Saw quite a good TED talk on the idea of Essentialism in relation to how we enjoy things, not a term i've heard before. You can watch it here
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But hes basically talking about how we are predisposed to percieve things as having some external "essence" to its physical being. Which helps us to define its existance / value. I guess in psychological terms its a kind of cognitive bias but I think its a helpful way of understanding how we enjoy art & music. Or more one of the reasons why we enjoy certain music and arts and not others.
The idea of how we value, or how much are own enjoyment is affected by, our percieved essence of a track is quite interesting I think. Its pretty much what people are talking about when they are talking about authenticity. If the piece isn't authentic (even if it does sound authentic) then you're probably going to enjoy it less and we are incapable of escaping this, maybe.
I think this can be seen in loads of aspects of music, the equipment its made on (analogue/digital) the DAW it was made on, the format you are listening to it on, how popular it is, who else likes it, who made it, where they're from etc. All these things clearly can have definable differences in the audible result. I think equally they can have no discernable difference in a comparison between two songs but still have an effect on the persons enjoyment depending on their bias. A example could be someone saying they enjoy a song in FLAC format more than in 320kbps mp3 but in a A-B test they cant tell the difference.
I know I am susceptible to this all the time but still I dont know how capable people are of controlling their bias's for their level of enjoyment. maybe you can look at these things objectively and some people are better than others I don't know. I think being drunk probably helps
.
But hes basically talking about how we are predisposed to percieve things as having some external "essence" to its physical being. Which helps us to define its existance / value. I guess in psychological terms its a kind of cognitive bias but I think its a helpful way of understanding how we enjoy art & music. Or more one of the reasons why we enjoy certain music and arts and not others.
The idea of how we value, or how much are own enjoyment is affected by, our percieved essence of a track is quite interesting I think. Its pretty much what people are talking about when they are talking about authenticity. If the piece isn't authentic (even if it does sound authentic) then you're probably going to enjoy it less and we are incapable of escaping this, maybe.
I think this can be seen in loads of aspects of music, the equipment its made on (analogue/digital) the DAW it was made on, the format you are listening to it on, how popular it is, who else likes it, who made it, where they're from etc. All these things clearly can have definable differences in the audible result. I think equally they can have no discernable difference in a comparison between two songs but still have an effect on the persons enjoyment depending on their bias. A example could be someone saying they enjoy a song in FLAC format more than in 320kbps mp3 but in a A-B test they cant tell the difference.
I know I am susceptible to this all the time but still I dont know how capable people are of controlling their bias's for their level of enjoyment. maybe you can look at these things objectively and some people are better than others I don't know. I think being drunk probably helps