That's interesting. Many times I can "hear" in my head songs I've heard.
But I've never thought of "adjusting" the volume, or trying to
transpose it. Although I have sometimes transcribed bits of such songs.
Maybe you're noticing artifacts of your brain's neurological audio
processing?
I'm more visual, when I have to transpose something, I tend to "see" it
rather than "hear" it. Although the use of the Transpose button on my
keyboard is probably ruining that through laziness!
Arvind Venkatasubramanian wrote:
Hi All:
Slightly deviating off the conversation, I am sharing with you all some
interesting stuff that I encountered.
I discovered this while I was walking besides the school of philosophy
after completing my class in in engineering. As I was hearing to the
sounds of leaves and birds, I was approaching my music lab at the Frost
school of music. As I was about to get into my department, I heard a
beautiful melody from a saxophone. I kept chanting the melody for
sometime as I started to work on my computer. With time, I started to
feel the image of the melody subjectively. But I felt that to be too
faint to hear. I wanted it to be a bit louder and tried to turn up the
volume button in me. I noticed that I could not do that. Any attempt
that I made to turning up the level of the music only helped me
transposing the melody up my one or two keys (semitones). Similarly, any
attempt to lower the tone helped only in transposing the melody down by
few keys.
I started experimenting this at home by listening to music on tape. Then
I turned the tape off and "immediately" started to listen to that piece
subjectively. I turned up the volume button. It worked now. The volume
went up in my head without transposing the music to higher keys. Seeing
the contradictions, I tried the same experimented the next morning. This
time, I was not able to have control over the parameters of the music.
The volume did not go up but transposition happened again. Is the
amplitude control mechanism not possible after data storage in memory?
Does the feel of amplitude control experienced only if external matter
is tweaked? That clearly re-defined the problem formulation in me about
the "theory of forms" mentioned in Plato's Cave Allegory/Republic.
These events lead me to think that memory plays a vast, unpredictable
role in connecting independent events of the world and give a meaning to
it. If memory does not work, each phrase in a music is an individual
phrase; each note in a phrase is individual note, each part of sound in
a note is an individual sound; each granular atom in a sound in
individual grain. The necessary connections to these events are
"believed" to be happening in human brain. But the existence of a human
brain is also part of memory. The residence or location of memory is
said to be in human mind. Wherein, the human mind dwells cannot be told
because it comes from living experience.
Regards,
Arvind Venkatasubramanian
Audio DSP Engineer and studio musician
On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 8:55 AM, David Santamauro
<david.santamauro@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:david.santamauro@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
On Fri, 3 Sep 2010 17:56:13 +0530
Rustom Mody <rustompmody@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:rustompmody@xxxxxxxxx>>
wrote:
> There are two voices I hear here vis-a-vis Bach:
> 1. Art for art's sake -- the romantic idea
> 2. Art for money's sake -- the distinction of commercial vs
> commisioned being a fine semantic distinction.
>
> Bach himself expressed a view however which does not fit in with
> either: *
> Anything done other than for the service of God is vanity*
"The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the
glory of God and the refreshment of the soul."
God, unfortunately, doesn't pay for food directly. The refreshment of
the soul alone would have left him starving as well.
Although he was extremely devote and clearly most of his inspiration
was generated by that religious stance, he was not above squabbling for
better pay. The fact that his employer was the church might also had
something to do with that stance as well.
"He regarded himself as a conscientious craftsman doing a job to the
best of his ability for the satisfaction of his superiors, for the
pleasure and edification of his fellowmen, and to the glory of
God." [ Grout & Palisca: A History of Western Music ]
David
--
David
gnome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
authenticity, honesty, community
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