Outline

How would you describe your relationship with music? Do you play any instruments? Would you like to learn? How big of a part does music play in your life?

Musicking
How would you describe music? Where would you place boundaries to separate organized sound from music, if at all?

The term “musicking” has been coined by Christopher Small (9) to surround the process of both making and listening to music. It has been defined as taking part in listening to, performing, practicing, or creating music. Musicking includes not only the performer and audience roles behind music, but also really any other aspect of music making and music consumption. For instance, the sound technicians, stagehands, and security guards at concerts are considered part of musicking.

Do you think this term is too broad? Should every aspect, intentional or not, directly or indirectly, writing, recording, listening, and recreating be considered as musicking?

(Find a song most people know, break it down to its most basic chords, strum it out for the interviewee.)
Can you identify the song? Would the barebones version that I just made/played for you count as musicking? Where would you personally draw the line?

Before vinyls, CDs, or radio, music was only attainable through live performances, making the musicking process more intimate and limited in its reach. As technology advanced, the availability of music spread, and the boundaries of musicking blurred. Nowadays you can find new music in less than 30 seconds, and can find entire albums available for digital download. The same ten songs are constantly repeated on radio stations, and music is constantly being thrown at us through advertisements, movies and television, storefronts, and overhearing other people’s music as they flow around us.

Do you think that the musicking process has become less meaningful because music has become so easily attainable? Would you say that the term needs to become more focused and limited as the waves of music push further and further in all directions of the music process?

Would you consider yourself to be part of the musicking process when you are walking down the street and hear snippets of songs coming from the cars that pass you? Would the ambient sounds of the busy sidewalks and streets contribute to your listening experience if you had headphones in? Would you consider those noises to be part of musicking?

Does silence contribute to music? Would you consider silence to be a sound?

Environment

Does the environment have anything to do with overall listening experience and power of a song?

(Take interviewees to different locations, each with varying levels of ambient sounds, and play the same song at each location. At the end of the song, before changing locations, ask the following questions.)

Did the ambient sounds add to the music? How did they change the way you perceived the song? Did the meaning of the song change for you as the environment around you changed?

Did the music distract you from the noises around you, or did those sounds distract you from the song? Did any of the outside sounds remind you of those within the music itself?

Would you consider all the sounds you heard both within and outside the song part of musicking? What about the environments you were in, or the process of walking to and from each location? In reflecting on your listening experience, are you mentally hearing the music and sounds again? Would you consider that to be part of musicking?

Do you think your memory of the song is accurate? How do you feel about this piece of music after having listened to it this many times in one day?

Which of these environments was your favorite to hear this song in?

Environment and Intention

During World War II, the use and development of sonic weaponry was on the rise. A sonic weapon is defined as weapons of various types that use sound to injure, incapacitate, or kill an opponent. The United States deployed the Ghost Army, soldiers as players making sounds of troop movement recorded, mixed, and played to deceive the enemy (“The Ghost Army”). During the 1960s, research into biomusic, a method to create compositions that use electric control of sounds and other stimuli to induce the same psychological states in each listener, developed. The body’s response to stimuli is monitored electronically, and sounds are tailored to such responses in a way that can be used to stimulate specific bodily reactions (Eaton 56).

Other examples of sonic weapons include devices like the Long Range Acoustical Device, or LRAD for short, and the Electromagnetic Personnel Interdiction Control, or EPIC for short, emit sounds with specific frequencies that affect the body and cause it to lower its defenses. LRAD has been used for crowd control, and causes those who hear it to stop what they are doing and cover their ears in an attempt to block the noise. The device itself emits a high frequency pitch at high volumes, and can be directed with extreme precision (Wilson). LRAD has been used to disband protests and as a warning signal for wild animals (Wilson). What little we know of EPIC tells us that it can penetrate walls and cause nausea in anyone who hears it (Shachtman).

Can biomusic and sonic weapons be part of the musicking process? Would their effects also be included? For instance, is the nausea induced by EPIC in any way related to musicking?

Does the intention of sound matter when considering the boundaries of musicking and the definition of music itself?

Governments and militaries use music as weapons on prisoners and enemies (Cusick 275). For example, in places such as Guantanamo, prisoners are subjected to extreme volumes and strobe lights, and are forced to listen to specific songs for extended periods of time while chained in uncomfortable positions (Cusick 283). The music that is chosen can either reflect certain politics and religions, or can be used simply because of the affect they have on the body. The soldiers are generally in charge of deciding which songs are played for the prisoners. Selections included heavy metal and rap, the “Barney and Friends” theme, and songs by Christina Aguilera, Eminem, and Drowning Pools, to name a few. Heavy metal and rap were used because of their vulgarity, intimidation, and heavy beats. The Barney theme was used mainly because it is a very annoying song to listen to on repeat. The other artists and songs that were chosen all contained messages in their lyrics that either opposed prisoners’ views towards women, their religions, or simply because they could be seen as intimidating (Ross).

Do you think the artists’ intentions matter in situations like these? When music is used to torture people, is it still considered music?

Some songs are blasted at excessively loud volumes, and are sometimes so loud that the brain cannot even process the lyrics or really anything that is being transmitted. Would these songs still be considered music at that point, or are they simply just sounds used to torture someone? If all songs can technically be manipulated in this way, is anything really music anymore? Where is the boundary, especially in regards to musicking? When songs become sounds, are they still part of musicking?

Some songs are created with a political purpose in mind. Any song can be considered political if its contents reflect a political view or sway listeners in their personal politics. Political music envelopes both protest and campaign music. In the 1960s, anti-Vietnam War songs dominated the time period. Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Joan Baez, as well as a multitude of other artists, wrote and performed songs that called attention to the morbidity and brutality behind the United States’ involvement in Vietnam. The protest songs of the 1960s were plenty, and covered a slew of topics ranging from civil rights and liberties to the state of the nation as a whole. These songs also presented the artists’ stances in different ways -- obvious and clear as day, or clouded and covertly. The environments in which these songs are played can be set up in a way to transform the meaning of the song, and can be twisted to support issues that the artist may not agree or associate with. These songs can also be used to manipulate their audience.

Does all music have intention? Are songs that exist for political purposes considered music if they can be manipulated and manipulating?

Do you think it could be said that all music today addresses some overlying cultural issue? What song have you been listening to on repeat this week? Do you think that song is trying to tell you something about today’s society and culture? Do you think the artist is trying to convince you of anything in particular? What are the circumstances in which you listen to this song? How does that affect the way you perceive it?

Final Questions

Is musicking infinite in its reach? Where would you say it begins and ends?

Works Cited
Cusick, Suzanne G. “Towards an acoustemology of detention in the ‘global war on terror’”, Music, Sound and Space. Ed. Georgina Born. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. pp.275-291.

David K. Dunaway. “Political music.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press.

Eaton, Manford L. “Induce and Control: Bio-music Is Here Today,” Music Educators Journal 59.5 (1973), 54-57.

Home - The Ghost Army, www.ghostarmy.org.

Ross, Alex. “When Music Is Violence.” The New Yorker, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/04/when-music-is-violence.

Shachtman, Noah. “Navy Researching Vomit Beam (Updated).” WIRED, www.wired.com/2007/03/navy_researchin/.

Wilson, Tracy V. “Pros & Cons of LRAD - How LRAD Works.” HowStuffWorks, science.howstuffworks.com/lrad4.htm.