Klarinet Archive - Posting 000656.txt from 2001/01

From: Bilwright@-----.net (William Wright)
Subj: Re: [kl]metaphor, measurement (was re-facing and metaphors)
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2001 01:45:42 -0500

<><> Ann=A0H=A0Satterfield wrote:

Graphing (spectral analysis) tone quality would be like quantifying a
caress--
you could measure some of the qualities-- of duration , pressure, area,
etc. But would you know anything that would help you communicate and
interact when you touch someone you love? Timbre is that complex, that
subtle, that infinitely variable.

Complexity.... okay, music and acts of physical love *do* share
something in common. Each of them involves knowledge and predictions
about the other person's responses and thought process and previous
history and so forth. Given the variation among human beings, complete
measurement or description of such an interaction is beyond today's
technology. Therefore I agree with you in this sense.

But.... the point I was trying to make is that a simpler and purely
physical measurement of the _output_ (either the sound wave or the
physical motion of the caress) may not be impractical, and it would be
quite useful.
I don't want to get too graphic here, but evaluating a caress (in
the sense that you have described) requires knowing what the other
person enjoys and what response your caress will elicit from the other
person and how much you yourself enjoy providing a caress and each
person's mood at the moment and what happened last night and so forth.

What I am talking about (when I tal;k about measuring
tonalcharacter) is simply to measure and describe the output. As I
suggested to Jay, it's only when we bring value judgements and
interactions between people, such as "pleasure" and "good" and "desire"
and "beauty", into the discussion that the idea of measurement becomes
too complex to think about realistically.

Jay commented that we don't need numbers in order to say: "Raise
your tongue and I think you'll agree that your tone sounds better."
This is true; but I believe that being able to add, "...because
raising your tongue will increase the <whatever variable>" would make
the statement more understandable and more instructive and more useful
for drawing further conclusions.

....oh well, since describing tone with numbers is not going to
happen any time soon, it's all just speculation.

Cheers,
Bill

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