Hey guys,
Sorry I haven't been blogging for a while. I've been (and still am) dealing with a family emergency. I'm actually writing this blog from a hospital room. Anyway, the guys of N.A.D. are almost finished their first mixtape, which we will release to you guys soon! So we're about to exit out of the phase of recording and entering into the phase of establishing our social networking bases, then into the phase of promoting, which we will also make you all a witness of! They performed another freestyle session, which is in the video below (they had no idea I recorded them). Otherwise, continue reading below the Ustream screen on what this blog is really about!
Video streaming by Ustream
I wanted to focus the next few blogs on a music topic that I'm pretty passionate about. In fact, I'm so passionate about it, that I wrote a research paper about it (and may even write a book on it). It's really a two-part topic actually. The broader topic addresses the argument of whether or not music was invented by humans, or if the idea of music already existed and we just discovered it. The "other" topic that somewhat connects to the first one addresses the relationship between music and the human mind... in terms of finding out how our brain processes music on a chemical level that makes us respond to it the way we do on a physical, mental, and spiritual level.
I merely state my opinion in this blog, and I really want you guys to chime in and comment with your opinion, as this blog is more focused on discussion than stating the "facts" (you may put the tomatoes away now). For the sake of time, I'm going to copy and paste part of my research paper so you guys can check it out, comment your opinion, and I'll join the discussion as well. Enjoy!
"One
of the other propositions in the World Music book, which we challenge this
essay, states that music is a human-invented idea, “For our present purposes,
however, it is proposed that music, understood as such, is essentially a human
invention. It is something that either people make, hear, or assign to other
kinds of sound,” (Bakan, Michael B, pg 4). Sound, as a
component of music, existed before animals began to walk on land. We can all
agree upon the one rule of biology that life evolves based on the conditions of
the environment. When animals started moving from water to land, specifically
before mammals evolved from reptiles, ears did not exist, until evolution realized
that there were frequencies already occurring in the air that the new
land-walking animals could not pick up. Then at that point, ears evolved. The
article “From Jaw To Ear: Transition Fossil Reveals Ear Evolution in Action”
talks about the discovery of one of the first mammals to form the ear. A man named
Zhe-Xi Luo and his team discovered a mammal in China, one they named Yanoconodon, which had features of
similar fossils dating about 250 million years back when dinosaurs still lived
and mammals started developing. This fossil showed an “incomplete” separation
between the jaw and inner ear bones. The article admitted, “This means Yanoconodon
not only picked up the high frequencies associated with modern mammal hearing
but also the vibrations transmitted through the ground,” (Biello, David). Luo stated in the article,
"It has not completely lost this ability to sensitively detect ground
vibrations through the jaw but has gained some of the modern mammal ability to
hear airborne sounds," (Biello, David).
Another article, “Evolution of Hearing,” confirms the development of hearing
from amphibians to reptiles to mammals, “One of the defining characteristics to develop that separated true
mammals from mammal-like reptiles was the development of the three-ossicle
middle ear. This advancement allowed mammals to hear a vast range of
frequencies that would prove tremendously significant for the development of
auditory communication (Manley, 1998). It was also during this period that the
tympanic membrane or ‘eardrum’ developed independently in each branch of the amniotes
(Manley and Köppl, 1998),” (author not listed in article). It then goes into
specifics of other auditory evolutions for mammals to better process
frequencies in the air and to use it to communicate with other mammals."
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