Lowercase music is the tiniest, weirdest experimental music (feat. Philosophy Tube) 

Lowercase music would be really good soundtracks to games.

Oh hey, who's that handsome philosopher ;) This was really fun! Thanks man!

Post-ASMR

i was getting my asmr on at 0:10 and then i was RUDELY AWAKENED

in always open to new genres give them a try, if you dont like it just say its not for you and move on. making fun of someone over their taste in music is like making fun of someones taste in food.

I have gotten wasted to Merzbow in a park before. I'd say that's close enough.

Music is whatever you want it to be.

One of my favorite quotes from vine sauce "what the fuck why did the music get all tiny and shit"

I think sound art is basically music. I did once say "the definition of music is, a sound there's a market for."

Not gonna lie these tracks would be great for the next big survival horror game.

Micro music has been a thing since like the 60s. Has to do with minimal sounds often produced by granular synthesis.

Music is: Art Sound, i.e. The use of sound,including silence,for the purpose of creating art😜✌️

After listening to "Bell is the Truth," I can say that it definitely has rhythmic and tonal qualities that seem to be intended to impart a feeling of eery beauty. I would call it music, just minimalist and strange music that sounds like the drepressed offspring of a meditation bell and a pachinko machine.

I subscribed yesterday and finished watching every single video, looking forward to more.

"Lowercase music is the tiniest, weirdest experimental music" The weirdest? Have you actually delved into the experimental music world? This stuff is tame compared to some of the stuff out there.

I actually listen to and made my own lowercase tracks years ago in high school. thanks This Exists for bringing lowercase to a broader audience.

Came to be confused by the subject, got confused by philosphy.

Yeah, I guess I'd call it "sound art" more than music. Defining things can prove harder than most would think. I made a whole video trying to define "comics" only to find that there's never been an agreed upon definition. Some even went as far as to say that things aren't comics unless they are mass produced, or at least published on a medium that can easily be mass produced. Imagine if music had a similar rule about it.

Aphex twin did it first

Two of my favorite channels that I never would have expected a collab between. Awesomenesssssss

I think lowercase music is like good for an intro or outro in your album, or a interlude not an album on its own

Sick cross over with Philosophy Tube. I love both of these channels. Thanks guys.

yes. it's definitely music. my definition: music is everything anybody defines as such for him/herself. When I'm sufficiently stoned, every single - even the faintest - sound may turn into something musical (per my definition) and gradually transmutes into some slightly more conventional musical piece, mostly modern jazz.

Non-music sound art is my new favourite category of art. I don't mind experimental music not being music as such, but the art is still art.

HAHA!!! SAM IN THE HELLOWEEN SHIRT!! LOVE YOU MAN.

I am always looking forward to those difficult and unsettling nights with Steve Roden.

This video introduced me to Philosophy Tube, and Philosophy Tube changed my life, so thank you both!

really cool that you shed so much light on interesting genres of music

Basically just a bunch of people doing Musique Concrete (which has been around in one form or another for other 50 years) & calling it something else.

My favorite experimental genre! Thanks for tackling this, it's pretty hard to talk about.

Oh Boris and Merzbow. They sure were at their best with Sun Baked Snow Cave. It's just too good.

I heard an interview with John Cage on NPR at one point, and he said that 4:33 isn't actually about silence - it's about sounds that we didn't know we were listening to: He took a peculiar opportunity (before "composing" 4:33) to sit inside a scientist-created "sound vacuum" (I don't remember the actual name of the space), that boasted absolute silence. When he came out he told the scientist that he was hearing two sounds while within, a low frequency and a high one, and the scientist explained that the low was the coursing of John's own blood, and the high was the electrical frequency of his body. It was then John Cage concluded that as long as living creatures are present to be listening, there is no such thing as absolute silence - so 4:33 became his commentary on this, an absence of Musical Performance to make way for what I'm guessing he'd say is the absence of Silence, rather than the absence of Music or Sound. People shifting uncomfortably, rustling programs, stifled coughs - these became the improvised "music" of John Cage's 4:33. And this is all quite interesting, but it still doesn't make 4:33 into music. :) Because the absence of silence still isn't necessarily "organized." And I've thought about this A LOT since I heard that interview, and I think John Cage is a revolutionary, but I think this project misfired in that you can't make an audience be the performer unless you prepare them for it (something out of which Bobby McFerrin has successfully made an entire non-verbal performance pedagogy revolution). On the other hand, in his elements of a play, Aristotle described (in some translations) anything "heard" on stage as Music. On the other other hand, theatre is a rehearsed, paced, organized production. Thanks for the brain-bend. f:o

You guys are great! Thanks for making this!

It's so weird seeing Abigal before transitin now. It just feels wrong.

Yes! Two of my favorite youtubers, together at last!

so glad to hear lowercase explained in such plain terms, i've been curious for a while but could never quite wrap my mind around it

i love your channel bro, keep up the good work!!

This is actually really relaxing to listen to and would make good study ambience.

Found this nightmare fuel music of a slowed down Alvin and The Chipmunks record: soundcloud.com/alvin-thechipmunkson16sp/call-me Big DOA fan, btw, love your background

I love how you used one of the most obscure and unknown tracks from Skrillex.

I've been on youtube for almost 8 years, that's by far the most entertaining and informative channel I encounter. (Let alone that most of the videos you post here are about music, which is the place I come from actually :) ) I am a musician and I teach music at school. You'll be amazed when I tell you that where I come from it's almost non-existant where people would actually dig deep into musical philisophies and look into challenge themselves with these questions. That being said, I managed to teach a whole series of music lessons for 6 through 8 graders on "concrete music". Which in my opinion could be quite possibility to look through when one should define what music is. That, and I'm also a huge Norwegian black metal fan!!!

Great video, thanks for all the hard work. btw nice shirt man \m/

Nice Helloween shirt dude! :)

I propose that music is "purposed sound." Any sonic experience utilized or purposed, intentionally or unintentionally.

I am actually surprised to see someone taking his time to share obscure musical styles such as the hilariously dubbed "lowercase". Props to that. I consider myself open to sounds, they're literally all around us, and sometimes hearing these subtle compositions in the background remind me of how subjective and blurry the boundary between "noise" and "music" is. Noise experimentation isn't a new thing, however, it dates back to the Futurists of the past century (Luigi Russolo and the Art of Noises), then carried on by people like Pierre Schaeffer and all the mid-century avant-garde, followed by the Berlin school developments in the '60s/70s. I think it's about being open to possibilities and embrace the sounds for what they are. One has to experiment or we'd reach stagnation. Whether you like it or not, it's really just a matter of taste in the end.

the boris and merzbow album totally RIPS my inner soul into shards what recombine after their ANOTHER collab album, sun baked snow cave, what destroys my ears and makes me nauseous but still is calling my body to get closer and make it louder to the point of tinnitus. i love it.

I've listened to quite a bit of this type of music without realising it had a name. One of my favourite albums that I think qualifies is Four Rooms. An album recorded in Chernobyl by recording the dead ambient noises of abandoned buildings, then with a speaker projecting the recorded sounds, then again re-recording the resonance before projecting the noise again. This process looping to compose a song.

Two of my favorite people doing a collab!! YESSZ

As a Design major and fine arts minor in college I got really into philosophy in art. I even took a course on this subject. Art/Music is a very hard subject to come to any conclusions on but it does have a wealth of discussion topics. Loved the guest philosopher segment!

Hell yeah, so happy listened to my suggestion for an episode. If you guys are interested, check out the japanese scene for lower case, Onkyo-key. Empty samples and no-ins mixers.

awesome shirt! love the keeper of the seven keys pt 1 & 2!

This form of music sounds like the old classic industrial music of the late 70's or early 80's. You can even push it back to the experimental tape music that was being made around the middle of the 20th century. I've always disagreed with that definition of music that Kania came up with. I have a much broader sense of what music is. I believe that music is more subjective to the listener. It's everything heard. Every sound together. It doesn't have to be organized. One person can consider birds in a forest as music. Others, a rock concert. It's entirely subjective. Some people can sit and listen to traffic or the sounds of a city as if it's an album. So music itself just might need a broad definition rather than the confining one that Kania was placing on it. Music means different things to different people. Every person considers a different thing to be "Music".

Now i'm into lowercase music. Thank you both.

FINALLY AN ACTUAL COLLABORATION ON THE THIS EXISTS CHANNEL!

The quote that nails it for me is from John Cage: "The music never stops; only the listening." Music (or any kind of art) is not such because of the way that it is made, but because of the kind of attention we bring to it.

Love the Keeper of the Seven Keys Shirt! :D

Nice helloween shirt!

Hey, I'm subscribed to both of you! :D

Just a quick note, the "musical features" that Kania talks about are most likely referring to the 5 elements of music (melody, harmony, rhythm, form, instrumentation). These 5 elements are pretty much the cornerstone for any sort of musical analysis. Using these 5 elements in conjunction with Kania's definition, lowercase music exists in a gray area; one could argue that it does contain faint vestiges of (albeit unconventional) harmony and rhythm, and its instrumentation could be classified as some sub-category of electronic sounds. It's kind of up to the listener to decide for themselves whether or not it's music, which is kind of what a lot of more experimental classical composers (such as John Cage) are going for; to challenge their audience to think more deeply about music. There are tons of classical compositions that forego form and melody just like lowercase music does, but have slightly more conventional rhythm, harmony and instrumentation, which makes them much more listenable

Awesome Helloween shirt dude!

Actually that 8 breaths of different lenghts from Steve Roden is pretty good.

My mind can't handle this ow my head

Lowercase is like the asmr of experimental music Wall-noise is the ear rape of experimental music (but honestly it works for clearing your brain, and or travelling to another dimension

Props for the very ironic given the context t-shirt, very cool guy!

As an ethnomusicologist with a background in mathematics, I can tell you "music is organized sound" is a misconception. First, the organized part, easiest to hit at. It's easy to say that there is no actual randomization, there are patterns within everything, therefor, everything aural can be considered music. Second part, with regards to even John Cage's 4'33, even silence can be considered music, as it gives way for the ambient sounds, or the unwritten notes as they're called, to be heard. The shuffle of feet, an audience member coughing, all these can be heard in any performance, but they are more ad libbed than anything, never planned. It's reminiscent of life, and how no matter how structured we attempt to make things, the unaccountable happens on its own.

I have a very broad definition of art (basically something created with artistic intention and/or created to be pleasing to one of the senses), so music to me is pretty much 'sound art'. Lowercase music is the sound version of those pieces of artwork that are just colored squares, or a tiny sprinkle of paint and scribbles on a giant canvas. It pushes the boundaries of what people normally consider to be art, yes, but is nevertheless still weirdly pleasing when you step back and enjoy it for what it is. A quote I heard a while back that may be relevant to this discussion: Art is the way we decorate space, music is the way we decorate time.

Oh shit I didn't know Abigail did a Collab with this exists.

So glad to see about Steve Roden here! One of my very fav artists and I love this "genre" of course!!! I hope that more people will appreciate artists like him! Also, a video about Iannis Xenakis or musique concrete fits to your channel!

Nice shirt man. Played a show with them once. That was pretty fun.

FINALLY! Thank You for This

after watching your video on scientology's music, everywhere i go i have an add for it

A lot of Roden's music sounds like the kinda stuff Endermen would listen to honestly

I love this show partly because of the enthusiasm and also because I've never heard of the majority of topics. Which I suppose is precisely the point. Nice shirt by the way.

this sounds awesome. I'll have to research more of this

wow thanks for this one. thhat steve roden sounded pretty interesting i definetely have to check him out

I love how he goes on a tangent saying this type of music is completely unique, and then directly relates it to EDM.

Hell yes! Helloween! My man!

This is one of those art forms that I'll likely never listen to, let alone be a fan of, but I am very glad they exist.

HELLOWEEN?! - Man... that REALLY took me off guard!!

Interesting video, thank you! Just one thing: Steve Roden did coin the term "lowercase", but Forms of Paper wasn't the first piece of lowercase music recorded - Bernhard Günter's Un Peu de Neige Salie, released in 1993, is usually considered the first. (Not surprisingly, the people in charge of pressing the CD thought the master tape Günter had handed them was defective because all they could hear were very faint pops and clicks.) "Amplified ambient sounds" could also describe some field recordings albums (yes, "field recordings" are also considered a music genre by some listeners)… Depending on how broad your definition is, lowercase music can use any kind of very quiet sounds, recorded, played or electronic. And silence. If you're interested, Wired wrote a good article about lowercase back in 2002 when the genre started gaining some attention, it was called "Whisper the Sounds of Silence". The sound samples no longer work but you can still read it.

I've made some of that before. didn't know what it was except for experimental, but now I'm glad I can throw it into a category

Music is a collection of sonic vibrations that attracts a listener to them. Just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is music. I think that all of nature is music. When I go out and hear the busy streets and feel the calm at the eye of the storm, when I'm stuck inside on a rainy day and the prattle of the falling water cleanses my soul of all worry, when the coffee machine is warming up and makes a smooth purr to remind me that life isn't about sweating the small stuff, and I can handle what's coming my way. People listen to music with the intention of suiting their emotional state with sonic vibrations that organize it, turning it into a stable moment they can go back to at any moment if they want to. lowercase music is about emphasizing the music amongst the mundane, capturing those precious little moments that we as humans just naturally feel emotion for. It's kind of like minimalist photography for sound.

The owl album is the feeling you get when you play Steve Roden at a party.

THANK YOU SO MUCH! Now I have new genre to sample for my beats. :D

All of that music sounded like perfect tracks to a horror game.

FYI, what is described in 1:43-3:00 is what is called _musique concrète_, and was one of the largest conceptual leaps man has ever made in music: any sample-based music owes its very existence to this concept.

aweful definitions, 4.33 is music and so is poetry. music is art that's perceived with our ears. art is the tricky thing to define.

I like it. Seems very suited to be ambient background noise in games and things of that nature.

You should put a link to where you get all your rad shirts in the description.

YES! I LOVE THAT HELLOWEEN SHIRT!

Olly with my favorite poem FTW!! "If Hope has flown away, in a night or in a day, in a vision or in none, is it therefore the less gone?" That being said, yeah, it's music...

MISTER SAM What about an episode on Pixação, a brazillian subgenre of Grafitti that artists climb 20+ story buildings by the outside, break in and literally risk their lives to leave their marks? Shit is preety intense and has a very decent audiovisual production by the own pixadores. And can be a nice toutch to the series "stuff that kills you" - Music that kills, movies that kill, videogames that kill, killer artists and now art that LITERALLY KILLS

I was taught that music is simply "sound organised in time". This eliminates the poetry problem, and removes both 4'33" (as there is no sound), and lowercase music (as most aren't organised in time by the sound of it) as music, while retaining what most people think of as "music".

I've been thinking of checking this scene out, but I'm wondering...does it HAVE to be difficult? Amplifying quiet sounds seems like it could produce really pleasant stuff.

It seems that lower case music does organize sound in some way, and the intention is for listening (unless missed something). Even John cage in his book 'Silence' talks about how there is no silence and 4:33 is supposed to show that there is sound to listen too, the uncontrolled sound of the hall in which it is preformed, so 4:33 even organizes sound in some way, it's just not directly controlled, similar to his 'Cheap Imitation' which is also music that happens by chance, and that, I think, would easily be considered music, so while it seems like a stretch to call 4:33 or lower case music 'music' it contains elements that we consider music in other forms of music. If you want to reference a philosopher to back this up look at Wittgenstein's family resemblance in terms of definitions. That a word such as 'music' doesn't point to one quality contained in all music, but a set of qualities that appear in what we call music. The same way a family will share facial features, or mannerisms without there being one single trait that is common to them all.

So glad you dropped the boris x merzbow klatter collab

helloween!!! \m/ and yeah the new slayer is seriously good

Okay, I've learned of lowercase letters but this is something new

so it's a lot like ASMR?

I knew that I shouldn't have come to you to calm myself down!