Texture in music

I was looking at this video on the meaning/symbolism of texture in (visual) art and asked myself: how do you guys deal with texture in your music? Because in the classical music since 1900 it seemed to have grown in importance...

For me texture is just about making the ear feel I want. There isn't any method with how I go about this just vibes.

2 hours ago, ConfusedFlourBeetle said:

For me texture is just about making the ear feel I want. There isn't any method with how I go about this just vibes.

 

So its a kind of, how do I put this correctly, sensual element in your music? I can understand you won't approach such thing as a logician 🙂

10 minutes ago, Jan-Peter said:

So its a kind of, how do I put this correctly, sensual element in your music? I can understand you won't approach such thing as a logician 🙂

 

Sort of but in an autistic way. I don't think my music can be separated from my autism and for me the ear-feel of a piece is analogous to how something may feel in the mouth or on the skin. Some things feel nice and other things just don't and can even be painful.

Its not sensual in a sexual or romantic way for me but I don't see any reason why it can't be for others. There is actually a really interesting paper on this by Dr Jodie Taylor, Auralism, the Sexual Fetishization of Music. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jodie-Taylor-3/publication/350876169_Sound_Desires_Auralism_the_Sexual_Fetishization_of_Music/links/6077b2ea2fb9097c0ce55256/Sound-Desires-Auralism-the-Sexual-Fetishization-of-Music.pdf

1 minute ago, ConfusedFlourBeetle said:

Sort of but in an autistic way. I don't think my music can be separated from my autism and for me the ear-feel of a piece is analogous to how something may feel in the mouth or on the skin. Some things feel nice and other things just don't and can even be painful.

Its not sensual in a sexual or romantic way for me but I don't see any reason why it can't be for others. There is actually a really interesting paper on this by Dr Jodie Taylor, Auralism, the Sexual Fetishization of Music. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jodie-Taylor-3/publication/350876169_Sound_Desires_Auralism_the_Sexual_Fetishization_of_Music/links/6077b2ea2fb9097c0ce55256/Sound-Desires-Auralism-the-Sexual-Fetishization-of-Music.pdf

 

Great term, the ear-feel. I can feel that.

I didn't meant it in a sexual way, no. It is hard to describe in modern language because we tend to relate all those things back 'down' to the physicality of sex. But when I read Plato on Eros it isn't necessary the sexual deed although it is certainly a possibility included. But he uses it in a more broader and I feel deeper sense than most of us can fathom today. In every relationship there is Eros but not necessarily sex... Anyway I could have said 'erotic' but this probably even more loaded with physicality than sensual. I guess you kind of understand what I tried to describe vaguely with 'sensual' as an expression of Eros. Thanks for the article, I'm going to read 🙂

The talk was under 5 mins so I listened to it throughout - but I still couldn't work out what that pair were trying to say.

Google's dictionary defines texture as "the feel, appearance, or consistency of a surface or substance," which applies to any constructed art as much as to any other "surface". I couldn't see how their string of analogies related particularly to music.

I tend to take a technical view of texture in music as being the relative thickness of a sound (or sequence of) in terms of harmonic density, spread of the 'tessitura' for want of a better word - span, maybe; timbre and dynamic. But it also includes melodic and rhythmic elements - in other words the sum total of sounds at a particular point.

This is just my view but I don't think that texture in music (edit: of itself) has anything to do with emotion or sensuality which is the province of the evolving harmonic progression (including melodic or motivic component). Fine, sensuality is well served by music but texture alone has little to do with it. Equivalent textures could produce the whole range of emotion / sensual reaction. And of course, how we perceive the sounds is so very individual. There are those who are excited to excess by the Rite of Spring or Sensemaya, while others find them unpalatable and provoke annoyance, even anger.

It's so personal a thing.

4 hours ago, Quinn said:

This is just my view but I don't think that texture in music (edit: of itself) has anything to do with emotion or sensuality which is the province of the evolving harmonic progression (including melodic or motivic component).

Polyphonic, homophonic, heterophonic, monophonic.

That's musical "texture" — although I've always kinda felt that was the wrong word for it, but I guess it's the best we have.

What most people mean when they say "texture" in this kind of conversation, and what a lot of sample libraries with "textures" in the title mean, is actually called a "soundscape" or at least referring to the style of background resonances used by a composition.