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Re: Color vs Quality, Timbre and Texture

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2018-11-20 22:09

Windy Dreamer wrote:

> This reminds of a world class theologian that lectured at a
> seminary I attended in California in 1978. In week one of two
> he spent over 50 hours defining 40 common words that were the
> foundation of his theological world. He began by asserting that
> vocabulary is in a constant evolutionary state.

Words, when they're used in very disciplined settings, need to be defined for use in the specific setting to avoid this kind of problem. My experience in the experimental side of my education background was that each author took pains before presenting his hypotheses, research results and conclusions to define the terms he would be using. The definitions were generally narrow and made what he or she meant by using them very clear.

For example, one obvious set of examples from Skinner's approach to behavioral psychology are the terms positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment. Skinner's (and others') use of those terms were not what many people outside the science of psychology mean by their use. You so often see "punishment" and "negative reinforcement" used interchangeably as though they were synonymous. But in classic behaviorist terminology they are very different. Even experienced educators sometimes try to make their approach to dealing with discipline sound more science-based by calling things "negative reinforcement" that are clearly punishments. The two classically tend to have different results.

Another pair of specifically musical terms I have found from day-to-day experience seem not to have universal meaning, so that a theory writer really needs to define them when he writes about meter, are "duple" or "triple" meter. Is 6/8 a duple or triple meter? What about 3/4?

Karl

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