What is your opium?

Okay-Dokie. Than I remain vigilantly unmoved in my last post, yet reverting to re-state that this topic deserves to be posted in the Philosophy forum. At least…My bad.

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” I ultimately believe this."

So do I.

audiomack.com/song/fixed-cross/ … en-files-2
audiomack.com/song/fixed-cross/ramon

Masculine motion is typically characterized by sharp, crisp, discrete movements. Crisply defined movements means change and whatever changes frequently tends towards noise/chaos.
Feminine motion, on the other hand, is typically characterized by smooth, vague, continuous movements. Fuzzy movements means little to no change and whatever does not change tends towards silence/order.

So yeah, men are attracted to complex, harsh, loud, mathematical, energetic music whereas women are attracted to simple, mellow, dreamy, emotional, relaxed music.
That’s the same reason/intuition or systemizer/empathizer distinction.

MASCULINE

Alexander Scriabin - Etude opus 65 no. 3 [20th century classical]
youtube.com/watch?time_cont … Pvfq5H8PgQ

Hiromi’s Sonicbloom - Time Out [jazz]
youtube.com/watch?v=qXsuPkyFQuQ

Aphex Twin - Meltphace 6 [intelligent dance music]
youtube.com/watch?v=lwMjpEXwz1c

Blind Guardian - Nightfall [metal]
youtube.com/watch?v=IoyToHOWSV8

FEMININE

Enya - Caribbean Blue [new age]
youtube.com/watch?v=Jl8iYAo90pE

Franz Schubert - Serenade [romantic-classical]
youtube.com/watch?v=ZpA0l2WB86E

George Benson - Breezin [smooth jazz]
youtube.com/watch?v=kVc5rCl0BIs

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb [rock]
youtube.com/watch?v=_FrOQC-zEog

Notice how fuzzy Enya’s music is? Everything flows into everything else – there are no clear boundaries. Very dreamy.

And I didn’t make this up:
theconversation.com/what-your-mu … lity-50492
cam.ac.uk/research/news/mus … -you-think

Staccato and legato might be the words to sum up your “masculine” and “feminine” archetypes respectively.

What then of the piece I posted? Legato, dreamy and emotional for sure, but loud, aggressive and overpowering in equal measure. Is it masculine or feminine? Both? In between? Neither? It is a gigantic sound, old and weary but effortlessly dominating from all sides with its rawness.

I would characterise Enya’s song most of all as light, maybe even playful, perhaps more childlike than feminine or masculine - Nightfall’s song has a lot of femininity to it, a lot of music of that type even has a “beauty and beast” dynamic where both feminine and masculine play off one another in the music as well as the vocals. Comfortably numb is a mindset that affects anyone on certain drugs or with certain kinds of fevers regardless of sex, or at least the Roger Waters verses are. Is being high or ill feminine?

There’s a musical term known as “brightness” that might be of interest to you - in the context of degrees of frequency dissonance. The closer two frequencies are together, the less bright they are, and the difference of just one semi-tone in the 3rd of a scale is the difference between the major “happiness” and the minor “sadness”. Scriabin and others employ a great deal of dissonance and discontinuity in their phrasing and pitch transitions. Schubert’s Serenade has some of all of this but much less, making it smoother and more continuous. Are females brighter and males darker?

Perhaps you might want to work these observations into your model, but personally I find it a bit forced.

It’s okay if you made it up, I made up what I’m posting, but not arbitrarily.

When I think of quintessentially masculine music, I think of heavy, loud, rhythmic (altho it can be melodic if it’s done right), aggressive music.

On the one hand, I think of hard rock, heavy metal, gangsta rap and outlaw country:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edBYB1VCV0k[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkFqg5wAuFk[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNctreabb38[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fG16w9IJrbo[/youtube]

On the other hand, I also think of epic film scores such as:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzig0qI7SFg[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZY2mRG5mzg[/youtube]

And some classical music like:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOk8Tm815lE[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGU1P6lBW6Q[/youtube]

These tracks are full of action, and adventure…bold, daring, imbued with a sense of grandeur, and profundity, full of masculine virtues, like valor.

Additionally when I think of masculine music, I think of what’s avant-garde, and technical.

Conversely when I think of feminine music, I think of the antonyms of the aforementioned words: light, quiet, melodic and agreeable:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULbfVgaMfdE[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E6b3swbnWg[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6Kspj3OO0s[/youtube]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3WMMwlHgZI[/youtube]

essentially what is challenging is masculine, what is gentle and accommodating is feminine.
Pop music is feminine, because it’s nice, and normal.
So is the sweeter, softer, safer side of every other genre.

There was little that was macho about what FC posted, it was too soft.
It was avant-garde, however, sort of.
But ethereal, which’s feminine.
Disorganized, which’s neither here nor there, in my opinion.
Overall I’d say it was manic, ethereal and eerily ecstatic, erratic, like a woman or effete man having a bout of psychosis.

Now to me, silence isn’t order, it’s the absence of sound, both organized sound, and disorganized.
I wouldn’t conflate order with simplicity either.
There’s such a thing as simple, and complex order.
Order is synonymous with patterns, and you can have relatively complex patterns, like 1 5 3 4, 11 19 15 16, 21 37 29 30, or you can have simple ones, like 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12.
That being said, complex patterns can appear random.
They can be difficult, or impossible for humans, with their limited memory and intelligence, to identify.
The universe might be full of patterns, even ones with profound implications for our lives, we’ll never recognize.

As for whether order is more masculine or feminine, again I think it’s neither here nor there.
Both males and females are, organisms, and they’re relatively complexly, organized, and they produce relatively complexly organized behaviors.
I don’t view males and females as polar opposites in any way, even where they’re most different, like they’re genitalia, they’re still more similar than different, in that they both have genitalia, sex organs, nor do I view them as relative opposites in every way, they are relative opposites in some respects, and virtually identical in others, like in terms of their complexion, their pigment, one sex isn’t lighter/darker than the other.

I think there’s a tendency in right wring oriented philosophy to extrapolate masculinity/femininity to absurd lengths.
Masculinity/femininity are human qualities, I don’t think they can meaningfully encompass every dichotomy in the cosmos, or in our language.

Air is my opium… for the times when I do breathe fully, it provides a natural high. :banana-rock:

I agree. You can also say “non-harmonic” and “harmonic” but then these terms are not used in English speaking countries. They appear in my native tongue and what they mean is “noise” and “tone” respectively. (English people apparently don’t but here where I live we make a clear distinction between “sound” and “noise”. Sound is partially harmonic whereas noise is completely non-harmonic. Percussion instruments, for example, would be classified as producing sound.)

Silence means no change. As you introduce change, you start moving towards noise. The music becomes louder, and harsher, as more and more change is crammed within a short period of time. It also becomes more energetic.

So I stand by what I said: masculine sound is characterized by change.

It’s difficult to tell. I’d say that Colosseum’s track is in a mixed state that is dominated by feminine tendencies.

Nightfall alternates between the two poles every half-a-minute or so. It leaps from one extreme (mellow, quiet, singing) to another (harsh, loud, screaming.) Most of their music is like that – very abrupt. They are too focused on the details i.e. the parts indivdiually. The whole suffers as a consequence, so their music has little to no structure. They don’t know how to gradate – to smoothly interpolate between two states. Their music is very high-energy – much more than the piece you posted. Consider Wheel of Time. If that’s not an energy-drain then I don’t know what is. Frequent changes, constant action, a lot of going on at every single point in time, massive stress on vocal chords, no silence, no rest at any single point in time, and all of that for 9 minutes straight . . .

I would say so. Light, heaven, happiness, positivity, etc is associated with women whereas the opposite which is darkness, hell, pain, negativity, etc is associated with men.

Who looks more masculine to you?

Satan or Jesus?

@Magnus

Associating men with negativity and women with positivity gives men a bad rap.
I’d rather associate men with a different side of positivity, and negativity.
I, and I suspect many, tend to associate men with pride (I like myself, which can be (un)healthy, mind you, like all the feels) and anger/hate (I dislike you), and women with guilt/shame (I dislike myself) and love (I like you), giving men a more self>other attitude, and women a more other>self attitude, but of course both sexes are more than capable of experiencing both.
I associate men with courage, but also foolhardiness, and women with cowardice, but also caution.
Oddly I associate men with both happiness (things are pretty good), and despair (but they’re going to get worse), which gives them a conservative outlook, and women with sadness (things are pretty bad), and hope (but they’re going to get better), giving them a progressive outlook.

And all of these qualities have implications for the kinds of music men and women tend to create, and gravitate towards.

Satan is one of our negative male archetypes, and Jesus one of our positive ones.
They appear equally masculine, in that they both look strong, but Satan looks antisocial (the attacker), and Jesus social (the defender).
Men’s sociality manifests in their capacity to protect and provide (ensure survival), and their anti-sociality manifests in their capacity to destroy.
There are negative and positive female archetypes in the bible and elsewhere in popular culture, such as Eve, Lilith and Delilah on the left hand, and Ruth, Esther and the three Marys on the right.
Women’s sociality manifests in their capacity to give birth, and to nurture (ensure health and wellbeing), women’s anti-sociality manifests in their capacity to abort, and to deprive.

Disclaimer: even if it ought to go without saying on a philosophy forum, I just want to say I’m sure some of what passes for masculinity and femininity is socially constructed, as I’m sure some of it has a biological basis, it’s just often difficult to distinguish nature, from nurture, and of course there are exceptions, no two individuals are entirely alike, but a few exceptions don’t disprove the rule.

Try to think of (excessive) negativity as a type of excess that is most commonly associated with men.

Right. So what you’re saying is that excessive lack of fear (recklessness) is a type of vice that is typically found in men whereas excessive fear (cowardice) is a type of vice that is typically found in women. I wouldn’t disagree with that.

@Magnus

In a sense, both silence, and sound can be continuous, changeless, like if you hold your finger down on the same key, or intermittent, changeful, like if you tap the same key, or different keys.
But in another sense, the sense you mean, you’re right, in that sound itself is a stirring of air, is itself change.

So when taken to an extreme, masculinity is just noise, and femininity is just silence, for you?
Or masculinity is music (just right) on the verge of being noisy (too much), and femininity is music on the verge of being quiet (too little).
It seems to me there’s more going on than just that.

We do tend to associate masculinity with loud music, which is noisier, but we also associate it with low notes, which are quieter.
We do tend to associate femininity with quiet music, but we also associate it with high notes, which are noisier.

Additionally we associate masculinity with orchestral instruments such as: the cello, guitar, horn, oboe, sax, trumpet, harpsichord and organ, and femininity with the viola, violin, clarinet, flute, piccolo, Harp and piano.

We associate masculinity with rhythm and percussion, with angular, coarse changes in notes/tones, which is noisier, but also with less breadth and depth of notes/tones, which is quieter.
We associate femininity with melody and orchestra, with rounded, fine changes in notes/tones, which is quieter, but also with more breadth and depth of notes/tones, which is noisier.

Males also tend to intellectualize, and systematize music, which is neither here nor there, where as women tend to play and sing from the heart.
Males like to be more creative with music, producing new sounds and arrangements, which’s changeful, but they also compartmentalize more, which’s stagnant.

Overall, I think you’re being overly reductive and simplistic in your masculinity equals noise, change and femininity equals quiet, stagnation assessment.

Another thing, is male music faster, more energetic?
Perhaps females have evolved to be more lethargic because they’ve had to stay home, due to the demands of childbirth, but on the other hand, females talk a lot, comparatively, which probably has implications for music.

@Magnus

Ah, that’s a good point, negativity isn’t always bad, it can be deficient, excessive or moderate, depending on the situation, and what it calls for, same with positivity.
Still, I associate some positive feelings more with masculinity, and some negative feelings more with femininity.

Yes. The higher the frequency the more repetitive the sound is. Frequency is “the rate at which something occurs over a period of time”. But that’s still different from silence. Silence means no movement whatsoever. It means stillness. Sound means movement even if it is a highly repetitive movement.

Correct.

Yes. Low notes->masculinity association may or may not fit my model. If it does not fit the model, it may simply mean there are additional rules that my model does not cover. If it does fit the model, it’s probably because low notes means lower frequency which means less repetition.

Higher tones → higher frequency → more repetition → less noise.

Yes, it is.

Yes. So what’s going on here? Here’s a tentative explanation. Calmness is a feminine trait but in the case of men it is subordinated to reason which is a masculine thing. The goal is to think through things – to postpone judgment in order to produce a higher quality judgment. Thinking is an expensive process that requires quite a bit of energy. It’s generally accepted that it is easier to emotionally react, i.e. to make a lot of quick but lower quality judgments, than to think, i.e. to make a single high quality judgment. Reason operates on a large pool of data, intuition operates on a small pool of data (usually the immediate sensory data.) So when a man appears calm he’s in fact extremely active. It’s just that this activity is largely invisible. So what’s happening is this: feminine talkativity APPEARS to be more active than masculine silence but IN REALITY it is not.

While we may tend to associate men with pride and anger/hate, and women with guilt/shame and love, and men with courage/foolhardiness, and women with cowardice/caution, perhaps we tend to associate women with both sadness, and happiness, and men with, tragedy and comedy, or in other words, men are more willing/able to see the good in bad, and the bad in good, giving them a more cynical/skeptical bent, and women a more idealistic one.
Perhaps men’s emotions are more, nuanced, ambivalent, and this might reflect in men and women’s respective music.
They might also be more apathetic, again gearing their music towards rhythm, and women more passionate, inclining their music towards melody.

If happy music tends to sound more feminine, I think sad music does too.
A lot of underground rock explores more negative emotions.
For example, hard rock and heavy metal tend to explore anger/hate, and tends to be dominated by males, whereas goth explores sadness, and tends to be more inclusive of females.

@Magnus

Is there more repetition, and thus less change/noise?
It takes a high note a shorter amount of time to get back to where it started, but at each step along the way to getting back to where it started, it has changed more than a low note would have changed, so I don’t think there’s more, or less for that matter repetition, and thus less/more change/noise.
But there is more activity, so in conclusion high notes are equally repetitive, but more active than low notes and so, noisier/changier.

Men do more, women talk more, men think more, women feel more, so I’d say in this regard, when it comes to noise/change, they’re different, yet equal.

Overall tho, actually I think you’re probably right, masculinity is probably more active/noisy, overall, however, as I’ve attempted to point out, not in every single way, in a few ways at least, women are more active/noisy.

My opium is work

Magnus Anderson,

lol

Someone mentioned Enya, I love her music.Very ethereal.

But I love Dragonforce just as much if not MORE…not so much mellow, dream, simple… :evilfun:
It must appeal to my animus (Jung).

So perhaps some women…but you need to reach them when they are in their other “realms” so to speak. Our psyches are multi-faceted.

Why would you want to make us woman as flat as soda can get.

Yeah that was a pretty damn weird observation. I thought literally everyone of drinking age would know what girls do with hard music. When the hour of Dionysos strikes men generally are rather timid in comparison. Only the horned ones are up to the task of being amidst women at this hour.

Anyone tried opium?

No… never done hard drugs, but I do have a story on the matter of opium… I’ve posted it before, but that was eons ago now, so might as well post it again.

During a random conversation, on various worldly matters, I raised the topic of: if you were forced to take a narcotic which one would it be, and why?

I chose opium… because I think that it’s the least detriment to self, of the detrimental opioids. I have no idea if this is true or not, but from what I know of the opioid family, it would seem to be the case… to me.

I don’t like the thought of psychedelics either, as I prefer to let the natural chemicals in my brain do their job, of making me, me… natural highs and natural trips, and it’s free too.