OK, so this broad-reaching framework about the role of music in and across cultures is VERY interesting to me. Aesthetically, it feels a lot like my long-time, but actually-never (e.g. once and future) project *Porridge: A History, *looking at the many different forms of porridge (gruel, cream of wheat, oatmeal, etc.) that have been developed over time and space, looking at the scientific/chemical similarities of these dishes in terms of how they gelatinize via starchy release, their place in culture and meal-making/sharing. This is great, in that it is an expression of a lens I love, and would love to develop in myself.

However, if I am to give real weight to the reality of how I spend my time as the best proxy for where my real interests and loyalties lie, then this interest doesn’t motivate me. I have not operationalized it in any deep or real way. This doesn’t mean I should give up on it, but to get things underway, to get things moving, I wonder if I might want to begin with a narrower scope, something that will tie together my projects in a more concrete and narrow way. This new idea for a frame is based as much in previous interests and lenses as the last one, but feels more incisive and directed.

When I worked at Artscience, I was introduced to the idea of, “The Power of the Novice.” This is the idea that, even in fields that are perceived as advanced, technical, specialized, there is a role for novices in that field, coming in with fresh eyes and new perspectives (especially with a perspective developed through practice in another field altogether) to solve hard problems, answer open questions, and more generally to innovate by *seeing old things in new ways. *At Artscience, David Edwards organized his thinking about this in scientific fields (e.g. Synthetic Biology, Neuroinformatics, etc.), but its resonance with me really came from the parallel I saw in music.

In music, novices don’t necessarily have the technique or the theory, they don’t have the symbolic manipulation or the muscle memory, but they have the *energy. *The ideas that new players can have, based on their previous relationships to music as listeners, singers, players of other instruments, producers, etc. can be more than enough to achieve the essence of what music is. Using fewer notes and their intuitions, they are able to use the skills they do have to create music that speaks, emotes, creates tension and release, which goes somewhere, as *usually *better than trained musicians, I think there is very much a real sense in which musicians’ training can get in their way of having new ideas, giving them traditional frameworks, precedent, and “the shoulders of giants” to lean on, rather than investigating that inarticulate energy that differentiates music from sound.

A famous jazz musician I’ve enjoyed for some time with no knowledge of their background or biography is Ornette Coleman. (I am not alone here, though he is also reviled, as he’s a free jazz dude.) The jam I’ve always loved by him is Friends and Neighbors. So good. Worth listening to. Anyway, through Kris’ copious knowledge of reviled, underground music, I’ve learned that Ornette did a lot of things that deeply offended Musicians of his time. One thing was having his 10 year old son Denaldo Coleman play drums on a number of his albums. Denaldo wasn’t a child prodigy. He’d never played drums. Another was that, one day, Ornette just decided to start playing the trumpet. And another day the violin. He wasn’t trained on either, though he was a skilled saxophone. He didn’t learn to play them. He didn’t train. He just played. As a novice. He channeled the energy of music, not the technique of instrument playing, and… depending on your taste… he made some AWESOME shit.

So, where is all this going. Today, I reread a document Alec put together about what makes good research/what the role of research is at PHS and in his opening paragraph he used the verb, “syllogize.” I was totally skeptical of its accessibility, so of course I’m going to reuse it here for my own purposes. In the thread of my research agenda, I want to ask, explore, and attempt to answer the following question:

  • What differentiates noise from music?

In particular, if the quality of music (or the “music-ness” of noise) has to do with some intangible quality of the sound (let’s call it Energy) rather than with the technique and theory behind the sound’s pitch and other patterns, then doesn’t it follow, that novices could be as good at making music as trained Musicians assuming they made music based on this Energy?