 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2005-08-30 21:10
Here's an interesting short piece from the New York Times about amusia (a/k/a tone deafness). About 4% of people have brains that do not respond to small pitch variations. However, their brains overreact to large variations.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/health/30head.html
The rest of us can become clarinetists. ![[cool]](http://test.woodwind.org/clarinet/BBoard/smileys/cool.gif)
Ken Shaw
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: joannew
Date: 2005-08-31 07:31
Attachment: interval tastes.gif (29k)
Another interesting neurological condition is synaesthesia - the overlap between different sensory inputs. For example, there are people who "taste" shapes or "hear" colours.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v434/n7029/abs/434038a_fs.html
This article is about someone who tastes musical intervals - see the attached figure for flavours of the different intervals.
http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v3/n1/abs/nrn702_fs.html
Here's an outline of an article for anyone interested in the neuroscience behind synaesthesia.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Morrigan
Date: 2005-08-31 13:50
Nice to see someone else knows about synaesthesia! I'm doing my honours thesis on it next year. Wish me luck!
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: BobD
Date: 2005-08-31 14:57
"I no longer care if you play Buffet or Leblanc. But do yourself a favor and get an Apple computer!"
Would be interested in your reasons via direct email.
Bob Draznik
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: archer1960
Date: 2005-08-31 15:13
Morrigan said:
"Nice to see someone else knows about synaesthesia! I'm doing my honours thesis on it next year. Wish me luck!"
Scientific American had an interesting article about it several months ago; I knew nothing about it except the word until I read that.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2005-08-31 18:14
Neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote a fascinating book about synaesthesia, _The Man Who Tasted Shapes_. Shadow Cat says clarinets sound like...oops, I don't think we're allowed to use that word on a family bulleting board....
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: joannew
Date: 2005-09-01 06:59
Great topic for a thesis!
Some people think that many kids are born with synaesthesia, but are socialized to 'unlearn' it. I had a friend who encouraged it in her daughter, who would read the colour auras around people and know how they were feeling. And a friend who associates colours with days of the week, and gets fantastic visuals from listening to classical music!
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Morrigan
Date: 2005-09-01 08:17
Yeah just from asking around, I find that most people associate words or letters or numbers with colours, as well as days of the week - and many see weeks/months as a calendar in their mind they can control, move around, zoom in on, and add and change appointments!
In my thesis, I'll be focussing on my opinion that everyone experiences synaesthesia to different degrees and in different forms, and how musicians can unlock it and use it as a tool to practice more efficiently and perform better.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Don Poulsen
Date: 2005-09-01 15:51
All the music I play tastes like...reed. (If it starts tasting like anything else, it's a sign that I need to sanitize something.)
When thinking about dates, I visualize a large circular calendar with December at the top and the months going clockwise. I don't know if it has anything to do with synaesthesia, as my thoughts are primarily visual and not in the form of words or sentences. (Einstein thought visually as well.)
Almost all of us have visual associations with music. We associate high (frequency) notes with high positions on a staff, for instance. I would guess that some associate high and low with left and right (or vice versa) from association with a keyboard or the neck of a stringed instrument.
And take into account that we often talk about "dark", "bright", "centered", "focused", and "fuzzy" tones--visual associations that are not obviously based on a direct physical association--and we all pretty much understand what these terms mean without having had them explained to us. Our brains automatically see analogies. (In rereading this, I just realized that in writing about the brain "seeing" analogies, I've created another visualization of an invisible process.)
And, for these common occurances, I believe the brain's inate tendency to create analogies is behind this. I have no idea if this is the basis for synaesthesia, but I could see synaesthesia as being an extreme form of analogy formation between the senses.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2005-09-01 19:30
Don -
You're obviously a highly visual person. You "see a problem." You don't "feel there's something wrong," "hear a clash, "smell a rat" or describe poor tuning as "sour."
By contrast, I think first of sound. I recognize composers because the particular music makes the Prokofiev or Mozart or Monteverdi "noise."
There's also a kinaesthetic element. I can pretty reliably distinguish Haydn and Mozart (when I tune in the radio in the middle of something) by their different phrase shapes and idiosyncratic gestures.
Sight and sound are the usual prime senses, but there's a fine article called "Can You Taste It?" about improving tone quality.
Each of us has a particular balance and priority of senses.
Ken Shaw
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
