On Fri, February 8, 2013 5:55 am, Stephen Stubbs wrote: I don't know that "art" and "science" are mutually exclusive. The art is in the creation and the science in the analysis.

Communication only works where there is clearly defined meaning to things, often in a cultural context. I have found it interesting to watch how a child reacts to some kinds of music. It is obvious that they are getting a different meaning from the same piece of music than I am. It is the same with writing a book (I remember scientifically analyzing books in school) or painting a picture. The tools used to communicate can be defined with science, but art keeps creating new things to define.

On 13Feb08:0755-0600, Stephen Stubbs wrote: So explain how Western peoples feel sad in minor keys while Middle Eastern peoples do not, just to mention one non-universal emotional reaction.

So explain how Western peoples feel sad in minor keys while Middle Eastern peoples do not, just to mention one non-universal emotional reaction. [Just a conjecture] The western notes are different from the eastern. Speaking in C-major-centric terms, a just-intoned Ab is 8/5, G# is 25/16. This is a difference of more than 1/3 semitone. On an equal-tempered keyboard that note is half-way between ie 800 cents. My conjecture is that the western ear not being familiar with any minor-sixth other than 800 cents hears it as such. The eastern ear auto-corrects it up to the just-intoned 8/5. [As I said, just my conjecture] Rusi

http://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/ specifically: http://www.huygens-fokker.org/docs/scalesdir.txt You will find that there are over 4000 diferent scales there.

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 6:51 AM, Neil <djdualcore(a)gmail.com> wrote: I find 4000 a big put-off. Are there that many scales in use worldwide?? If it were a few hundred one could at least make some headway. My guess is that most of them are some kind of mathematical experiments. The problem as I see it is like this: Mathematically: The number of scales is worse than uncountably infinite (powerset of R). So for mathematical tractability one needs to work with genera, eg - Equal tempered scales (not necessarily only 12 notes) - Well tempered scales (all/notes usable, all subtly different aka Bach's WTC) - Meantones - Justs with various cut-off rules And then criteria for 'badness' http://x31eq.com/badness.pdf for comparing these Musician-ly: This is a pain. I just want better sound than ET. And a few rules of thumb to make sensible choices. Personally I can say that after I got my keyboards with a handful of tunings a new world has opened to me. If only I could have done some of that with timidity/fluidsynth...

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Patrick Shirkey <pshirkey(a)boosthardware.com One of my major uses is to teach a class singing with a score software like nted or musescore. [Or else I am at the piano] My attempts are more than a few years old so my memory is foggy... timidity has some tuning support poorly documented. It has some 3 ways of re-tuning -- pitch-bend, and 2 'batch-modes's -- the details I forget The pitch bend sounded horrible and different on linux and windows. The two 'batch-modes' -- the sysex option (if thats what its called) I could not figure out at all. The 'load-a-scala-file' seemed to work somewhat but I could not figure out some parameters. Fluidsynth I could not make any sense of. My problem is that I was brought up on an (old) steinway. So when a software is built analogically to some hardware that is assumed to be familiar to all, I dont know where to start...

[I am off tomorrow to a camp where I am musician/music teacher. So I may reply after 10 days. Hope thats ok] Rusi -- http://www.the-magus.in http://blog.languager.org

On 02/08/2013 03:55 AM, Stephen Stubbs wrote: In the context of Ancient Greek culture.

On 2/8/2013 1:43 AM, david wrote: So now we have quantitative proof that the Ancient Greeks' views on music were correct. Music is not an art but a science, with well defined laws that enable the musician to induce specific effects and emotions in the listener. Refer to: On Music in Three Books, by Aristides Quintilianus Translation, with Introduction, Commentary, and Annotations by Thomas J Mathiesen 1983, Yale University Press ISBN 0-300-02893-8 'The Other' Stephen Stubbs Champaign, IL USA

On 08. feb. 2013 14:55, Stephen Stubbs wrote: This made me want to recommend Musicophilia - Tales of Music and the Brain - by Oliver Sacks. ISBN 978-0-330-52359-2

And while music certainly can be viewed as 'science' there's no doubt in my mind that it also rightfully can be viewed as 'art' - those two are not mutually exclusive!

On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 06:38:58PM +0100, Alf Haakon Lund wrote: Like chess! The game, not the musical or the record label. :)

On Wed, 20 Feb 2013 09:12:13 +0100, david <gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com> wrote: And it aways was called a "sport" :D. And often it's claimed that all highly gifted people play chess :D. Perhaps done by people who like to play chess and who wish to be artists, wish to be sportsman and wish to be highly gifted ;).

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad with playing chess, but it’s just a game and playing chess doesn’t give super cow powers. Being active does train our creativity, brains and muscles. Questionable if boxing or playing chess, is the more active exertion. There’s also nothing bad with inland water fishing. Also called a sport, but a sport with being less active. The rule is: “You snooze, you lose.” It’s not important what we like to do, it’s important that we do something. Listening to music A isn’t better, than listening to music B. Doing X isn’t better than doing Y. Where do all this claims come from? Some people playing chess are creative others aren’t, it has less to do with playing chess. -----Original Message----- From: linux-audio-user-bounces(a)lists.linuxaudio.org on behalf of Alf Haakon Lund Sent: Wed 2/20/2013 21:02 To: linux-audio-user(a)lists.linuxaudio.org Subject: Re: [LAU] The Psychology of Music On 20. feb. 2013 12:14, Ralf Mardorf wrote: Since I love playing chess I should probably feel insulted, but as the description kinda suits me, well, who am I to complain?

Le 20-02-2013 19:57, Ralf Mardorf a écrit : There are internal and external energies. Cultivating both is probably the best. Holding stances for a long period of time is another form of training for the body. That's not the case with inland fishing, though. ;-) Cardiovascular and muscular training benefits also from internal energy training. The problem with the philosophy of 'doing something' is that any internal energy training can be considering as doing nothing. Then there's no balance between internal and external. It's all go-go-go on the outside. Robert Fripp, for one, did experiments with effects of sound on people. Some frequencies will trigger body and mind responses. At a certain level, yes, the music that is listened-to can have an influence on the person and then it matters. At the taste level it's something else, but at the physical level it can vry well be that certain frequencies and certain rythms actually have an effect. Yes, same with music. I still do not know how to qualify this. I all kinds of music as long as there's *something* in it. I think that something has to do with the creative spirit. Or something. I find some music boring and other music not boring. Some people also go by the masses. If it's popular, then it's good. Some people will not listen to music that is unknown, or too foreign. In these cases, the mind, the psychology, plays a role in 'appreciation' of music. Although when the role is so heavy, I'm not sure if 'appreciation' is the right word at all ;-) 'Furniture' could be more suitable. Some people have music as a furniture in their life ;-)

On 20. feb. 2013 09:12, david wrote: I'd rather say the programmers behind those chess-playing programs are artists, after all "code is poetry" ...