On Non-Musical Sounds
Why is it so difficult for experimental musicians and sound artists to accept the notion that there are non-musical sounds?
Editor’s note: This blog post is an early draft of a work in progress.
The idea that all sound is music — that there is no distinction between musical and nonmusical sounds — is a deeply held belief by a specific subculture consisting primarily of ‘experimental’ musicians and ‘sound artists’. Since the 1940s, this subculture has clung to this position militantly; when an assertion that there may, in fact, be a distinction between musical and non-musical sound within Culture at large, the experimental musician/sound artist will almost certainly claim it is impossible for there to be any discernible difference between the two types of sound (citing John Cage’s 4'33'', Schaeffer’s musique concrète, and Hip Hop’s electronic sampling as evidence) and that anyone who claims otherwise is a fascist who wants to trap sounds within distinct categories, killing their freedom to be musical. However, this so-called evidence is merely a series of artistic events and proclamations; it is not scientific fact, nor is it indisputable, eg. humans tend to perceive bird calls as music, but birds almost certainly perceive them as language. It is also based somewhat on misinterpretation: in Cage’s defense, his assertion was more about all sounds’ potential to be musical rather than an outright declaration that all sound is, in essence, music.
Indeed, one merely has to not be an experimental musician/sound artist in order to have a fairly clear personal understanding of what is music and what is not: a car alarm is not music. The jangle of a keyring is not music. A dog’s growl is not music. Wind through tree leaves is not music. A stomach rumbling with indigestion is not music — and so on and so forth. Obviously, these sounds may be recorded and manipulated into becoming recognisable as music, but they are not in and of themselves musical: there needs to be an intervention on the part of a listener or composer in order to transform them into music. Before this intervention, all sound is merely physical vibration.
The belief that all sound is music has a close analogue with the incontestable taste of the hipster record shop owner, the one who decides whether the record you are purchasing is actually ‘good’ or not — a kind of schoolyard aesthetics bullying, and an opinion they will no doubt reject as soon as it is embraced by the mainstream; for once the subculture becomes the Culture, the subculture will turn its back on its former self (see early fans of U2, The Police, The Clash, R.E.M., Lady Gaga, etc.).
