https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/louis-armstrong-and-cannabis
Some quotes from Louis Armstrong on the utility of "gage" in his musical career.
Critical listening and altered states
Ok, this is not a question about relaxing, but about listening to evaluate how the system (or a piece of gear is sounding).
What, in your experience, are the pluses and minuses of altering your state of mind for listening? This can include anything you've used to affect your everyday state of mind, from coffee, beer, scotch, tobacco, to much stronger — and psychoactive, dissociative — additives.
What do you gain by altering your consciousness in terms of what you notice, attend to, linger on, etc?
What causes more details to emerge?
What allows you to stick with a thread or, alternately, make new connections?
Or perhaps you like to keep all those things *out* of your listening; if that's you, please say a bit about why.
What, in your experience, are the pluses and minuses of altering your state of mind for listening? This can include anything you've used to affect your everyday state of mind, from coffee, beer, scotch, tobacco, to much stronger — and psychoactive, dissociative — additives.
What do you gain by altering your consciousness in terms of what you notice, attend to, linger on, etc?
What causes more details to emerge?
What allows you to stick with a thread or, alternately, make new connections?
Or perhaps you like to keep all those things *out* of your listening; if that's you, please say a bit about why.
- ...
- 296 posts total
Cannabis is relaxing and can make the "flowing state " easier for a musician... But in some case it can be handicapping as for Chet Baker....Heroin is not pot... Interesting article thanks...
|
Our only reference for timbre is acoustic instruments played without sound reinforcement. The recording process alters it as do the playback instruments/components. Also we have so many non acoustic instruments, we have no reference for timbre with this. If this true how can stress be caused by imperfect timbre.
Levels of ASC in any particular individual cannot be known by any of us. Many report very high levels of musical engagement with very ordinary equipment. It would seem logical to suggest those who seek and need highest quality audio components are more resistive to high levels of ASC. On the other hand, considering there are differing levels of ASC, perhaps those with the greatest needs equipment wise wish to have even higher levels of ASC than previously experienced. In this case audiophilia is an affliction in which, just like other addictive drugs, tolerance may be reached which means even greater amounts/better equipment needed to maintain the high.
Now, the above contingent on what are the goals for any particular audiophile, perhaps the equipment itself brings about certain levels of ASC. No doubt humans can lust after material objects, think about how many humanize these objects, men often give their cars women's names. My neighbor has males names for my cars. |
Great post thanks.
It is not the gear pieces who gave me ASC. It was music rendition translated in an acoustically relatively correct manner... "timbre" is not only the sound corresponding to a know non electrically amplified instrument, even if in many case it is for sure. It is more complex. Timbre inform us about the vibrating sound source state, be it a MooG synthetiser or a Yoruba drum... Timbre is also not only a tonal color microdynamics varying in space but it is through the deformation or distortion of information caused by any stereo listening a dynamical "volume" in space which also create an ASC by his mere existance not as a mere localized noise in Nature but as an artificial "sphere" of artful meaning in our room if all is acoustically under control. Acoustics parameters also not only the music content can create a strong ASC especially their convergence. Consumers in a race to upgrade are not in an ASC but are perturbed by the boredom caused by their lack of acoustic control over their experience of music from which they evade by purchasing easy "solutions"...
|
Perception may be a robotic act of recognition by the "robotic ego" as in recognizing a known store on a known road... Perception can be too an act of creative imagination who use apparent randomness to extract a known or new pattern... Do you remember your first book with figures to put colors on but only after using the numbers associated to a point to form a figure ? Do you remember your amazement to see order born from apparent chaos because of a hidden road map linking all points with numbers? I remember it as if it was yesterday... All our perceptions are most of the times a mix of the robotic ego actions and of the creative imagination... We dont perceive "things" which we had not created or participated to in some way, but we can recognize also known pattern as if in a sleepwalking state with very low creativity...Each perception may be a door to ecstasy but life will be unlivable if we were stuck on a trip... Musical perception and acoustical perception may be such acts of imaginative creative perception... People with low understanding of the working mind can call them illusion, placebos, hallucinations, it is not even wrong... But truth ask for more study and more involvement in our own thinking perception than accusing our perceptions of lies... We think also with our senses... A blind can think and recreate with imagination the world pattern and densities with echo-localization... i takes acoustics as seriously meaningful as music...The two activities imply ASC... A flow state of creativity like in any art... Listening is an art which create meanings... |
- 296 posts total