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@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
authenticity, honesty, community
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