Lecture 8 Music and everyday contexts

1
Lecture 8Music and everyday contexts

• MUSI 3911Music, Emotion and Meaning

2
Overview

• Direct perception and affordances
• Everyday and musical perception
• Everyday and musical contexts
• Everyday and musical intentions
• Music as a resource
• Summary

3
Direct perception and affordances

• Survival
• Information
• Evolution
• Perception and action
• Structured information
• Affordances
• Gibson, J. J. (1966). The Senses considered as
  Perceptual Systems. London Unwin Bros.
• Gaver, W. W. (1993). What in the world do we
  hear? An ecological approach to auditory event
  perception. Ecological Psychology, 5 (1), pp.
  1-29.

4
Everyday and musical perception

• Music as an everyday sound?
• Opera as sign of bourgeois culture
• Brass band as sign of working class culture
• Sousa as a sign of martial culture
• Everyday as musical
• Opening of Wisharts Red Bird
• Music and interpretation
• We make meaning through action
• Is there a difference between musical and
  everyday?

5
Everyday and musical contexts

• The shop
• Passive?
• Unconscious
• Involuntary
• The concert hall
• Passive(?)
• Conscious(?)
• Voluntary
• The lift
• The aerobics class
• The club
• Music as context

6
Everyday and musical intentions

• Listener as critic
• Listener as participant
• Listener as consumer
• Listener as musician

7
Music as a resource

• Mood management (most common use of music?)
• Badges (another kind of sign)
• Persuasion (political or financial)
• Imagine example

8
Summary

• Musical meaning is contingent
• Music depends on context
• Music creates context
• Listener may actively create meaning
• Listener may be a passive receiver of meaning
• Music has its uses...