Music, Meaning and Knowledge

Here is something to tide you over during the holidays, when you need a break from the all the festivities. University of Toronto Psychology professor Jordan Peterson delivers a truly brilliant lecture on music:

Music affects us in ways that most of us can't quite put it into words, and yet is very much a kind of language. More specifically, how does music produce in the listeners intimations of meaning? How do we translate wave patterns into language of emotions?

Part of me doesn't want to add any comments here on this lecture, it's better if you just listen without me colouring (ruining) what he talks about. The other part of me wants to write really long-winded passages about a number of points and insights uncovered by Peterson. Since it's a Friday just before Christmas, you will be pleased to know that I'll refrain!

One thing I will add: having played music for people professionally for twenty years, the single thing motivating me from the beginning is the awesome power music has to change people by affecting them in ways that nothing else can. How that happens is phenomenally thrilling and inspiring, yet, after all of these years, so much of what music really means has remained a mystery. Even though I've seen it and often helped to guide it along, the "language of emotions" is a beautiful mystery always beyond grasp.

Relating this somewhat back to planning, Professor Peterson does an amazing job explaining the ways that our perceptions build meaning, and in my opinion this is central to what communications is all about. Sure, that's stating the obvious, but knowing that and figuring out how it works are two different things.

Comments

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Why do Country Music Writers Have a hard time getting their works out there and picked up by a star?
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Do singers actually know the meaning of their songs or do they just sing the songs that song writers write?
Do singers actually know the meaning of their songs or do they just sing the songs that song writers write? And do they actually write their own songs in the first place?? Shania Twain's song, "Ka-Ching" has a lot of true meanings in it, but I doubt she knew half the things she sang in that song... That's just one example though...

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hello thanks for the information on this blog! I think too interesting! I think without music could not live is one of the best things out there! Greetings!