Language of Music

Humans are equipped with a strong sense for rhythm thanks to our ability to figure patterns, sequences that recur in predictable intervals. And at least some of the enjoyment in music comes from the familiarity of it – the expectation of the rhythm, the groove that comes from the anticipation of a beat landing exactly on "that spot", like a surfer who prepares for the next wave already at the top by starting the pump of momentum for the next one incoming, creating a continuum of, not only impacts of an individual hits, but the transitioning to the next one already while at the "pound" of a previous one, wanting you to just yell "FUCKING YES!"
_{Man I got that sounding sexual, but honestly, music at its best isn't far off from that, I guess...}

If we think music as a language, like those spoken ones that also have recognizable patterns, it changes its character. It's not something static anymore, even though objectively a song stays the same on a track. It moves along the changing view of yours. Hence, one's taste can, and likely will, develop along the years; your perception never stays static, it changes every time even from the single same input, if not creating new paradigms in your head, at least ever so slightly.

When laid out like this, music can be something learned to enjoy when one learns to "encode" the patterns. What that actually means, isn't quite clear though because there can be as many interpretations of any given peace as there are humans – infinite. And none of them can't really be claimed to be the right one because we are arguing with subjective tastes.

What I like in music is that there is something new to be potentially discovered with each new listening. This requires that there's a certain amount of depth put into it, it must be dynamic, something that unexpectedly throws me off the horns of a bull, to figure a way how to stay on top of it. I like a challenge, it's always better to have something to thrown me off guard than something that's just blunt.

The most simple rhythm is obviously just a single beat in regular intervals between all the hits, but what happens when rhythm becomes "chaotic"? Something of which you can't make any sense, only "noise" to your ears, fooling you to think you got a grasp of it for a second, only to lose it left feeling like a robbed stripper at the end of a hard working night.

One band I'm intrigued with having this "stripping effect" is Meshuggah.

Okay, this is like the most extreme thing of theirs, they can't even play it live, so don't get scared by this smack on your face.

Their music is something completely different you've probably ever heard. It sounds like pure chaos and – of course for those people who don't like metal music at all – just noise, pure garbage. But despite your despise, "what the fuck is this crap", on the first listen, it is highly technical and precisely on time.

It's chaos, but it's chaos on rhythm.
_{I'm still trying to fathom how do they play that stuff LIVE.}

Having listened them for a while, I can only say that it becomes fun to listen when you start to understand, or rather "feel", the complex patterns in their music – it becomes a satisfying groove. They have a very different sense of rhythm with different instruments and beats in odd time signatures overlapping with each others. Did I mention they have jazz influences also in their music? (I think some of the band members used to be jazz musicians.) You can here it in those weird creepy guitar "solo" parts.

One cannot mention 'Meshuggah' without introducing 'Bleed', which is at least slightly more appealing to the mainstream being in 4/4. That doesn't mean it's a simple song though. Oh not at all...

Picked from the video's comment section:

Clearly a cyborg [Tomas Haake, the drummer] sent from the future to bring about the apocalypse, but got sidetracked and became a metal drummer.

^{Clearly the only explanation.}

Listening music like this, I think really alters the way how one perceives rhythm. Classical music might have the same effect if I'm not mistaken.

Going with the theme, I'll show you a clip where I play drums. Unfortunately, I rarely have a chance to do that (which shows in my skills). Only chance in a year was that of the video in my uncle's place while I was visiting him, and that was 6 months ago already.

I'm not obviously the best drummer, I could become decent at it if I could play them little more often than twice a year, but this cherry picked groove turned out to sound close to ok-ish for my critical ears.