music , mind , thought and emotion


There is not a society on this planet, nor probably ever has been, which is without some form of musical expression, often closely linked with rythm and dance. My question is less concentrated on the latter two however.
What I am pondering boils down to:
What is music and what does it do to us
Why do we differentiate music from random noise so clearly and yet can pick up certain samples within that noise as musical.
By listening to music, we find some perhaps interesting, some which we would call musical. What differentiates "musical music" from "ordinary music" and this again from "noise"?
In a more general sense again:
If music has impact on us, what is the nature of our receptors for it. Or better: Who, what are we, that music can do to us what it does?
What would be the nature of a system, which practically all of us would agree upon, that it imparts musicality best?
And finally, if such a sytem would exist, can this quality be measured?
detlof
My EMOTIONal response to the direction of this thread is that the THOUGHTs presented here don't seem to MIND that there is little refererence to MUSIC. Seems like the time is upon us to don the boots and bring out the shovels.
Winters come early this year. What started out as snow has turned into slush. Better clear the roads, lest an accident occur.
Accident? Why so afraid? Its Christmas, snow on the trees, collective memories of why we are here arising, if you let them, into our minds, why such fear? From words? Isn't music we listen to related to Music we are talking about?

6ch/6chac/six channel comes out to say "I!", in a lull, when it robs no one of their voice, and you still have your finger on the channel changer; the accident is only his, to choose. Citing it and you crawl into the car with him. Altruism?

Let them. Let what? 6ch? No, the memories...

Unsound, if you want to return to the music, a question for you.

We have said that the brain changes with the perceptions it experiences. Since not all experience is derived by thinking - notwithstanding what those Cartesian minds attached to the power of cognition would like to tell themselves - and since I listen to music, or watch the waves, I am experiencing reality also, then what brain/mind is formed by the experience of music?

If we can say what next "you" is being formed by the music - or rather, not BY it, but through your participatory, integral relationship to that external experience - then aren't we closer to saying what the purpose of it is in our lives? When we look at beauty, what next "me" am I chossing to form?

Last, how is that "me", or rather, my orientation to reality that allows the event of my beauty apprhension to occur (ie some deny it exists...) related to the beauty of the collective memory I talked about above? Simply put, are the abilities to percieve music-beauty and compassion-beauty related?

Aren't they both percieved through open-ness; through receptivity to what is; through a forgetting of the "I" in the moment of rceognition?

Perhaps, Unsound, what you have been hearing are not as unrelated as you think. But, were you listening, open, receptive?
Asa, good questions.
1) What brain/mind is formed by the experience of music? I'm not sure "formed" is quite as appropriate as "excercised". For me, the left and right brain come together and dance. Sometimes one is leading, sometimes the other. The analytic and the artistic/intuitive -- we need both and music helps bring them both out.
2) What next me am I choosing to form? For me, I choose to strengthen the artistic/intuitive. As many threads have pointed out, sometimes the analytic overwhelms, especially among audiophiles.
3) The "I" always gets in the way -- of listening, of art, of beauty, of appropriate action. Why should music be any different?

Asa, I must admit that I sure wasn't following everything that was being said (and not just by you) but we are ending up in a good place and your comments always make me think just a little harder and differently.