To EN- JOY the Wonderful Music Structures in Nature

 Free from the Mental Conditioning

First a brief note on my experience with the mental conditioning in music enjoyment.

Some years before one software engineer met me to share his result of the computer based analysis of the pitches in south Indian classical music he enjoyed.

Since those pitches did not satisfy the consonant relations of the octave, fifth and fourth, he concluded that the consonant relations were not applicable to the classical music, instead of using MIT to change those pitches to the Just Intonation and listen to identify the aesthetic differences.

Late Abraham Pandithar in his treatise ‘ KaruNamirtha sAkaram’ ( Tamil -1917) derived the same conclusion on the basis of the Equal Temperament, which he wrongly identified as the ancient Tamil Music Tuning System. (But he, in my study, was the first to explore the ancient Indian method of composing called ‘Raga Sputa’ method.)

Note that in the intervals of the Equal Temperament, now dominating in the world music, except the octave, the other consonant relations are not strictly followed.

To enjoy music, first we need to look for the good structures in any music and then listen to it and, if necessary, use MIT to improvise it to experience the complete music potential of the composition.

To do that we need to free ourselves from any kind of mental conditioning preventing our open minded approach to music.

The negative consequence of the mental conditioning in music enjoyment will deny the option to identify and enjoy the wonderful structures in the sounds of the birds, winds, water falls, thunder and the other sources of music in nature. The structures identified in nature or/and in earlier compositions can be joined following the ‘Raga Puta’ method like a garland. Great composers like Mozart, Beethoven, etc. had used the structures in earlier compositions in their composing as briefed in a post below.

The mechanism of the mental conditioning in music enjoyment is well explained in the quotation below, thanks to the Late Western Music composer Ernst Toch ,

“You must listen without always wanting to compare with the musical basis you already have. You must imagine that you inherited from your ancestors different compartments in the musical part of your brain, just as you inherited any other physical or intellectual qualities. Now when you hear a piece from the pre-classic, classic, or romantic periods, the sounds fall without any trouble and agreeably into the already prepared compartments. But when music for which you have no prepared compartments strikes your ear, what happens? Either the music remains outside you or you force it with all your might into one of these compartments, although it does not fit.--------------------------------------------------------------- instead of calmly , passively, quietly, and without opposition , helping the music to build a new compartment for itself”

Page viii ‘ The Shaping Forces in Music’ by ERNST TOCH – Dover 1977