What is Musicality?


Hello fellow music lovers,

I am upgrading my system like a lot of us who follow Audiogon. I read a lot about musicality on Audiogon as though the search for musicality can ultimately end by acquiring the perfect music system -- or the best system that one can afford. I really appreciate the sonic improvements that new components, cables, plugs and tweaks are bringing to my own system. But ultimately a lot of musicality comes from within and not from without. I probably appreciated my Rocket Radio and my first transistor radio in the 1950s as much I do my high-end system in 2010. Appreciating good music is not only a matter of how good your equipment is. It is a measure of how musical a person you are. Most people appreciate good music but some people are born more musical than others and appreciate singing in the shower as much as they do listening to a high-end system or playing a musical instrument or attending a concert. Music begins in the soul. It is not only a function of how good a system you have.

Sabai
sabai
"it got my foot tapping"

That's as good an indicator as any.

" I often wonder if it's just me?"

Its possible.

PErsonally I;ve found deciding what to chose to listen to with so much to choose from these days a chore. When that happens, I put my music streamer on random play off my digital music library and let it decide what I should hear. Then I am able to just soak it all in and not have to pick and choose. or I'll put on Radio Paradise or some other good quality internet channel or maybe even add some stuff to my library in AMazon prime and explore some other new horizons that I might not otherwise.

Sometimes I'll get teh urge to pull out some old record off the shelve and revisit it, but not as often as used to be the case. Most of what I like is pretty well represented in my digital music library these days.

Its nice to just liten and not have to make dcisions, especially when so much to choose from these days.
Mapman,

Foot tapping and other involuntary body reactions are a good indication of musicality. Of course, you can tap your foot or sway to the music consciously. I am referring to when you catch yourself with your body moving without having directed it to do so.
If you read the original post, he wants to know what makes a system good!

OP stated that: "Appreciating good music is not only a matter of how good your equipment is. It is a measure of how musical a person you are."

He was not asking about good equipment, but rather stating fact that some people are very musical by nature and don't need great sound to enjoy music. I'm not one of them - being unable to have ANY enjoyment listening to symphony orchestra on tiny pocket transistor radio. In fact it would annoy me knowing what I'm loosing. That's logical brain speaking. I wish I could turn it off.
"some people are very musical by nature and don't need great sound to enjoy music"

Yes, its a very interesting and valid point.

Just one more reason why pursuit of the absolute sound is mostly a technical endeavor of little interest to many music lovers. TEchnical perfection helps but is not a pre-requisite for enjoying music. It can put you in a better position perhaps to enable enjoyment if needed, but alone accomplishes nothing. You need a "musical person" in order to cohabit effectively.

How hard is it really to enjoy music? Aren't we all programmed for that to some extent, each perhaps a bit differently? Hence all the variety in how we all go about to achieve the desired results.
Sabai, I stumbled unto this thread only now unfortunately, being intreaged about your use of magnets on a new thread of yours.
To my mind a system is felt to be musical, if it allows a listener to be deeply touched by what he hears. A system, which lets "the soul of the music" come through. A musical person is generally also a music lover and not necessarily just an audiophile. The two do not always and at all occasion necessarily coincide and this fact makes the definition of musicality difficult in our context here. A system itself can never be musical. It is just a collection of machines. Nor can the software, we feed our machines with be musical. It is rather in the interplay of software, machine and ear that we deem one system musical and another not.
I find the fact interesting, that even with a system which we on one day experience as musical, on another day with the same music playing we find as sounding awful. So there is more to it, than just "ear".
The high end industry strives in part due to the fact, that we often enough question our systems. Is it really as good as we think? Shouldn't we rather get product B, because our product A does somehow not keep its promise? And so on and on ad nauseam. Compare that to our going to a live concert. Unless we sit in a really lousy seat, would we ever criticize the sound as unmusical? The interpretation of a given piece, yes of course, but the sound itself? Hardly, I would contend, unless again, we are seated in an acoustical unfortunate place. So, live music, even if it is perhaps not pleasing to us, IS by definition musical. And hence I am thinking, that perhaps the late Harry Pearson was right, when he tried - at least in his beginnings - to judge systems in comparing them to what he called "the absolute sound", namely that of live music. And yes, to be a good critic of how a given system sounds, you must necessarily be a "musical person" who, if he is a music lover, would also enjoy music from whatever source it comes from. If the source is more important than the music, I would call that person an audiophile, a sound lover, translated, but not a true lover of music. Just my two cents.....