Listen with your skin.

Perception is not sensation...

In perception which is a subjective but nonetheless real experience, not an hallucination or the so called "illusions" or placebos, which are all DIFFERENT phenomena, in perception synesthesia and conceptual schematisation plays a great role...

For example to give you an idea of this deep and complex subject, a synesthete who associate sounds and colors will do so in a completely subjective and idiosyncratic way ; none other synesthetes may exhibit exactly the same association, but the specific association will endure in time and be stable for this individual then for him "objectively" real... And for an observer this synesthesia will appear then under test of the subject as real and has nothing to do with hallucinations , placebo or illusions...

 

The synesthesia which is a communication, resonance,interference or translation between the senses, can be UNDER the conscious level and stay there ; or being over the conscious level and stay there...

There is level of synesthesia and many forms...

It is evident for me for example that music told a story in geometrical patterns, sometimes very vivid, like cinema...

A Bruckner symphonies may be a movie... In my case, i am not a full blown conscious synesthetes, the phenomenon manifest in relaxation state when i am very deeply concentrate on the sounds, not at the unconscious nor at the conscious, but at the subconscious level , then acessible to my attention... for me music is fractals dynamics... i remember even the first day i was struck by this without even knowing what it is...

i was 13 years old and the music teacher put Bach , who i never listened to before, i was instanteneously put in a trance, i did not have any concept nor a name for this experience , i was in awe without even knowing WHY ... Bach became my long life best composer over anything else.. His geometrical dynamic is perfect this is why and for me it contains cosmos secret language ...I did not know that at 13 years old, but this motivate my interest in mathematics as meaning of the higher kind..

Here, in the links above , you can have an idea of this experience but in my case they are not simple geometrical shape associated with tones but dynamical fractals histories patterns interpenetrating... Each Composer had his own style.. My experience is more geometrical than colored... The colors are only "abstract" labels put on a dynamical geometrical history ...But in the case of Scriabin my experience is almost in colors, i cannot describe it it was so powerful , i remember my first scriabin listening...Scriabin anyway was a synesthete... With Bach it is my favorite composer for the same reason..

Not surprising that one of the most influential book in my life, i bought it almost first before the english translation , fractals objects by Benoit Mandelbrot... I immediately understood the book because of this intuition/imagination about music and form in my sub conscious listening experience...

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv5wMjuo_i8

Here a conscious synestete , a violonist, explain his color and sound synethesia :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obrBAysVef0&t=46s

 

Now what this means for audio, cables, amplifiers, speakers/room, etc; this means that each of us can tap internal tool of perception and we can learn to listen to phenomena that will refine our perceptions , and that will help us to tune our system in a way , no materialist conditioned by scientism can understood as "real"...

Training our ears with acoustic experiments will means compute room dimension as any acoustician can do and put in place acoustic devices in this room accordingly to these objective measures... But it will also means tune the time factors between waves and the ratio of reflective and diffusive and absorbing waves to increase your own "subjective/objective" subconscious or conscious or unconscious synesthete experience...And also please and learn about your own ears/brain specific filters and systems...

Then you learn basic acoustic, you learn how to focus your attention , and your learn how to increase from the unconscious or from the subconscious the synestesia real experience to the conscious level...it is what we call LEARNING HOW TO HEAR AND TO LISTEN... Add to this the music experience as a language...

You then can understood why hearing is not as naive people think about only a matter of objective acuity expressed in Decibels and Hertz resolution levels as "objectivist" claim , it is not false, but it is not even wrong...These decibels and Hertz levels controls aure useful on psycho-physics experiments yes, this does not means that they tell us all the tales to tell about hearing and sounds qualities, which are now as you can guess , nor objective nor subjective, but tune for our own individuality as our personal tools and esthetical roads..

Here it is not necessary to joke about "tin foil hat" or "drugs", it will only show your own ignorance for all to be seen ... Stay modest... keep your sarcasm... 😊

And "objectivist" conditioned by tools scientism , not science, can pass their turn and MEDITATE and STUDY... After all science does not exist in the singular but in the plural forms  , and we understood something when we are able to relate it to other fields too..

As Lichtenberg said and Paul Feyerabend after him  :

“He who understands nothing but chemistry
does not truly understand chemistry either”

 

We dont know what is a sound by the way....

Saying that it is ONLY and MERELY waves , is not even wrong... It is a misrepresentation of the complete more complex truth... i will spoke about it later...

This describe well my experience of music :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6jlhqNxRYk

 

 

 

 

I won’t get into the skin changing what we hear, but different people experience music through the body more than others.

I personally do NOT want my body below my neck excited by bass or horns or anything else I play. It bothers me greatly, while others need to feel it in their gut. They need a (word carefully chosen) visceral experience.

There’s certainly a great deal of validity to including how you want to feel (not emotionally) when you listen to music, I just really hope you’ll all keep your shirts on in the store.

Great post! thanks and i concur with eric_squires..

 

Music is NOT a mere immersion of the body in a wall of sound , naked...Even if the hearing experience implied all the body... For example i felt deep bass extension with my body listening headphone and i felt the organ bass note with my stomach and feet by bone resonance... ( bass regime of the K340 is the only natural bass , not boomy  i ever listened to anyway, so much i love deep bass i hate boomy completely  )

it was in some concert immersion of the body mainly , which concert crowded i never goes in my hippie era...I hate crowd... And for me three person is the limit of a crowd... 😊

Music is a perceptive complex phenomenon, not a mere intense direct, one way, sensation, then music implicate a balanced communication between body-mind and soul...

But dont get me wrong, music is a viscereal experience for me , but implicating three elements not one : body-mind-soul... As it is certainly the case with eric_squires if i read between the line...😊

 

I won’t get into the skin changing what we hear, but different people experience music through the body more than others.

I personally do NOT want my body below my neck excited by bass or horns or anything else I play. It bothers me greatly, while others need to feel it in their gut. They need a (word carefully chosen) visceral experience.

There’s certainly a great deal of validity to including how you want to feel (not emotionally) when you listen to music, I just really hope you’ll all keep your shirts on in the store.

 

If we simplify to the maximum...

one piece of the argument is the body, another piece of the argument is the mind-soul...

Only one hand cannot clap , it takes two hands to make sound... Any argument has two sides also at least... It is in fact multidimensional... our attention is not...

And we dont understand quantum mechanics for the same reason we do not understand sound-hearing and even the Bible...😊

There is at least two levels of experience and meanings and of symbolic forms here...

There is physical MEASURABLE phenomenon in the horizontal dimension, but there is also a vertical non measurable level , the natural qualitative experienced phenomenon..

Physical measured VIRTUAL objects are not = to ACTUAL natural phenomenon...Natural phenomenon are not reducible to their physical measurable dimensions... History of science is to be understood as a spiralling move around this problem... It was not the case in the Platonic inspired unity of experience of Aristotelean times... It became conscious after nominalism in the 12th century, as a division more from the Galileean-Cartesian era... There is no nominalism at the focus center in the unitive Logos greek era...( anglo-saxon nominalism oppose logos phenomenological experience in german influenced cultures for example )

This is why sciences exist in the plural specialized diversities of all fields, under some necessary philosophical reflection, and cannot replace it; sciences did not exist at all as the totalitarian singular unidirectional mode of knowing where scientism-techno idolatry and blinders, or bad vulgarisation , want to established it for corporate and political interests...Or if we  simplify for the express needs  condition the crowd minds and cobntrol them as we have seen not long ago for those who use long term  memory ....😁

 

«Do not say hypothesis, and even less theory: say way of thinking. »Lichtenberg

 

«A leg of mutton is better than nothing,
Nothing is better than Heaven,
Therefore a leg of mutton is better than Heaven. »

Lichtenberg, the greatest humpback scientist of all times with Steinmetz perhaps ... 😁

Do any of you recall the articles some years ago about the deaf gentleman who listens with his hands holding a balloon?  He had serious systems, and said he could discern differences in cabling.  I suspect that his experience included more of his body than his fingertips.

Bill