Music to My Ears
This is Steven Petrick Posting.
Music, by this I mean instrumentals as opposed to songs, can conjure up different images. It all depends on our backgrounds, and what we know of the tune.
Take "Tubular Bells". This is the music that accompanies "The Exorcist". It was included on a tape of tunes that came into my possession. Not knowing anything about it (I have never seen "The Exorcist", not my kind of film) when I heard it what plays out in my mind is an attack on a defended position. I hear the enemy scouts picking off the pickets and listening posts, deploying their heavy support weapons, and initiating their assault, and finally the defender's counterattack.
Same thing with "Classical Gas". I see a setting sun over a fire base, then an attack that is initially held, but rise to a crescendo as the attackers penetrate the base. The remaining defenders being driven to a final stand, and the colors slowly falling to the ground. The the arrival of the cavalry, usually in my mind attack helicopters and troop ships.
I do not know if "Maid of Or'leans" was done for a movie or something else. I had never heard it before. But the first time I ever heard it it conjured up the image of the aftermath of a lost battle. Of visiting the various positions that the defenders tried to hold, but were overrun. I know from the title that the music here is a theme for Joan of Arc, but I have no other knowledge of it.
There are other instrumentals that conjure up images. A carrier launching a strike is one, a strike group penetrating a defended air space is another.
What these instrumentals conjure in my mind is not necessarily what they would conjure in the mind of anyone else that heard them, or even what the musicians intended. But the ear hears of what it hears and the mind makes the image based on the knowledge base of the individual.
Some tunes, of course, have their own specific meaning. No one can hear the music for the attack on the Enterprise by the Reliant in "The Wrath of Khan" and not know that it is an attack. Indeed, I have known many players of SFB who would play that sound track to accompany their own attack runs on their enemies in games (whether they were Klingons descending on Hydrans, or Romulans descending on Gorns, Orions descending on some inoffensive convoy made no difference).
Music, by this I mean instrumentals as opposed to songs, can conjure up different images. It all depends on our backgrounds, and what we know of the tune.
Take "Tubular Bells". This is the music that accompanies "The Exorcist". It was included on a tape of tunes that came into my possession. Not knowing anything about it (I have never seen "The Exorcist", not my kind of film) when I heard it what plays out in my mind is an attack on a defended position. I hear the enemy scouts picking off the pickets and listening posts, deploying their heavy support weapons, and initiating their assault, and finally the defender's counterattack.
Same thing with "Classical Gas". I see a setting sun over a fire base, then an attack that is initially held, but rise to a crescendo as the attackers penetrate the base. The remaining defenders being driven to a final stand, and the colors slowly falling to the ground. The the arrival of the cavalry, usually in my mind attack helicopters and troop ships.
I do not know if "Maid of Or'leans" was done for a movie or something else. I had never heard it before. But the first time I ever heard it it conjured up the image of the aftermath of a lost battle. Of visiting the various positions that the defenders tried to hold, but were overrun. I know from the title that the music here is a theme for Joan of Arc, but I have no other knowledge of it.
There are other instrumentals that conjure up images. A carrier launching a strike is one, a strike group penetrating a defended air space is another.
What these instrumentals conjure in my mind is not necessarily what they would conjure in the mind of anyone else that heard them, or even what the musicians intended. But the ear hears of what it hears and the mind makes the image based on the knowledge base of the individual.
Some tunes, of course, have their own specific meaning. No one can hear the music for the attack on the Enterprise by the Reliant in "The Wrath of Khan" and not know that it is an attack. Indeed, I have known many players of SFB who would play that sound track to accompany their own attack runs on their enemies in games (whether they were Klingons descending on Hydrans, or Romulans descending on Gorns, Orions descending on some inoffensive convoy made no difference).
posted by Federation Commander at 4:08 PM
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