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"What visual sign says 'music'? Notes remain the most typical answer – particularly, it seems, beamed eighth or quarter notes (see the iTunes icon); the solitary eighth note with its jaunty flag; and the clef. The disc shape has had a pretty good run, and you still see instances involving headphones (Napster’s logo, for instance). Maybe representations of speakers and guitars would make the list, too. But if you want to suggest music in the digital era, how about the waveform?"
—Well? How about it?
Can't it just be the smiling faces of the members of LMFAO? That's all music is nowadays anyway.
Considering I had to click through to the link to see exactly what was meant by waveform, the answer is "No."
Even if that just proves I'm an idiot, as the author points out, the waveform, unlike a musical note, can represent any sound, from a voice to a fart (okay, so those examples weren't used). "Music" isn't the first thing that jumps to mind.
@KenWheaton It's even less specific than that, since it only represents amplitude (volume) and not pitch or timbre or anything else meaningful. Seeing it helps in making samples and loops, that's about it. I guess you could try and argue that that's all modern music is, but I disagree.
@KenWheaton – It's like suggesting the use of a DNA strand to represent "human."
I was into waveforms before they were cool. Now that they've gone mainstream, I'm more into spectrograms.
Sure, why the hell not?
A 3-D chart with time as x axis, amplitude as y axis and colored frequencies for the z axis might be a little overkill.