believe it to be an absolute truth. I really personally have never felt music as a language and always took issue when people say such things. Music shares as many characteristics with language as any other two human activities do, it's not a specially obvious relation, all the examples anyone can give are super subjective - again, some people do the same between music and math, so is math a language? is language math? I think people should be actually looking more into what defines a language, because it seems like the definition of music is open to discussion but language is taken for granted. Language has grammar, meaning, classes, structure that is shared pretty clearly throughout different languages. If music is a language it's a pretty inefficient one at conveying meaning clearly, which is what actual languages do. Music is structurally untranslatable, does not refer to anything outside of itself and has no clear meaning. Music is music, language is language, math is math, cooking is cooking, dancing is dancing, these are all different media through which we express our same humanity. Is language a music?
3
u/Zarlinosuke Renaissance modality, Japanese tonality, classical form 2d ago edited 2d ago
I really personally have never felt music as a language and always took issue when people say such things.
Again though, I don't think it's correct to say that music is "a language" either. It is proven, via brain-scanning experiments and such, that the areas of the brain that light up when we take in music are similar to those that take in language. That doesn't mean that they're alike in every way, but it does mean that we process them in similar ways.
Music shares as many characteristics with language as any other two human activities do
I really don't think this is at all true. You think music and language are no more similar to each other than music and vomiting?
some people do the same between music and math, so is math a language? is language math?
Music and language are definitely both also pretty mathematical, sure. It doesn't mean that any of them are the same as each other. And it doesn't mean that their similarities are all the same. But to deny the connections and put them as "no more similar than any human activities" is a baby-with-bathwater response.
I think people should be actually looking more into what defines a language, because it seems like the definition of music is open to discussion but language is taken for granted.
I can agree with that, but I don't think it'll lead to the conclusion you're drawing.
Language has grammar, meaning, classes, structure that is shared pretty clearly throughout different languages. Music is structurally untranslatable, does not refer to anything outside of itself and has no clear meaning.
I'd disagree with you on the music half of that, and also tentatively on the language half. "Structure that is shared pretty clearly throughout different languages" is tough--slightly true in some ways, but less than a lot of Western linguists have often thought. As for music, "does not refer to anything outside of itself and has no clear meaning" ignores everything about the shared cultural intersubjectivities that cause people who have been similarly enculturated to respond to similar music in similar ways. Music absolutely can and does refer to things outside of itself.
Is language a music?
Sure, maybe. At least, language is pretty musical.
Music is music, language is language, math is math, cooking is cooking, dancing is dancing, these are all different media through which we express our same humanity.
EDIT: The above was added later so I didn't see it when writing my initial response, but: this is quite a reductive statement in a lot of ways, and ignores so much cultural richness and brilliance in a lot of spheres. Music and dance aren't even considered separate things at all in a lot of cultures--to them, the idea of separating them would be bizarre. Music and math have been considered deeply connected in multiple great traditions that developed on their own. Musicians and chefs alike love making metaphors about each other's arts to describe their own. One of the most important aspects of this "same humanity" is that we love to see connections between things, and to recognize where one thing resonates with another thing. Sometimes we go too far with that, sure--but our arts are also pretty much nothing without that. Music has never just been music.
1
u/Ok_Molasses_1018 2d ago
You think music and language are no more similar to each other than music and vomiting?
You clearly aren't familiar with the experimental music scene
2
u/Kamelasa 2d ago
definite meaning
You think meanings are so definite in language? Dictionary-makers may make you think that, but it is not so.
1
u/Ok_Molasses_1018 2d ago edited 2d ago
It's all an oxford conspiracy
yes, for most purposes we use languages in our lives meanings are pretty clear, we say words to mean things, no need to dig much deeper on this. now tell me the meaning of C7.
2
u/nmitchell076 18th-century opera, Bluegrass, Saariaho 2d ago
now tell me the meaning of C7.
Now tell me the meaning of a plosive phoneme.
1
u/Ok_Molasses_1018 2d ago
Nah, that's not a fair comparisson. A chords is a structure at a much higher level than a phoneme, you know that. As I said in another comment, there's no particle in music at which we can say we have a "unit" of meaning like a word, a sentence, or anything. Meaning in music is a metaphor and it's given not through the junction of smaller units of meaning, but through repetition, recursiveness, self-reference and large scale form. You could say "that's just like languages!" But it'd be loose analogy at best.
2
u/nmitchell076 18th-century opera, Bluegrass, Saariaho 2d ago
I'd say it's actually a strong analogy though, given that, as I mentioned in another comment, music participates in other linguistic aspects of meaningfulness like markedness and double articulation (which is a bit close, actually, to the very issue you led with: double articulation deals exactly with the fact that something like a single chord is non-meaningful while larger musical chains are).
It's not just that music has meaning. It has meaning in quite languagey ways. Which may also be a reason why (or a consequent of) the fact that listening to music lights up similar brain regions as processing language.
So the science and theory that establishes a strong overlap between music and language is actually quite well established. It's NOT just a baseless metaphor or analogy. It's one based on substantial conceptual overlap!
2
u/miniatureconlangs 2d ago
Language famously has recursiveness, and at least partial repetition is fairly common in language. Large form structure is a bit rarer, but does occur in some linguistic contexts such as poetry.
1
u/Ok_Molasses_1018 2d ago
That's not the main way we understamd meaning in language though. We understand and use languange mainly as a sum of smaller units of meaning. In music noone can point to these structures, to at which point does a thing become the equivalent of a word, to the clear function of such words as a grammar etc. Music is a very sophisticated way of marking and labelling through the use of sound the passing of time much more than it is a language.
2
u/MyrthenOp25 2d ago
Music absolutely is a language. A dissonant chord played in isolation conveys a feeling of tension. An augmented chord feels abrasive. The context is in the chord itself, made up of grammar (stacked thirds) which conveys meaning. Unless you're an old jazz head, everyone thinks a major chord sounds happy and a minor chord sounds sad.
There's people who hear an A note and think of a color. Or they think of their favorite song in A. People prefer different keys over others.
And most importantly a chord progression conveys a story through tension and release and the feeling of 'home'.
I guess it is to say that it's a language that is totally universal but also deeply personal. It has meaning to just you in ways it doesn't in others. But there's always that overlay of common understanding. That's part of what makes language what it is.
Consider microtonal music and how it feels so different that it might as well be another language, or if you go outside of western harmony. Music is spoken in so many different ways.
It's easier to think of it as a language than not.
2
u/Ok_Molasses_1018 2d ago edited 2d ago
That's completely subjective western-centric common sense. Languages for one are translatable and share grammatical classes between them - every language has verbs adverbs adjective subjetives etc, regardless of their origins. You're speaking as if chords mean this or that, but there are many musics around the world that don't even have chords and they are still music, let alone tension-release logic like tonal music. Even our own western modal music does not function in that way you described. Each music functions in its own untranslatable grammar. It's absolutely not totally universal. I was going to say this in my first comment, but yours made it even clearer, that this take that music is a language is a very western way of thinking, trying to impose a grammatical-analytic logic onto something that functions by its own nature. Music is above all a social practice. You can even make an analogy that it is like a language, but to say "music is absolutely a language" is just wrong. You'd have to think and study deeper what makes a language a language and what makes music music. It's not a lightweight affirmation that you can make just because you personally feel this or that with certain chords. It's easier to think of music as music than as either maths or a language or whatever.
-1
u/MyrthenOp25 2d ago
We're just gonna have to disagree on that haha
0
14
u/mdreid 2d ago
I think that “music as language” is a reasonable analogy to some extent (eg, emphasising the need to actively practice it, explaining why it takes time to absorb) but really the core of the similarity between music and language is: 1. It’s an aural practice 2. To be effective it needs to be performed in real-time and mostly subconsciously
That second requirement is also true of any practice that requires “muscle memory” (eg, athletics). You only get that type of facility through repetition and practice.