> In comp.dsp Jerry Avins<jya@ieee.org> wrote:
>
> (snip)
>> When a group sings "Happy Birthday to You", the members usually have no
>> trouble starting in the same key. That key seems to vary from
>> neighborhood to neighborhood.
>
>> Most people have no difficulty knowing whether a dime or a nickel
>> dropped on a hard surface. That can't be due to relative pitch if only
>> one coin drops.
>
>> I think that (untrained) perfect pitch is more widespread than commonly
>> believed.
>
> Someone did a study on it, with a web site that would play notes
> and collect statistics on how well people did. I don't remember
> the results, but it might not be hard to find.
I have perfect pitch only when I'm stressed or half asleep. It comes and
goes. Semitrained?
Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
Reply by glen herrmannsfeldt●September 2, 20112011-09-02
In comp.dsp Jerry Avins <jya@ieee.org> wrote:
(snip)
> When a group sings "Happy Birthday to You", the members usually have no
> trouble starting in the same key. That key seems to vary from
> neighborhood to neighborhood.
> Most people have no difficulty knowing whether a dime or a nickel
> dropped on a hard surface. That can't be due to relative pitch if only
> one coin drops.
> I think that (untrained) perfect pitch is more widespread than commonly
> believed.
Someone did a study on it, with a web site that would play notes
and collect statistics on how well people did. I don't remember
the results, but it might not be hard to find.
-- glen
Reply by Josip Almasi●September 2, 20112011-09-02
Jerry Avins wrote:
>
> When a group sings "Happy Birthday to You", the members usually have no
> trouble starting in the same key. That key seems to vary from
> neighborhood to neighborhood.
>
> Most people have no difficulty knowing whether a dime or a nickel
> dropped on a hard surface. That can't be due to relative pitch if only
> one coin drops.
>
> I think that (untrained) perfect pitch is more widespread than commonly
> believed.
I don't think so. I think people start with halftones but somehow keep
up with sqrt(2) thing, and relative ratio is more important than point
of reference; for in group performance, it's resonance that matters.
We should distinguish hearing and reproducing sounds though. You might
be right about hearing perfect pitch part. Then again, I wouldn't call
it untrained;)
Regards...
Reply by Curt Welch●September 2, 20112011-09-02
Jerry Avins <jya@ieee.org> wrote:
> On 8/29/2011 5:56 AM, Richard Dobson wrote:
> > On 28/08/2011 22:04, HardySpicer wrote:
> Richard Owlett wrote:
>> RichD wrote:
>>> During this passage, I started wondering, how do the
>>> listeners so easily follow the beat?
>>
>> The short answer is not all do. I speak from personal experience ;)
>> My musically trained friends consider my inaility to follow a
>> beat/rhythm comical.
>
> Right:) Much the same here.
> Which is wierd for I don't have trouble following the rhythm while
> playing, just while dancing.
> Not that I have any motoric deficiency, that would sure show during judo
> and aikido trainings:>
> But guess what - music is produced in speach centers, while dancing is
> performed by motoric centers.
> Turns out people react to beat differently - some display more electric
> activity in frontal lobe while others, majority, show activity in
> motoric centers. Turns out we may be wired for dancers or players:)
> Sadly, I don't remember where I got that from, and now can't find
> references; info welcome.
>
> ...
>> Others have pointed out the importance of the musical tradition of the
>> listener. I'd ask any linguists in the group if there is any
>> correlation of the"rhythm" of the language of an area and its music?
>
> I'm no linguist, but it might be so - brocca area.
>
> "It has also been found that, among music conservatory students, the
> prevalence of absolute pitch is much higher for speakers of tone
> language, even controlling for ethnic background, showing that language
> influences how musical tones are perceived."
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_the_brain
>
> ...
>> A fascinating topic.
>
> Agreed.
>
> Regards...
When a group sings "Happy Birthday to You", the members usually have no
trouble starting in the same key. That key seems to vary from
neighborhood to neighborhood.
Most people have no difficulty knowing whether a dime or a nickel
dropped on a hard surface. That can't be due to relative pitch if only
one coin drops.
I think that (untrained) perfect pitch is more widespread than commonly
believed.
Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
Reply by Jerry Avins●September 2, 20112011-09-02
On 8/30/2011 4:27 PM, boB wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Aug 2011 03:08:00 -0700 (PDT), John Ladasky
> <ladasky@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>> On Aug 29, 2:38 am, Richard Dobson<richarddob...@blueyonder.co.uk>
>> wrote:
>>> "everyone knows where the beat is, so nobody actually needs to play it".
>>
>> Awesome quote! And it takes me back to the days that I took a class
>> in African drumming. The quote is pretty true, though I would say
>> that the downbeat always gets plenty of emphasis.
>
>
>
> How about automatically detecting the beat of say, an acapella group
> or barbershop quartet ??
It depends on the music. With Josquin De Pres, it should be easy.
Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
Reply by Jerry Avins●September 2, 20112011-09-02
On 8/29/2011 5:56 AM, Richard Dobson wrote:
> On 28/08/2011 22:04, HardySpicer wrote:
> ..
>>>
>>> During this passage, I started wondering, how do the listeners so
>>> easily follow the beat? If you're a mathematican, you'd probably
>>> do DFT, and pick out the fundamental. I find it hard to imagine
>>> the brain does this.
> ..
>>
>> they don't always. In fact pianists don't either, not in the
>> mathematical sense anyway. If a pro plays Chopin to a Midi file it
>> will not be perfectly aligned to the bar lines.
>>
>>
> And of course it would be hopelessly wrong if it was. The bar line
> (and indeed the tempo marking, such as it is) is just a heavily
> quantised semantic framework or space in which the player moves. A
> simple analogy would be with the "timing" of an actor or orator. Nothing
> to do with a metronome. And so, again, both genre and culture-specific.
> Some music does need a pretty "tight" pulse, but by no means all of it,
> nor even most of it. And if you are considering the brain, you have to
> consider ~all~ music cultures, not just Western metric idioms.
>
> Brains are very remarkable organs. Music changes them, rewires them, and
> the favour is then returned when the brain reinvents or rewrites the
> music, and the whole cycle iterates for ever. IMO it is the single best
> form of brain training that has ever existed.
A Mazurka is hard to learn precisely because it's beat is consistently
off. Listen to Horowitz: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8PJsjO1u5w.
Jerry
--
Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get.
Reply by steveu●September 1, 20112011-09-01
>"It has also been found that, among music conservatory students, the
>prevalence of absolute pitch is much higher for speakers of tone
>language, even controlling for ethnic background, showing that language
>influences how musical tones are perceived."
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_the_brain
All languages are tonal. In English punctuation is expressed tonally. In,
say, Cantonese tone changes the word, so you explicitly speak punctuation
as words. There are Chinese characters for all the major kinds of
punctuation. In modern Chinese you will also see marks similar to English
punctuation marks, but this is really just breaking up the blocks of text.
So, tone means different things in different languages, but its important
in all the languages I've ever looked at.
Steve
Reply by Josip Almasi●September 1, 20112011-09-01
Richard Owlett wrote:
> RichD wrote:
>> During this passage, I started wondering, how do the
>> listeners so easily follow the beat?
>
> The short answer is not all do. I speak from personal experience ;)
> My musically trained friends consider my inaility to follow a
> beat/rhythm comical.
Right:) Much the same here.
Which is wierd for I don't have trouble following the rhythm while
playing, just while dancing.
Not that I have any motoric deficiency, that would sure show during judo
and aikido trainings:>
But guess what - music is produced in speach centers, while dancing is
performed by motoric centers.
Turns out people react to beat differently - some display more electric
activity in frontal lobe while others, majority, show activity in
motoric centers. Turns out we may be wired for dancers or players:)
Sadly, I don't remember where I got that from, and now can't find
references; info welcome.
...
> Others have pointed out the importance of the musical tradition of the
> listener. I'd ask any linguists in the group if there is any correlation
> of the"rhythm" of the language of an area and its music?
I'm no linguist, but it might be so - brocca area.
"It has also been found that, among music conservatory students, the
prevalence of absolute pitch is much higher for speakers of tone
language, even controlling for ethnic background, showing that language
influences how musical tones are perceived."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_the_brain
...
> A fascinating topic.
Agreed.
Regards...
Reply by steveu●September 1, 20112011-09-01
>RichD wrote:
>...
>> During this passage, I started wondering, how do the
>> listeners so easily follow the beat? If you're a
>> mathematican, you'd probably do DFT, and pick out
>> the fundamental. I find it hard to imagine the brain
>> does this.
>
>Exactly.
>
>> Is there any theory regarding what's happening, at the
>> neural level? How does the ear filter the beat?
>
>It's probably closer to good old analogue electronics than new shiney
>digital one.
>So, I'd start, say, here:
>A low-pass filter is a filter that passes low-frequency signals but
>attenuates (reduces the amplitude of) signals with frequencies higher
>than the cutoff frequency.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-pass_filter
>Then, check passive filter - one resistor and one condenser:
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-pass_filter#Passive_electronic_realization
>We hardly need any neuron for this, it may be realized in neural
>microcircuits (1).
>Start with one filter like this, to get drumm and bass frequencies. Then
>attach another other one to cut off anything but a few beats per second,
>and there's your beat.
>Which gets screwed by first syncopation:>
>
>> It might be hard to separate this specific question
>> from the whole huge puzzle of how the brain
>> processes music.
>
>Probably so. Recoginizing the beat may be the part of the same puzzle.
>I imagine simple passive and/or active frequency filtering is performed
>by neural microcircuits (1) of very same neurons that process music.
>As we all know, there are some extremelly complex rhythms, and ear takes
>quite some training to percieve these as rythms... which reminds me:)
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53rP5gH1YVM
>Once we get bots dancing like this I'd say we got the rhythm allright;)
>Just, I couldn't do that, for I don't get the rythm there - it's way
>over my head.
>
>1) Haykin:
>A neural microcircuit refers to an assembly of synapses organized into
>patterns of connectivity to produce a functional operation of interest.
>A neural microcircuit may be likened to a silicon chip made up of an
>assembly of transistors. The smallest size of microcircuits is measured
>in micrometers, and their fastest speed of operation is measured in
>milliseconds. The neural microcircuits are grouped to form dendritic
>subunits within the dendritic trees of individual neurons.
>
>Regards...
Maybe you should have also looked at the Wikipedia pages on how the human
auditory system works. The ear does spectral analysis by simple resonant
methods, and passes the spectral data to the brain.
Steve