The art of marketing and commercializing music has made us relate to song as an item for public consumption and profit based merchandising. The sound of rhythms, cadences, tempos, and audio related stimuli has remained as important to man as sight, smell and speech; although we take it for granted. Technology has distanced man from the belief and understanding that he or she is what music is and has always been. The importance and purpose of “music” diminishes when we limit it to a five-letter word. We refer to “music” as something that someone else does or is doing. “He plays music… “I hear music playing… etc.
Animals use an abundance of rhythmic sounds to familiarize themselves with others as well as territory. We fail to recognize that sound is just as important as smell to animals. Even more amazing is the fact that animals, like humans, recognize territorial accents as well. A lion from the plains of the African Serengeti can recognize a neighbor lion by its territorial slag or accent. But when a lion from a distant pride ventures into the territory of another, that feline growl or howl is instantly understood as being that of foreigner. This is not unlike when man instinctively knows that when he crosses the ocean and finds people speaking French, he has crossed boarders and has arrived in France (a foreign place).
Hundreds, possibly thousands of years ago, the continent of Africa vibrated extensively with the vibrations of rhythmical conversations and communications. There were no CD players, pianos, or violins. Instead, one would become instantly aware of border crossings simply by coming into earshot of a different or unfamiliar rhythmic cadence or drum beat. While in familiar surroundings individuals would be comforted by familiar sounds or beats. One African tribe would know the familiar beats or rhythms of their friends or neighbors. The sounds of blood relatives would be even more familiar.
Man has distanced himself/herself from the once essential sensory gift of metrical beat and or sound. The advent of electronic tones and sounds has created a disconnect from personal ownership of beats and rhythms. This is mainly because we do not create the sound ourselves. The computer created and replicated the tone or sound from a simple but random series of “1’s” and “0’s”.
The Musical Instrument Digital Interface or MIDIcreates sounds that we can only take credit for programing, not personally or instinctively creating. As with most all technological advancements man has enhanced and expounded upon this audio creation
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression. It is a common audio format for consumer audio storage, as well as a de facto standard of digital audio compression for the transfer and playback of music on digital audio players.
Identifying and coordinating rhythms only, is more akin to African, South American, Asian, and varied Island grooves. I refrain from calling these sounds music because the making of music I feel is a North American notate-tone driven creation. But this does not diminish the value or validity of popular music. That is why it is owned and registered by the creator its notation pattern in conjunction with its beat or groove. This is and should be considered an original creation because of the infinitesimal numbers of variations and or combinations that can be used to create repetitive patterns as well as lyrics. Therefore, an individual can create and own the rhythm, cadence, notation structure, chord progression, melody, and lyric, poem, or word and this makes the player the author and or sole creator a valid beneficiary of rhythmic stimuli.
Feeding the Impetuses
We can spark our inert rhythmic DNA easily by taking several pots and pans, dishes or plates, or anything that makes a sound when you strike it. As we strike (play) beats and rhytms we must inject our personal beat instincts to the creation. However, there is a lack of audio stimuli when we select a ringtone on our cell phone. Although we create the ringtone; our natural rhythmic instincts are not in question or in action.
It is to the advantage of all peoples and societies to continue to use and enhance our natural abilities such as this important one called "RHYTHM."
