Klarinet Archive - Posting 000469.txt from 2004/06

From: ormondtoby@-----.net (Ormondtoby Montoya)
Subj: Re: [kl] "Tunes create context like language"
Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 17:19:33 -0400

There's a lot of 'gray area' here, but thinking about this a bit more:

It can be argued that we respond more to the intervals between musical
notes than we do to the notes' frequencies themselves; and to some
extent we respond more to contrasts between the timbres than we do to
the timbres themselves. Perhaps we can also make a similar comment
about note duration, articulation, loudness, etc since one note doesn't
create a meter, tempo, rhythm, phrase shape, etc all by itself.

Language may be different in the sense that we *do* respond as much (or
sometimes more, because sometimes we respond to a 'hot-button' word
despite what the remainder of the sentence says) to the specific
'content' of each word than to the... connections?... between words.
That is, saying a single word carries some meaning. Try saying the
word "sex" all by itself, whereas playing a single "C" all by itself
usually doesn't communicate much, except perhaps to announce that you're
in the area.

....anyway, I wonder what the result would be if a similar statistical
analysis were done with the *intervals* in the aforementioned
compositions (rather than the frequency of use for each pitch itself)?

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