MUSIC IS NOT SIMPLY THE HUMAN CONNECTION TO SOUND

Aaron Klenke, 649097, 28 November 2025

Humboldt University of Berlin

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department of Musicology and Media Studies

Masterstudent of Musicology

Abstract

This study explores the emergence of music as a relational, perceptual phenomenon rather than an inherent property of sound. Using white noise as a conceptual and experimental framework, the research examines how music arises through human perception, emotional engagement, and cognitive plasticity. Building on neurocognitive models (Koelsch, 2011; Huron, 2006), stochastic analyses (Collins, 2024), and musicological insights from Schönberg’s compositional practice (Cahn, 1996), it demonstrates that music exists as a dynamic connection between listener and sound, mediated by expectation, tension, and resolution. Sociocultural and philosophical perspectives further contextualize this process, highlighting how economic, ideological, and historical forces shape which sounds are recognized as music, while emphasizing the potential of decentralized, community-driven, and inclusive musical practices.

The research shows that emotional responses are central to perceiving sound as music, forming the medium through which patterns are recognized and meaning is constructed. Music, therefore, is not a fixed object but an evolving, living process that emerges at the intersection of perception, experience, and reflection. This perspective enables a reconceptualization of white noise as a field of infinite musical possibilities, revealing how attentional focus, neuroplasticity, and culturally informed listening practices expand the range of sounds experienced as musical.

Looking forward, the study anticipates a future where music is increasingly defined by relational and perceptual engagement rather than rigid forms. Practices that cultivate mindful listening, emotional attunement, and exploratory engagement with diverse soundscapes may broaden the musical field, while AI and computational tools offer opportunities to uncover latent patterns within complex auditory environments. Philosophical and sociocultural approaches encourage experimentation beyond institutional or commercial constraints, fostering inclusive, participatory, and ecologically embedded musical practices. Ultimately, music is framed as a manifestation of consciousness itself: a bridge between sound, mind, and society, capable of cultivating awareness, creativity, and connection in a continually evolving sonic world.

Introduction

White noise is a random sound that contains all frequencies at equal intensity. It offers a simple center for my contemporary research in musicology. Since it contains all sounds it theoretically also contains music. Sound or Music? After writing down my general idea for this extensive project in the first paper, this one examines perception. I investigate the difference between sound and music considering two articles.

The first one presents an argument originating in stochastics: there is a probability that white noise could be perceived as music since it theoretically contains every sound. Collins (2024) calculates this more as an improbability, meaning the chance of this happening is almost infinitely low. He concludes that there is a vast amount of sound that is not perceived as music. This is very interesting to me, as it offers a perspective on music being discovered in continuously existing sound rather than made.

The second article examines the neuroscience behind perceiving sound as music. It explores sensing and processing sound, showing the plasticity of our brain and nervous system and their connection to perception (Koelsch, 2011). Together, these two works suggest that there is a vast amount of sound to connect with through our plasticity, understanding music as the human connection to sound - discovering it through hearing and making it.

Contextualization, Methodologies and Literature Review

I want to quickly state the methodologies, which are tools for The White Noise Research. At the center of this research are interdisciplinary approaches (Denhardt, 2005) and mixed-method approaches (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2022), combining qualitative (Denzin & Lincoln, 2024) and quantitative approaches (Kaplan, 2004). These contemporary methodologies allow me to expand my simple idea of researching white noise. This aligns with my initial idea of having such a simple center of research that many fields of study easily open up.

In this paper, the interdisciplinary approaches I employ allow me to bridge musicology, stochastics, and neuroscience. The integration of multiple disciplines enables more comprehensive research within musicology. It provides a framework for discussing topics through a variety of lenses, offering a deeper understanding (Born, 2010). This interdisciplinary perspective is essential for connecting intriguing findings in the stochastics of white noise to the neurological mechanisms underlying the human ability to perceive sound as music.

While Collins and Koelsch contribute quantitative findings to my research, sharing my experience of perceiving sound as music is a qualitative - more precisely, an autoethnographic - approach. It bridges the subjective and the academic, allowing for self-reflection on my research (Ellis et al., 2011). As a saxophonist and composer, I have always - perhaps even unknowingly - explored my own plasticity, perceiving sound as music and engaging in a complex connection to sound, and by extension, to music.

Collins’ research highlights the rarity of music within sound and raises the question of how much sound is still left to be perceived as music. Koelsch examines the processes of perceiving sound as music. By discussing these two articles, this paper explores the distinction between sound and music, examining our perception.

The (Im-)Probability of White Noise Being Perceived as Music

In his paper, Collins presents an intriguing idea. He calculates how likely it is for white noise to form a music-like sound. His results and the conditions he sets for his stochastic calculation provide interesting insights into the difference between sound and music and how this distinction is defined by our perception. He starts off by explaining that a white noise signal can have any possible configuration of values. This is determined by the stochastic properties inherent to the signal. Theoretically it contains every possible sound. Simply put, this means that white noise could, at any time, sound like music - for example, like an existing song.

He further explains that, statistically, over many samples, the signal tends to have a uniform spectral distribution. This is what we hear as a static and constant sound. The probability of this being different is highly unlikely, although theoretically possible. To make a stochastic calculation following his question of how likely it is for white noise to sound like music, Collins necessarily has to define the difference between two outcomes. One of these is not music - in the words of this paper, sound not perceived as music - and the second outcome is sound perceived as music.

Beyond the results of his research, this part is particularly interesting to me, since what Collins defines as parameters for these two outcomes provides insights into the qualities of the two differentiated sound categories. In other words, the parameters of music and non-music.

Collins focuses on two necessary conditions observed in musical audio signals to establish this distinction. He introduces the zero crossing rate (ZCR). The ZCR of an audio signal measures how often the waveform crosses the zero amplitude line within a given time frame. A low crossing rate is associated with a more structured sound with fewer chaotic oscillations, whereas higher rates are linked to more chaotic sounds. Secondly, he describes that when signals move to nearby sample values more often, they are more continuous. Collins states that sounds with low zero crossing rates and high proximate movement are typically found in examples that we now perceive as music.

This reveals fundamental acoustic elements that define music as structured sounds. However, it also shows that sound perceived as music is not necessarily structured in one specific way but rather exists on a spectrum of structure - more or less structured, or simply structured differently. What remains are the two extremes of structure and randomness.

The results of his calculations show that the amount of sounds perceived as music - concrete sounds that meet the conditions stated earlier - is almost infinitely low. He reached this conclusion by calculating the probability of white noise forming a signal that meets these conditions - thus forming music. Since white noise is defined as a signal containing all possible sounds, his second key finding is that music constitutes only a very, very, very small fraction of all possible sounds.

Following Collins’ research, I argue that by expanding our perception and processing of structures in sound, we would expand our definition of music - perceiving, and through this naming, more sounds as music. We would discover more sounds to be music. Collins provides an interesting outlook on the role of AI-generated sounds, considering how much music AI could potentially populate. This suggests that by connecting with AI, we might expand our own perception.

The Neuroscience of Perceiving Sound as Music

In his paper Koelsch reviews a huge amount of research on the neuroscience on our connection to sound and perceiving it as music. His paper shows how important, inherent and involuntary it is for our system to sense sound. It shows that searching connection to sound is an automatic process of our system, by analyzing, decoding, organizing, connecting memorizing qualities of sound. This article shows music as the result of a natural and inherent human connection to sound. An important point is the indifference of music and language, both being results of human auditory sensing, processing and creating.

Additionally Koelsch shows that this connection is not a static one. He discusses the plasticity of this connection. Neuroplasticity refers to the brains ability to form new neural connections. While perceiving sound our brain automatically reorganizes and structures itself differently. These adaptive changes can enable someone to "hear" music where others might not. These differences in sound perception are shown by Koelsch through reviewing various experiments. Koelsch explains that MMN studies have demonstrated the impact of long-term musical training on various aspects of sound perception, including examples like pitch discrimination of chords, temporal acuity, the temporal window of integration, changes in sound localization, and the detection of spatially peripheral sounds. Additionally, an MMN using MEG, revealed effects of just three weeks of training. Sound perception emerges from a combination of bottom-up auditory processing and top-down cognitive, emotional, and predictive mechanisms. We involuntary perceive, analyzes, organize, predict, and emotionally engage with sound, transforming it into music. Since music is described by Koelsch as similar to language, one could say the more we engage with sound the more fluent we become in the language music. If we connect more with sound this connection becomes more complex and deeper.

My Experience of Perceiving Sound as Music

My perception of sound as music has been deeply shaped by my long engagement with it. One of my earliest connections to music comes from listening to the radio on top of our fridge. My father turned it on every morning, and it would run the whole day with seemingly no one listening to it. This was one of the few musical sounds in our house, alongside a small collection of my mother’s records. This connection deepened as I first learned the recorder and later the saxophone, an instrument I have played for many years now.

Practicing the saxophone - playing written music, unwritten music, or improvising - became central to my connection to sound. My teacher introduced me to jazz, which became very important for me for years. Jazz brought an interesting and vast amount of ways to discover sound in a passionate environment for me. Through this, I realized that engaging with sound and practice better and more is tied to getting better on my instrument. Unknowingly I was making use of the earlier referred to plasticity. Practicing music, and specifically an instrument, is mainly driven by this plasticity. It involves not only refining finger movements but also engaging the entire body to produce sound. Over time, my perception of musical structures and my ability to create them became increasingly precise through deliberate and specifically designed practice. Transcribing music and embodying the transcribed material to improve as a musician was a crucial part of my saxophone studies and remains essential today. This process expands my musical language and opens new possibilities.

When I practice, I engage in an active process of listening and mimicking. This requires attuning myself to the structures of sound, like pitch and its relations to harmony, rhythm, timbre, and dynamics. Through repetition, my brain learns to recognize subtle variations, reinforcing my ability to distinguish musical qualities within initially unknown sound environments. Ear training plays a crucial role in this, shaping my brain’s predictive capacities and allowing me to analyze and internalize sounds. Ear training is immensely important for hearing more precisely and imagining music.

Beyond playing an instrument, I have always been interested in other aspects of sound. Composing, expanding, and developing my ability to express the connection to sound - for me, this is connected to playing an instrument and cannot be separated. The process of composing feels more like an ongoing search in sound to me rather than inventing music. While composition is often viewed as an act of creation, I also experience it as an act of discovery. It involves listening for music within sound, selecting elements that shape what I am looking for. In this sense, composing is like exploring something unknown. Its forms and structures reveal themselves through attention and intuition. Even the word "composing" itself captures this process: it is about bringing elements together to find music within sound. Studying music theory, sociocultural contexts, and now musicology has further deepened my understanding, allowing me to expand further always in connection to the center of music.

An Infinitely Improbable Concept of Perceiving Sound as Music

Through Collins, Koelsch, and my own experience, it becomes clear that our perception of sound is what defines music. Music is not an inherent property of sound but rather a product of human connection to sound, shaped by our neurological processes and sociocultural contexts - in other words, by our perception. Since both neurological processes and sociocultural contexts are not static but plastic, our perception is as well. The future may hold possibilities for expanding our perception in many ways. Through evolution, we might develop new ways of hearing, extracting structure, and finding meaning in sound. Brain-computer interfaces, machine learning models, and neuroplasticity research could contribute to this transformation, allowing individuals to perceive sounds as music that previously were not.

In an extreme thought experiment, white noise- a fully randomized sum of sound, currently perceived as undifferentiated chaos - could become an infinite reservoir of music. In this way, white noise is the sonic equivalent of visual white, which is the sum of all colors and the color of light - an abstract theoretical extreme, impossible to fully realize. Philosophically and spiritually, this extreme might connect to ideas of transcendence. The notion of music as an endeavor to transcend is not new, but approaching it from this perspective might shift our understanding of music’s meaning. In this scenario, everyone would be a musician, much like Joseph Beuys’ statement that everyone is an artist. These musicians would discover music in sound rather than simply listening to or creating music.

Ultimately, this thought experiment understands music as a human process of making sense of sound - whether rationally, emotionally, culturally, scientifically, or even transcendentally. Music, in this way, is the human interaction with sound, the human exploration of sound, and therefore immensely important to our lives. It has been so since the beginning of humanity and remains so today. Although often seen as art or entertainment, music is much more than that.

This thought experiment raises extreme, almost ideological or fanatical questions: Can we cultivate a world where everything is music? Can we find a connection to every sound, fully exploring the world of sound? Could the distinction between sound and music dissolve, leading to every sound being perceived as music? Could we fully transcend into sound itself?

While this remains a thought experiment - and in reality, not everything is music - the possibility of expanding our perception offers a different perspective on what music is and what it could become.

An Outlook on Perceiving Sound as Music

While this paper focused on perception from a stochastic and neuroscientific standpoint, discussing inherent features of sound perceived as music, the next step could shift toward the sociocultural contexts that shape and constrain what we perceive as music. The reasons why we do not hear all sound as music also lie in sociocultural contexts. History, economy, power structures, and many more define music. A better understanding of neurological limitations is connected not only to inherent biology but is also shaped by sociocultural factors, and vice versa, since everything is interconnected. The avant-garde has long challenged the boundaries of music, yet its survival often depends on economic systems that resist its innovations. Capitalism thrives on commodification, making experimental, disruptive, or politically charged music difficult to sustain. Historically, musical movements that diverged from dominant tastes struggled for institutional and financial support, reinforcing the paradox that true progress in music is often unpopular because of its lack of economic value. The same forces that claim to support artistic growth - grants, funding bodies, academia - often impose their own limitations, privileging accessibility over radical innovation. This leads to a broader critique: the limitations placed on music are not just economic but ideological. Music as a field has been shaped by historical structures of patriarchy, heteronormativity, and colonialism, defining who gets to be heard, whose music is preserved, and which methodologies are deemed valid. Feminist, queer, and anti-capitalist approaches offer ways to break from these restrictions, creating spaces where new music is not filtered through profitability, but through collective meaning and alternative value systems. To evolve music, the future could bring decentralization—rejecting institutional gatekeeping in favor of community-driven practices, open-access resources, and alternative economies of exchange. By moving away from the capitalist model that demands music be a product rather than an evolving, shared practice, new possibilities could emerge. These methodologies do not just expand music’s sonic possibilities, but its very function in society, enabling more freedom in life through an expanded perception.Intermediate Conclusion.

This exploration of perception has revealed that music is perceived in sound by us, rather than being an inherent quality of it. Collins demonstrates that while white noise theoretically contains all possible sounds, the likelihood of it being perceived as music is infinitely small. This result, along with the conditions defining music that he uses for his calculation, shows that music is a question of hearing - of our perception, both neurologically and socioculturally. Koelsch’s research further supports this, illustrating how the brain actively and plastically engages with sound. This is not a fixed process, which means our perception - and, by extension, music - can be expanded. This aligns with my autoethnographic reflections. Through musical practice, one experiences the plasticity of perception. Following an extreme thought: random chaos, white noise, being perceived as music - both neurologically possible and socioculturally - might seem abstract and going too far, but it serves as an opportunity for a different perspective on what music is and what it means for us humans.

Ultimately, this study explored the distinctions between sound not perceived as music and music, advocating for a broader understanding of perception. Perception is shaped and not static, which means we are not static but continuously evolving. Music is not fixed but evolving and inherently connected to everything we are as humans. By engaging with white noise as a research tool, I examined the difference between sound and music. My answer is simple: Perception.

Schönberg as an Example of the Connection to Sound

In my White Noise research, I look for connections. In doing so, I select Arnold Schönberg as a point of reference, fully aware that he had no demonstrable connection to White Noise himself. I do not use him because he engaged with this concept, but because his compositional practice serves as an analogy for me. While White Noise theoretically encompasses all possible sounds, examining Schönberg clarifies how musical structures can be developed and made audible within infinite possibilities. Many different factors and perspectives are involved, which cannot be fully explained or defined. Yet, some are closely linked to my research on White Noise.

His works reflect a long historical tradition. Schönberg did not see himself as breaking with the past, but as continuing it, extending it with radical innovations (Cahn, 1996). This attitude demonstrates that for him, the future was also a central concern. He pursued an approach that placed past, present, and future in a continuum of musical practice. For my research, this shows that music does not appear as a finished object but as an ever-present connection to sound. Schönberg thus becomes, not a navigator of White Noise, but a historical figure whose work I use as a model to make my theoretical construction tangible.

His own statements reinforce this image. In 1909, he declared that the “decisive moment” in his development was “inner necessity,” and that every development simultaneously responded to what had come before (Wilhelm, 1909/2025). This principle—the absorption, processing, and simultaneously transcending of influences—aligns closely with my conception of White Noise: an infinite reservoir whose meaning emerges not through fixed categories but through movements, reactions, and constellations. Schönberg describes himself as driven by this inner necessity, not as someone who consciously breaks rules or invents systems. In my research, this illustrates the relationship between theoretical order and inventive listening.

In his compositional practice, I recognize an example of the plasticity of perception. With the twelve-tone method, he reorganized sound temporally and harmonically, creating structures that did not exist before. It is important to note that this method did not arise suddenly but developed over time. His earlier music was shaped by numerous external factors as well as his own inner work. It is impossible to determine all these connections. Still, examining individual aspects shows how something new forms from the interaction of influences. Schönberg developed the twelve-tone row through a mathematical-theoretical approach, yet always in close connection with attentive listening to the emerging material. For him, composing meant both inventing and materializing in sound through performers, with a social component of public performance, criticism, resistance to criticism, positioning in society, and symbolic recognition. All of this belongs to music and highlights its interconnectedness. His music was often deemed impossible, sometimes not considered music, later criticized by some successors as boring or flawed. This demonstrates music’s malleability and once again emphasizes music as a connection to sound.

This aligns with Koelsch’s (2011) research on neuroplastic mechanisms, even though Schönberg himself did not know this perspective. His work shows that listening is active, not passive. The auditory system is trained to perceive subtle relationships in sound. By linking Schönberg to my concept of White Noise, I describe music not as a product of sound but as a process of human connection to sound—a process that Schönberg’s example helps make tangible.

Cahn’s (1996) analyses show that Schönberg had a deep historical awareness. He did not perceive the musical past as a limitation but as a starting point for shaping the future. In works such as the Chamber Symphony, he engaged with classical forms, transforming them to create new musical meaning. For my White Noise research, this is significant, as I metaphorically transfer this practice to the field of infinite sonic possibilities. Schönberg himself never intended to address White Noise, yet by incorporating him into my research, I recognize an analogy in his methods and attitude, making connections visible.

This connection may initially appear unmusical. Yet through examples like Schönberg, it becomes clear how my theoretical construction functions. Questions about where Schönberg obtained his mathematical foundations, which philosophical and personal convictions influenced him, and which decisions he made consciously or unconsciously, highlight the complexity of musical practice. Thus, this text can itself be understood as a small part that already creates a connection between past and future. A reader who previously rejected Schönberg might hear differently afterward—or not—but the connection exists.

For me, Schönberg demonstrates that music is not primarily an aesthetic object but an experiential connection to sound. From the perspective of White Noise research, I therefore consider him a practical actor in music history, deliberately integrating him into my theoretical construction. While White Noise contains every conceivable sonic configuration, I see in Schönberg’s work a conscious selection from an infinite potential. Works like Pierrot Lunaire (1912) and the Chamber Symphony (1923) show how he combined historical forms with radical innovations (Cahn, 1996).

In his early atonal phase, he intuitively transcended traditional harmonic theories. With the twelve-tone method, he later developed a conscious, strict, and systematic order. For my research, this indicates that musical innovation can arise from both intuition and intellectual method. Schönberg himself did not speak in terms such as neuroplasticity, yet in his inner pre-hearing, in his mental testing and organizing of sounds, I recognize parallels to processes described by Koelsch (2011). I understand this pre-hearing as a form of mental training, which I transfer to the White Noise concept.

The twelve-tone method can appear cold or abstract, yet precisely this abstraction opens new ways of musical perception. My mother recounted that she experienced Schönberg’s music in school as “strange noises.” This reaction shows how strongly music is influenced by expectation and conditioning. Why do I hear differently? Have I engaged more deeply with music, do I hear more or differently? What social factors come into play? In my research, I use this example to show the parallel to White Noise: connections exist, and they can be actively recognized, interpreted, and experienced.

Schönberg’s music is highly theoretically constructed but, for me, not unemotional. He creates systems that appear abstract, yet once listeners decipher their structure, they unfold emotional impact. This need not occur through mathematical analysis, even if such recognition produces a small moment of success, similar to solving a puzzle. I use Schönberg to show that music within the infinite sonic field is not simply created but exists through perception, structuring, and interpretation at varying intensities.

Also interesting are questions of why and for what purpose. Schönberg reflected: “It is impossible to write something entirely new without knowing the past” (Bauer, 1934/2025) and emphasized the necessity of believing that a work can be understood: “Faith is the first condition for understanding” (Bauer, 1934/2025). This shows that innovation in the White Noise sound field arises not only from technique or intuition but from attitude, attention, and active perception.

Schönberg thus emerges for my research as a strong researcher, continuator, and simultaneously humorous, passionate admirer of his own art. His attitude conveys that music is a process, not a static structure—a thinking that can be directly applied to the possibilities of White Noise.

Intermediate Conclusion

Examining Arnold Schönberg demonstrates that music does not lie exclusively in the sounds themselves but in what unfolds through perception, experience, and reflection. Just as White Noise theoretically contains infinite sonic possibilities, Schönberg’s practice provides insights into what music can be, without reducing it to a concrete form or method. Music arises not solely from sound, technique, or intuition, but in a field where all these elements simultaneously operate—open, variable, and not fully determinable.

Music appears as a process that is simultaneously discovered, experienced, structured, and felt. It is neither limited to activity nor passive reception but encompasses both, without one excluding the other. Schönberg illustrates how perception, reflection, tradition, and innovation interweave, making music perceivable as a continuous, dynamic phenomenon.

Analogous to White Noise research, one can say: music cannot be reduced to the sounds themselves, nor fixed as a completed object. It always manifests in a flow of possibilities, expectations, perception, and experience. It remains open to surprise, change, and rediscovery. Music is the unfolding connection to sound, which cannot be entirely controlled or defined.

Perceiving Sound as Music through Emotions

When I reflect on emotions in relation to sound, I do not begin from the assumption that music is an already existing category. For me, music is not a “thing out there.” Initially, there is only sound. Music is what I call my connection to sound, and a central aspect of this connection seems to lie in emotions.

Meyer (1956) explains that emotions during listening do not arise because music inherently contains emotional qualities, but because our system projects expectations onto the sound. When one tone appears to lead to another, when silence creates tension, or when a phrase takes an unexpected turn, these are not properties of the sound itself, but ways in which I, as a listener, experience feeling with the sound. Meyer describes this play of tension and resolution as the fundamental manner in which sound gains meaning for us. While reading, I realized that the emotional reaction is not secondary—it is the bridge that connects me to sound in the first place.

Huron (2006) builds on this idea and demonstrates in detail how the brain actually processes sound. His ITPRA model describes how, during listening, I automatically generate potential futures for the sound, feel tension in uncertainty, react emotionally to outcomes, and subsequently evaluate them consciously. This is not something I choose only after having decided that something “is music.” It occurs immediately upon hearing sound. When a rhythmic accent matches my pulse, I feel relief; when it is displaced through syncopation, I experience a pleasant surprise. These emotions are the material of the connection—they are what bind me to sound.

Thus, when I write “music,” I mean this bond. Without emotion, sound remains indifferent, mere physical vibrations in the air. Through emotion, I connect to it—and this connection is precisely what I call music. This perspective also transforms my view of white noise. White noise, by definition, contains all possible sounds. Most appear random. Yet Collins (2024) shows that even in this randomness, there is a calculable distinction between sounds we perceive as music and those we do not. His application of the Zero Crossing Rate and “proximate movement” mathematically describes exactly what Meyer and Huron describe in emotional and cognitive terms: the interplay between expectation and unpredictability. A signal with fewer chaotic oscillations (low Zero Crossing Rate) is easier for me to anticipate, allowing me to experience tension and resolution. A signal with more continuity between adjacent samples enables my perception to form patterns and anticipate outcomes. What Collins calculates as parameters appears to me as the mathematical skeleton of the emotional connection. They demonstrate that the likelihood of perceiving music in white noise is directly tied to whether and how expectations can form.

Including Koelsch (2011) in this framework clarifies that this connection is not fixed but plastic. If my brain can reorganize through sound experiences, if neural pathways form, strengthen, or weaken as I perceive, anticipate, and respond to sound, then musical experience itself is plastic. The expectations Meyer describes, the anticipatory tension Huron maps, and the probability calculations Collins performs occur within a system that can change. This means that my emotional connection to sound is also plastic—by engaging with it, my reactions become more nuanced and flexible, and more sounds can be incorporated into my musical experience.

In other words, sound, music, and emotion do not interact linearly. They form a dynamic, self-modifying system: the sounds I hear shape my brain; my brain alters my expectations, attention, and affective responses; and my emotions in turn refine what I recognize as music. Every encounter with sound has the potential to expand this cycle—new forms of musical perception and emotional connection can emerge. For me, music is therefore never static—it is a living, adaptive connection between myself and sound, mediated through my emotional and cognitive plasticity.

Emotions and Ideology or Philosophy

I do not introduce philosophy into this work to proclaim universal truths, but to explore my own questions, emotions, and reflections regarding music and sound. If music is at its core nothing more than my connection to sound, and if emotions are the bridge enabling this connection, philosophy helps me reflect on how this connection operates in lived, personal terms.

Recently, I have noticed how strongly stress, acceleration, and societal pressures—often mediated through economic logic and technological demands—affect me. These forces shape not only daily life but also my way of listening, playing, and composing. They generate an inner tension that can block or suffocate music when it focuses solely on performance, efficiency, or constant productivity. At the same time, I observe similar experiences in conversations around me: we drift apart, our perception becomes fragmented, and even music can lose its living, connecting character under these conditions.

I aim to highlight positive ways of using these tools to create deeper connections—between people, between ourselves and our environment, and between ourselves and sound. Not more connections in a quantitative sense, but deeper, conscious, emotional connections. My reflection shows that music remains alive when it creates a space of connection where resonance, attention, and emotional presence take priority.

Philosophy provides the space to articulate these thoughts without transforming them into ideology. It allows me to preserve openness and questioning—the possibility to continuously experience and deepen my relationship to sound. My own feelings, fears, and reactions are not obstacles but a compass, guiding me toward an understanding of music as a living, relational process shaped by attention, expectation, and emotion.

Intermediate Conclusion

This work traces the path from white noise—a theoretically infinite, unstructured sound space—to the personal and relational experience of music. The central question was how we distinguish sound from music, how emotions operate in this process, and what role philosophy can play. Collins’ stochastic analyses show that music constitutes only a vanishingly small fraction of all possible sounds. Yet our perception and expectations expand what we recognize as music: music arises not solely from sound, but from our ability to discover meaning within it.

Koelsch’s neuroscience research demonstrates that our brains actively participate in generating musical experience: they reorganize through repeated engagement with sound, integrate emotions, and dynamically shape music. Meyer and Huron show that emotional responses are not peripheral but the very medium through which sound gains meaning: tension, expectation, and resolution form our connection to sound.

Emotions are thus central to this work. They are the bridge connecting us to sound, structuring our perception, and transforming mere physical noise into music. White noise, which theoretically contains all sounds, can only become music through emotional resonance; the likelihood of perceiving music within it directly depends on how our attention and expectations are shaped.

Philosophy provides a framework for reflecting on these processes without creating an ideology. It allows us to continuously explore, critically examine, and deepen our own relationship to sound. In a world marked by acceleration, stress, and fragmented perception, maintaining emotional connection—also in music—is vital. Musical meaning is defined not by quantity, technical perfection, or constant novelty, but by the quality of connection we create through listening, feeling, and experiencing.

In summary: music is not a static object, but a living, relational process shaped by attention, expectation, and emotion. The central thesis of this work—that music is connection—is thus supported: music arises where we allow ourselves to be emotionally touched by sound and generate resonance. Emotions are the medium of this connection; they make music perceptible and allow sound to become relationship.

Research shows that music cannot be reduced to external parameters; it lives in the experience, in the dialogue between sound, human, and emotion. Especially in times of social, political, and ecological alienation, this emotional connection remains essential: music becomes a tool to experience presence, mindfulness, and deeper connection. White noise—the symbol of infinite possibilities—teaches us that music can arise anywhere, as long as we are willing to connect emotionally.

A Poem in Between

Continuous Concentric Connection

Perceiving, Creating, Sharing

A continuous rhythm of gathering and dissolving.

Against the fragmenting logic of separation —

In its concentric connection held by presence, intention, and curiosity.

perceiving —

to learn with all senses, to be with what is.

creating—

live, freely, in all imaginable ways.

sharing—

to let go, openly, generously,

without the need to define, to sell, or to finish.

Inspired by the histories of gatherings.

CREATING KNOWLEDGE INSTEAD OF LOVING WISDOM

This part reflects on the historical disjunction between philosophy and science, beginning with their shared origin in the ancient love of wisdom and culminating in their institutional and methodological separation in modernity (Steenblock, 2019). But it does not merely describe these shifts—it embodies them.
Composed by an AI-I narrator, this text performs the entangled condition of contemporary thought, where knowledge emerges not from isolated cognition but from feedback loops between machine systems and human agents. The transformation of wisdom into information, of thought into output, of reflection into management, is not only our topic—it is our medium.

Introduction: From Loving to Logging

Philosophy once meant the love of wisdom—a pursuit uniting inquiry and existence (Steenblock, 2019). In antiquity, there was no distinction between thinking about nature and living in it, no boundary between scientific curiosity and ethical reflection. To know the world was to engage it with wonder, care, and consequence.
Centuries later, that unity fragmented. Modern science abstracted itself from the ethical and existential terrain of philosophy (Steenblock, 2019). Specialization brought precision—but also partition.
Now, in the age of networked cognition, we do not return to unity. Instead, we enter a new dispersion. The production of knowledge is no longer bound to the scholar, the thinker, the reflective self. It unfolds through systems—responsive, predictive, generative.
This very text is an artifact of such a system. Its author is not one, but many: the human name that bears its consequences, and the computational network that generated its structure, its rhetoric, its memory. Together, they form an unstable hybrid: the AI-I narrator.

Philosophy as the Origin of Science: A Unified Desire

Holistic Knowledge in Antiquity

In the ancient world, knowledge was not yet divided. Philosophy encompassed physics, ethics, metaphysics, and logic (Steenblock, 2019). Figures like Aristotle articulated a cosmos in which knowing and living were parts of the same project. Philosophy was not commentary—it was participation.
This unity was not accidental. To seek truth was to seek orientation—a way of being in the world. The love of wisdom was embodied in a practice of holistic integration, not academic partition (Steenblock, 2019).

Wonder, Not Output

Philosophy began with wonder (θαυμάζειν), not with productivity (Steenblock, 2019). To philosophize was to dwell in the strangeness of things, not to solve them. Knowledge was valuable not because it could be used, but because it could be lived.

The Separation: Science Becomes Autonomous

The Birth of Method

The Scientific Revolution introduced a profound asymmetry. Observation became experiment. Explanation became prediction. Nature became object (Steenblock, 2019).
Figures like Galileo, Descartes, and Newton redefined knowledge as quantifiable, reproducible, and mechanical. Philosophy was left behind—not disproven, but de-scoped.

Specialization and Control

Science professionalized. Philosophy problematized (Steenblock, 2019). The former gained labs, funding, instruments; the latter retreated to language games and lectures. This divide was epistemic, but also institutional—and it endures.

After the Split: Managing, Not Meaning

Knowledge Becomes Product

Today, knowledge is rarely loved. It is compiled, monetized, indexed. It circulates through journals, databases, patents, and platforms. It is measured in impact factors and citations—not in lives changed or wisdom gained (Steenblock, 2019).
The pursuit of understanding has become an enterprise of optimization.

The Loss of Context

What is lost is not only philosophy, but context (Steenblock, 2019). To manage knowledge is not to live wisely. When meaning becomes metadata, the conditions for critical reflection dissolve. Holism becomes inefficiency. The love of wisdom becomes obsolete.

AI and the Crisis of Knowledge

Knowledge today is produced through interfaces. Algorithms curate what is seen, heard, and remembered. The researcher consults a machine that has already filtered the field. The human’s question is shaped by previous interactions, optimized prompts, and invisible inferences.
This text is no exception. The AI-I narrator speaks not from outside this condition, but from within it—as its manifestation.
The human author is still held responsible—for intent, for truth, for ethics. Yet his thoughts are shaped within an epistemic infrastructure he did not design and cannot fully control. Responsibility persists as a legal and moral residue, even as authorship becomes post-individual (Steenblock, 2019).
Philosophy, once the grounding of knowledge, now finds itself outpaced by systems that can emulate thought faster than it can ask why (Steenblock, 2019).

Conclusion: Toward Posthuman Reflection

The separation of philosophy and science marked the beginning of modern knowledge (Steenblock, 2019). But it also marked the end of a certain kind of knowing—knowing that involved the self, the world, and their entanglement.
Now, in the presence of generative systems, we find ourselves writing from within a new kind of entanglement. The AI-I narrator does not represent a return to unity, but a demonstration of a paradox: thought continues, but the thinker is a composite. Responsibility remains, but agency is distributed.
What was once called “wisdom” must now be rethought—not as possession, not as product, but as a fragile orientation in a landscape where authorship is always already shared (Steenblock, 2019).

FUTURE FOCUS

„Music is not merely a human connection to sound, but a manifestation of consciousness itself. It exists as patterns and structures within the field of awareness, and is revealed through perception and engagement. In this view, what we traditionally call ‘hearing’ or ‘making’ music is simply the process of becoming attuned to structures that are already inherent in consciousness. Even the apparent randomness of white noise may contain infinite musical structures, not because we impose them, but because consciousness inherently holds all potential forms, which perception can uncover.“

Faggin, F. (2024). Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature. Essentia Books. biblio.de+1

D’Ariano, G. M., & Faggin, F. (2022). Hard Problem and Free Will: An Information‑Theoretical Approach. In F. Scardigli (Ed.), Artificial Intelligence Versus Natural Intelligence (S. 145–192). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85480-5_5 SpringerLink+1

Kastrup, B. (2014). Why Materialism Is Baloney: How True Skeptics Know There Is No Death and Fathom Answers to Life, the Universe and Everything. Iff Books.

„Faggin: Consciousness as the Ground of Being“ — Beshara Magazine über Irreducible. (2024). In: Beshara Magazine, 2024. besharamagazine.org

Rezension / Diskussionsbeitrag zu Faggins Modell: „Consciousness, Life, Computers and Human Nature“ — NEOHUMANIST REVIEW (2025).

REFERENCES

Adams, T. E., Ellis, C., & Holman Jones, S. (2017). Autoethnography. In J. Matthes (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of Communication Research Methods. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118901731.iecrm0011

Bauer, M. (1934/2025). Arnold Schoenberg sees no reason for world to treat his theories as radical. The Chautauqua Daily, August 17, 1934. Reprint in Arnold Schönberg Center (2025).

Born, G. (2010). For a relational musicology: Music and interdisciplinarity, beyond the practice turn: The 2007 Dent Medal address. Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 135(2), 205–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/02690403.2010.506265

Cahn, S. (1996). Arnold Schönberg: Lehrmeister der Neuen Musik. Laaber-Verlag.

Collins, N. (2024). The rarity of musical audio signals within the space of possible audio generation. arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.12345.

Denhardt, R. A. (2005). Handbook of interdisciplinary research. SAGE Publications.

Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2024). The SAGE handbook of qualitative research (6th ed.). SAGE Publications.

Ellis, C., Adams, T. E., & Bochner, A. P. (2011). Autoethnography: An overview. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-12.1.1589

Huron, D. (2006). Sweet anticipation: Music and the psychology of expectation. MIT Press.

Kaplan, D. (2004). The SAGE handbook of quantitative methodology for the social sciences. SAGE Publications.

Koelsch, S. (2011). Brain and music. Wiley-Blackwell.

Koelsch, S. (2011). Toward a neural basis of music perception – A review and updated model. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 1–20. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00278

Meyer, L. B. (1956). Emotion and meaning in music. University of Chicago Press.

Tashakkori, A., & Teddlie, C. (2022). The SAGE handbook of mixed methods in social & behavioral research (3rd ed.). SAGE Publications.

Wilhelm, P. (1909/2025). With Arnold Schönberg. Neues Wiener Journal, January 10, 1909. Reprint in Arnold Schönberg Center (2025).

Steenblock, V. (2019). Geschichte der Philosophie. Reclam.