Andrew Grathwohl

I don't mean to bring up my own work while responding to this post, but I find it incredibly interesting that I too find myself compelled into making textual and slightly ambiguous music, despite the several Objectivist writings that I've read labeling such aesthetic properties as being 'naturalist'. I think the problem really stems from a viewer's inability to separate process from result. Your paintings, to me, are quite beautiful, and I particularly enjoy Inkling. It presents a startling hybrid of natural textures and serene, peaceful colors. I can tell that your style is not forced, and that results in legitimate, valuable art. When I view this art, I see an artist who has achieved romantic results using completely individualistic processes, not too different from Howard Roark.

No! You should keep those quotes. They were an excellent summary of why Peter's campaign is so relevant to Objectivists!

Peter kicked ass in the first GOP Senatorial debate in CT this evening! The highlight was by far his foreign policy response... Part 1: Part 2:

Your question did not ask about politicians who ran against Rand Paul, so I think my answer was appropriate.

Peter Schiff is pretty damn close. He's running for CT Senator as a Republican. Look into his commentary on everything from social issues to the economy to foreign policy... he's the best we've got. A pro-choice, capitalist, non-religious entrepreneur with sensible foreign policy views.

Not for the right reasons, I'm afraid. The Pauls are populist libertarians - dead and simple.

It really would be best practice to use the spoiler tags on any plot information that may RUIN THE ENDING OF THE FILM. I haven't seen this movie yet, but I feel like I already know how it ends. Tag all spoilers with the spoiler tag.

Circumcision is an irrational act of brutality, and child abuse if performed on a child. Surely, de-skinning any other part of a child's body would be considered immoral, so why not circumcision? It is not a legitimate medical procedure as it has no positive effect on the child and cannot be a cure to any ailment. Having the government force parents to raise their children with a traditional education seems a bit collectivist to me. The role of government is to protect individual rights, not to enforce a subjective viewpoint on the best way to raise a child. Though I would say that good parents would put their children through a traditional education and allow them to learn as much as possible, a parent's passivity with regard to his/her child's education is not an example of aggressive force, nor negligence, on the part of the parent. It significant disadvantages any child, but if the child really wants to learn, as Ayn Rand says, all you need to do is get out of its way. Though I am not a fan of Christopher Hitchens, he wrote a very powerful entry in his book "God is Not Great" regarding religion and child abuse. His claim essentially boiled down to: The vicious lies of religion, paired with the manner in which it is pummeled into a child's head - day after day, year after year - is certainly a good candidate for the very definition of mental abuse. Obviously this type of claim requires a lot of context in support, but I'd safely say this statement could accurately reflect the nature of a significant amount of parents residing in the Bible Belt region of the US. My point is that I think mental abuse is just as prevalent, if not more so, than physical abuse is, when it comes to parenting, considering the popularity of religion (particularly the Falwell-flavored versions). I'd like to hear from more seasoned O'ists how a moral government could handle such an issue, if this issue is deemed to be abusive in nature. Having read the sides of Hitchens/Dawkins and the opposing viewpoints of The Christian Post and "God and Science.org" (a remarkably funny website, actually, though I'm sure it's unintentional on the part of its creators), I can safely say that I find the atheistic reasoning rather sound, and the opposing viewpoints to be wholly unscientific in nature. The God and Science website even tries to disprove Hitchens' notion by looking at theistic children vs. atheistic children, and their relative test scores, drop-out rates, etc. - as if these things were the objective measurements of whether or not a child has been abused.

I'm a composer of electronic music, so I don't know where you're getting the idea that I think that about electronic music. What I said earlier was simply a point I was making - that point being that there are boring and monotonous pieces of music within all genres of music, so why focus all of the negativity on the electronic medium? Aphex Twin has made among the most original and innovative electronic music pieces of the past few decades. I highly support that recommendation...

You mean the movement that spawned the Civil Rights Act - one of the most hypocritical pieces of legislation ever written?

I still honestly have no idea what you're asking. You wrote: If Rachmaninoff composed his piano concertos on a computer, would they be any less enjoyable? I have no idea what you're getting at, because obviously the process is not important to the listener's enjoyment of the work. Whether he decided to write the whole thing in his head, or on score paper, or on a computer, is not relevant to the musical quality of the work. Anyway, if you're a composer, you have to first decide the type of performance you want the performers to give. It all depends on the composition. I cited Rach 3 as an example - no computer can actually interpret what Allegro ma non Troppo means other than picking an arbitrary tempo or a fluctuation of tempo within that range. So if the piece were written to be interpreted - as opposed to playing back as perfectly and mathematically-consistent as possible (i.e. the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen) - then a computer would be a poor choice. I also mentioned the computer's inability to synthesize a piano well, and truly no good piece of music should be played by a computer without its synthesis process being as precisely within the composer's intent as possible. So, in the case of Rach 3, the computer would be a poor performance choice because the piano is a much better-sounding piano than a computer. Composers do not program "interpretations" for computers, they program compositions for computers. Sometimes that can involve generative modulation of synthesis parameters - in which case, that's not interpretation, but rather non-linear adaptivity. If you want to write a piece of music for a computer to "interpret" you will probably find the next millennium a more appropriate time to compose your magnum opus. For the meantime, you'll probably have to find a different technique to utilize for computer music, because machine listening/learning techniques are in their infancy presently.

I do not have a definition of music that I am comfortable with. I started this thread because my studies of sound, audio, and music, completely refute Ayn Rand's definition. I agree with your position. The problem is defining what is musical. A guy named Thomas Clifton wrote a book called "Music as Heard" in the 1980s, and he claimed the following definition of music: an ordered arrangement of sounds and silences whose meaning is presentative rather than denotative. . . . This definition distinguishes music, as an end in itself, from compositional technique, and from sounds as purely physical objects." - Thomas Clifton This one works best, in my opinion. But frankly I have not put too much thought into coming up with a better definition. That last piece was written on commission, and I openly state that it is not of value to me. So with regard to that piece, no, I don't regard it as fully musical. I slipped a melody into the piece, but that's it. The first two are movements of a string suite, and I take that work very seriously. Any sound can be MADE musical by means of electronic modification, so no, I cannot provide you with a sound that is not potentially musical.

According to Ayn Rand herself, the first statement is untrue. Music employs the sounds produced by the periodic vibrations of a sonorous body, and evokes man’s sense-of-life emotions. - Ayn Rand The second statement is outrageous. I would never wish to hear a composer's work who did not have a very sophisticated understanding of the timbrel qualities of different instruments. That's the basis of instrumentation. Not understanding the harmonic qualities of each instrument, and the ways that certain instruments will combine when sounded together, are huge pitfalls in music composition. You're right. That was a factual error on my part, caused by not reading over my post carefully enough. Package-dealing. Human vision is a whole different sensory ballgame, with a much more refined sensitivity. Traditional western scales (major, minor) use the equal temperament tuning system, which is completely based on the physics of frequency ratios. Why do they sound right? Because the interval spacings of the musical scale affect the bassilar membrane through ratios that the central auditory system perceives as pleasant. But that has nothing to do with the music people like. Nobody likes hearing sine waves, no matter what scale they're played under, no matter what tuning system is utilized. This is because, more often than not, and especially in popular music, timbre defines what people like and don't like. This is why popular songs often share many qualities, such as length, chord progression, structure, instrumentation, etc. The only justification for a scale "sounding good" is the bassilar membrane's logarithmic reaction to frequency and amplitude. As Ayn Rand herself has said, no objectively valid criterion of esthetic judgment is possible in the field of music, so the argument that something sounds objectively "right" is not a valid one to make. Ayn Rand herself disproves your idea in "Art and Cognition": Helmholtz has demonstrated that the essence of musical perception is mathematical: the consonance or dissonance of harmonies depends on the ratios of the frequencies of their tones. The brain can integrate a ratio of one to two, for instance, but not of eight to nine. - Ayn Rand Periodicity absolutely does exist, and I never said otherwise. There is a difference between a thing being examinable only in certain fields of study and a thing being entirely unattainable in reality. "Organized sound" would mean that frequency and timing were both manipulated by the composer. But disregard my attempts at definition for a moment and consider the way you've managed to pigeonhole an entire practice of musical composition, despite its potential for inherently musical qualities. You claim that any composer who composes with manipulated recorded sounds is not creating musical sound. Of the endless possibilities inherent in such practices, you make the ridiculous claim that this same process is incapable of making anything sound musical. Is it not possible to manipulate a sound's pitch to make it ascend a harmonic minor scale? Is it not possible to add algorithmically-determined harmonic information to a recorded sound to change its pitch properties over time, with those pitches being determined by an arpeggio function? Whatever your odd definition of music is, I'm certain that there exist a plethora of pieces composed in this manner which could be deemed "musical" in terms of both your own definition, as well as the psychological terms, which Ayn Rand discussed in "Art and Cognition." Just because you don't like a certain kind of music does not make it unmusical. If you think musique concrete has no musical value, then you have absolutely no concept of the practice. How are all works composed with the musique concrete technique not music? I take it you'd have enough sense to not be a fan of naturalism, so surely you could defend this sentiment in the other arts. Is Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead not a play? Are the works of Jackson Pollock not pantings? You're confusing process with result. It is standard practice for any composer to understand and manipulate the frameworks that he/she is using to compose, but outside of musical composition, the presence of a scale in a piece of music, or the type of scale used, is only inherently necessary to consider for composers who write works of music containing standard musical scales. Scales are not concepts that are necessary to understand for musical listening or enjoyment. In fact, there is no need for a piece of music to have a scale of any sort for it to be enjoyed, even if you consider the fact that musical scales help you reach a broader audience by using musical qualities that your audience has grown up hearing their entire lives. This is evident by examining the emotional responses that atonal and non-Western pieces elicit from listeners. Periodicity is not required for performing a musical composition because, if it were, then very little music would ever be played, since fluctuations in frequency occur all the time in musical performance, which can be the result of either intentional modulations or unintentional fluctuations due to technique and materials. Periodicity is involved in anatomically perceiving music, due to the human ear's auditory nerve fiber tunings and the Greenwood function inherent in the bassilar membrane's place-frequency map. However, once we deal with the psychoacoustic processing of sound, it's anybody's guess at this point. Even Ayn Rand herself stated that the jury is not out on that one, as referenced above.

What? How can a computer compose music? It has no volition. It must be told what to do. I'm an electronic composer - the computer is not the composer, I am. Depending upon the musical processes implemented in an electronic piece, there could easily be computer-based interpretation. That's not up for argument whatsoever. What were you referring to, then?

If Rachmaninoff composed his piano concertos on a computer, it would only indicate that he did that as opposed to writing it free-hand. If Rachmaninoff composed his piano concertos for a computer (which is what I think you meant to ask) then it would probably not only sound bad - the score wouldn't make any sense. What would a computer do with a sustain notation, for example? How would Rach 3 be performed if a computer's only tempo indication is Allegro ma non troppo? Rachmaninoff intended for the work to be interpreted, not played back with machine-like precision. At the moment, a computer cannot intelligently "interpret" music - it can only create the illusion that it is interpreting a score. Also, though computers are remarkably close to modeling a perfect-sounding Steinway piano, they aren't there quite yet. So why this would be the method for performing a Rachmaninoff work would be beyond me.

Electronic music is an enormous category. You're saying that an entire performance medium draws monotonous and predictable results, which is beyond unreasonable. Would you ever come to the same conclusion that all guitar music is monotonous and predictable? How about trumpet music? Or solo violin music? There is a lot of boring, monotonous, and predictable electronic music - just as most music is on all types of instruments. One thing about computer-produced music is that it can derive timbrel and spatial results that are unrivaled by acoustic instruments. This allows the composer to see through their unique vision in a much more unlimited manner. If you want to amplify synthetically-produced partials on a violin, for example, and then time-stretch them to fit a two-minute sound window -- well, you can easily do that. Show me how a composer would accomplish this feat otherwise. However, even more important is the electronic music continuum's constant creations of better, more sophisticated, and more sonically-unique impulse convolutions (reverbs, delays, and the general resultant "sound room" that these techniques produce). I think that most connoisseurs of electronic music are largely drawn to the new and innovative forms of digital signal processing that can further enhance the sound worlds these pieces of music live in. Of course, the best way to understand music is to listen to it, so asking for justification on a message board will do you little good. Check out for his haunting electro-acoustic textures; the Alva Noto + Ryuchi Sakamoto compositional collaborations for their beautiful, space-age live piano music manipulations; and Hildur Gudnadottir for her moody, mentally-manipulative works for cello and electronics.

You would do best to give this up. You have a lot more reading to do about sound. What that picture demonstrated wasn't periodicity. It merely demonstrated the first six harmonic modes of a vibrating string (fixed or unfixed is unclear, clearly showing how much validity your source truly holds). Periodicity, in the context of the physics of sound, is unrelated to the modal systems of vibrating bodies. The only way in which periodicity comes into play is that it is required for a resonant modal response, but that is only necessary for as long as the harmonic is being sounded. And considering pretty much all sounds made by humans have a plethora of partials to select from to create resonant tones (not just harmonics) it is easy for a vibrating string to play a non-harmonic upper-partial with a resonant response. Simply put, this means that upper-partial resonance can be obtained without periodicity on the part of either the resonant force or the initial vibration. Periodicity of sounds is dependent on looking at at least two full cycles of a wave of sound. You haven't presented one bit of evidence to suggest you even know what periodicity means in the context of the physics of sound travel. It is just about impossible to hear a pure tone, as even the purest of tones suffer from spectral splatter (which is only minimized by having attack and release times beneath 200 milliseconds - not eliminated). Musical scales, just like pure tones, are ideas that can only be put into practice (on a human being playing a musical instrument) by means of estimation. Periodicity only applies to musical scales because, like all aspects of the science of sound, its ideas are mathematically-derived, and unrealistic assumptions are made when formulating these ideas. Periodic sounds have to be assumed in order to carry out the concept of a musical scale, because otherwise you couldn't mathematically-justify them. But even if your auditory nerve fibers have incredibly poor tuning curves, or if you have bassilar hearing damage, you can still detect changes in timbrel and harmonic quality despite the fact that the sounds may be played at agreeable (psychoacoustically-speaking) intervals to the listener.

You disagree that children, by nature, will grow up to be comprehensive and volitional?

I don't either. That was clearly a typing error or an unfinished thought. Sorry about that.

It seems that most of the members who have responded don't have any understanding of how sound moves through air, nor how it is perceived. I also suspect just about everyone that responded did not actually read the essay, either. Just because something has a period - that doesn't make it periodic. And just because something sounds the same to the listener doesn't make it periodic either. And furthermore, if anybody actually read the essay before responding, then they'd know that Ayn Rand makes a direct connection between the physical properties of a sound and its musicality. These three facts need to be addressed in order to go anywhere meaningful with this discussion.

The young child - incapable of making rational decisions on its own - will live in its natural habitat; with its parents in a home. It is then (hopefully) raised to be a rational human adult. Parents make decisions for their children because that is part of growing up for a human being. It is the most rational way to allow your child to live a fulfilling childhood. A dog, on the other hand, is taken out of its natural habitat, placed into a domestic home, and trained to operate as a companion for humans. Because many dogs are domesticated and bred to the point of being unable to survive in the wilderness, NOT being owned is not in the interest of any dog. Nevertheless, dogs will never mature to rationality, because they are unable to possess free will. You can morally own any thing that does not possess free will. Humans are unique with respect to their possession of free will: Edwin Locke once wrote about chimpanzees in a similar context: If the concept of rights is totally beyond a dog's , and is irrelevant to its life, If you can own anything that doesn't have rights, then you can own a dog, but since humans have rights, you cannot own one. Humans have rights because they are volitional, and possess the ability to reason. Children do not hold any special exception to this because by nature, they possess the ability to reason - that ability is simply undeveloped. A dog can never hope to develop reason.

It has a period, but that doesn't mean that the sound itself is periodic. Period as it relates to frequency is a measurement of the number of cycles as a result of time (time/cycle). In other words, period is only a measurement of how long it takes to complete a single revolution. That has no bearing on the periodicity of a wave, and certinly doesn't influence the revolution that preceeds or proceeds it.

Your lack of precision in this sentence is astounding, and makes your argument vague and worthless. Humans don't have the potential to play instruments periodically, and humans don't have the potential to design acoustic instruments that sound periodically. In what way do you claim periodicity? Physically? Then you're simply wrong. Psychoacoustically? Then you're not giving people credit who actually have discerning ears. Either way, you're absolutely not correct, and your entire defense is based on context-dropping.

You've actually succeeded in over-complicating my ideas, in a rather shallow way. The conflict is simple: in reality, Ayn Rand tried to connect the physical properties of musical sounds to the definition of music psychologically - that exclusive property being periodic sonorous activity; in reality, rarely are musical sounds sonorously periodic. If anybody is ignoring reality, it is the one who is apologizing for this factual error by incorrectly stating that Ayn Rand's use of the word "periodic" was meant perceptually, when in reality, it was meant physically. There's no getting around this, and your suggestion that a perfectly unwavering frequency is not possible in reality shows your lack of credibility. Periodic frequencies are easily obtained by anybody who possesses mid-grade consumer audio equipment nowadays.