@rvpiano I totally get where you're coming from. I would just add this comment. Leonardo Da Vinci was an artist and an engineer, a painter and an inventor; the "how" of things and the "feel" of things commingled for him. Their entanglement were the conditions which made him who he was -- and great, to boot. There are countless others who combined imagination and calculation, too. The view that one of these human faculties is "ultimately" more important may be an expression of personal preference, but as an expression of "how things really are," it's baseless. Would we have anything to play on our rigs without music? Of course not. Would we have anything to say without brains? No. But without means to communicate, who knows what we'd think? What would music be without anything to play it on?
This extends past gear to instruments themselves. A harpsichord score without a harpsichord? Nothing. Then came the forte piano and then the fully developed piano. More music was inspired and developed by those instruments because they provided modalities without which certain musical creations couldn't come into being. Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier" was made possible by Bach *and* developments in the technology of the piano. As McLuhan said, "The medium is the message."
This extends past gear to instruments themselves. A harpsichord score without a harpsichord? Nothing. Then came the forte piano and then the fully developed piano. More music was inspired and developed by those instruments because they provided modalities without which certain musical creations couldn't come into being. Bach's "Well-Tempered Clavier" was made possible by Bach *and* developments in the technology of the piano. As McLuhan said, "The medium is the message."