[LAU] Re: That must suck. For me it's about beauty -- musicisjustone path

[david]

Chuckk Hubbard wrote:

> You said:
>> It seems likely that you don't like these sounds because of their
>> psychoacoustic association. To put it bluntly if every morning you were
>> being prematurely woken up by a beautiful bird song of a bird who 
>> lives on a
>> tree next to your window, I am pretty sure that you would eventually 
>> learn
>> to dislike that sound as much as you currently dislike the sound of your
>> alarm clock.  All sounds we are aware of are simply a combination of sine
>> tones perceptible by our ears. Therefore, the only difference between a
>> sound of an ocean and a steam engine is ultimately their "recipe." If you
>> consider all sounds on this, much more equal plane, then it becomes 
>> rather
>> apparent that all sounds have beauty that simply needs to be uncovered
>> regardless of their source.
> 
> This is the part I don't buy: that people decide what sounds are
> worthy based on association.  The sound of a "beautiful bird song"
> will never have the disruptive effect that an alarm clock or a
> jackhammer outside the window have.

I think, though, that there is some input from the sheer basic physics 
of vibrations. For example, the traditional American police siren vs the 
common French one. The American siren gets my attention more from sheer 
volume. The French one gets it because it is jumping between two notes 
separated by a disharmonious interval. Of course, continuity effects 
this, too - replace the jump with a smooth glide up or down, I think it 
would be less jarring. In fact, it would be replaced by a ramp of 
continuous, small intervals. Our experience of audio in general, and 
music in particular, is very much tied to time. Reminds of me of the 
ending of Keith Emerson's synthesizer solo in Emerson, Lake & Palmer's 
Karn Evil 9, third movement. He plays a fairly short melody on the Moog, 
which he then feeds into a time base divider (could be wrong about the 
precise equipment, just know that it was very expensive and unusual at 
the time) that begins looping the melody. Each loop through the melody, 
it speeds the tempo up while cutting the duration of each note, without 
altering the pitch. It starts very slow but keeps speeding up until the 
phrases in the melody are starting to be perceived as single, almost 
fuzzy sounds. The simple change in time radically changes how the music 
is perceived.

I think the ear itself has reactions to clashing vibrations, reactions 
that come through to us (perhaps unconsciously) and color our 
perceptions of the sound. If it's unconsciously perceived, then it may 
be similarly altered by what we've learned of our culture. When I took 
cultural anthropology many years ago, it was defined as "unconscious 
behavior learned from others." Or something like that.

-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community