[gregorio]

Now you have called the perception of two pitches "imaginary". I would like to clarify. To me imaginary means I'm hallucinating. I think we need to acknowledge that our perception of two pitches is correlated to the real-world sound. You have also used the word "abstract" which I think is more accurate-- an abstraction refers to a concept that lumps together a lot of detail/variation into a single concept.

We are getting into semantics here. The perception of the two pitches is abstractly correlated to two of the frequencies but we don't hear two pitches, we hear two piano notes. From the maybe 30 or more (I'm plucking a figure off the top of my head, there maybe considerably more) different frequencies created by the vibrating strings in the piano, our brain has selected two to perceive as the pitch of our notes and then has used the remaining frequencies to create the timbre of the notes.

If we listen to a sine wave at 440Hz we hear a pure pitch which we could call an A, if we play that same sine wave but surrounded by other sine waves of the correct amplitudes and frequencies we could now perceive that same sine wave as part of the timbre of one of the lower surrounding sine waves, say the one at 220Hz. In other words, that identical 440Hz sine wave could be used as part of the brain's construction of a completely unrelated piano note. The reality is, nothing about that original 440Hz sine wave has changed, what has changed is our perception of it, an aural illusion if you will. Now, do we say the note is abstract, because some constituent part of it is abstractly related to parts of the resultant frequency spectrum or do we say it is imaginary because the entire construct which we call a "note" doesn't exist in reality, only in an illusory perception?

Don't forget, I've simplified here, the reality is that the brain has not constructed these piano notes directly from the sound waves created by the strings inside the piano but from their reflections from the piano lid and the acoustic environment. A piano in an anechoic chamber without a lid sounds very strange indeed and many would not recognise it.

Another thing I think we should acknowledge--
 
We hear two pitches, right?
 

A member of a western audience or a western trained musician would, but others may not. A highly trained mastering engineer would probably be able to focus into some of the more prominent individual harmonics and also be able to identify other constituents of the sound such as reflections, etc.

Well the sound may be very complex, but think about what's happening in the physical world-- we struck two keys on the piano, and two sets of strings (each set being nearly identically tuned) are vibrating.
 
So our perception is correlated with the real world in that sense.We hear two things, and two keys were struck.
 
So when our brains "make sense" of that complex wash of sound, they come up with a perception that has elements which exactly matches the real world.

That is because we have manipulated the real world to fit our perception. The piano isn't an item which existed and then one day someone decided to use it as a musical instrument, it was designed from scratch as a musical instrument. The fact is, when we hit a piano key a number of strings will vibrate, both those actually hit by the hammers and those producing sympathetic vibrations. Having separate keys for all the strings which vibrate would make a piano virtually impossible to play, so the piano's mechanism has been designed for one key = one note.

G

 

[mike1127]

Well, I think Gregorio and I will never agree on the language we use, so I'll just make this my last post.
 
The last fundamental claim I made was that a trained musician can take harmonic dictation, and by ear alone, make an objective determination of the state of the world (that is, which keys were pressed). The problem with your responses, Gregorio, is that they have nothing to do with this point.
 
I'm not sure you understand what the concept of "correlated" means--I have asked many questions re this which you have never answered. I'm not sure you know what the word "abstract" means.
 
 
Quote:

gregorio
Quote:

mike1127 We hear two pitches, right?

 
 
A member of a western audience or a western trained musician would, but others may not. A highly trained mastering engineer would probably be able to focus into some of the more prominent individual harmonics and also be able to identify other constituents of the sound such as reflections, etc.

This has nothing to do with the fact that some musicians can make a correct objective determination. It is not necessary for all people in the world to be able to do it, or that they agree. All that matters is that in one context (one listener, one tuning system, etc), it can be done. Easily so, and also any musician from another culture could be trained to do so.
 
 
 
Quote:

 
gregorio
 
Quote:

mike1127
So our perception is correlated with the real world in that sense.We hear two things, and two keys were struck.
 

That is because we have manipulated the real world to fit our perception.

 
Here's where I think you are not acknowledging some basic facts about how the ear/brain evolved. It is remarkable what we can do, but most of that comes from what evolution gave us. Evolution gave us the ability to unite harmonics and infer a fundamental. Evolution gave us the ability to listen and focus on one person speaking against a very noisy background. If you put N people speaking in a room, almost anyone could tell whether N was 1, 2, or 3. Since we were probably singing very early in our evolutionary history, evolution gave us the ability to distinguish stable pitches and intervals. Piano strings are resonators.. and the world is filled with resonators from our earliest evolutionary time (most noticeably the voice box). We easily parse the world into resonators.
 
I could probably construct a musical instrument out of garbage I find at a dump, and the average trained musician could quickly learn to tell whether 1, 2, or 3 elements are vibrating.
 
So we didn't have to "manipulate" the world to fit our perception in the sense you apparently mean-- our perception is designed to parse the world in the way it works naturally. What we did manipulate is that instruments make a subjectively beautiful sound, but that's an entirely different issue.
 

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

 
It seems that the entire thread boils down to mike's intentional misuse of the word “objective”.
 
What he is doing is attempting to blur the distinction between "objective" and "subjective".
 
This is a problem in the Sound Science forum where "objective" and "subjective" have very precise meanings.
 
I doubt there would be any debate if mike were to replace the word “objective” with something else.
 
 
 
 

My "objective" I mean something from the physical world that can be verified by multiple independent observers, as contrasted with subjective which relates to an individual's perception and cannot be observed by anyone other than that individual.
 
What do you mean by it?
 

 
 
 

 

[upstateguy]

 
Quote:

My "objective" I mean something from the physical world that can be verified by multiple independent observers, as contrasted with subjective which relates to an individual's perception and cannot be observed by anyone other than that individual.
 
What do you mean by it?

By your definition if a few people (multiple independent observers) listened to a silver cable and all of them claimed it sounded brighter than a copper cable (verified), it would be considered an "objective" determination.  That is just not the case. 
 
OTOH, if a few people (multiple independent observers) measured the various parameters of the cable in question with an o-scope and all of them got the same results (verified), that would be an "objective" determination.
 

---

 
No offense but reading though your posts is like reading through a series of Logical Fallacies.
 
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/  or  http://www.logicalfallacies.info/  or  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fallacies  or  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy
 
Here is an example of a logical fallacy in which a conclusion is inferred by improper or ambiguous use of words.
 
The last fundamental claim I made was that a trained musician can take harmonic dictation, and by ear alone, make an objective determination of the state of the world (that is, which keys were pressed).
 
Leaving out the improper use of the word "objective" and the ambiguous phrase "make an objective determination of the state of the world ". (state of the world?????)
 
You might say, a trained musician can take harmonic dictation, and by ear alone, determine which keys were pressed.
 
Further, the "perception" that a musician taking dictation is using, is an "individual's perception".  It is something that is unique to him, because no one else can hear through his ears or analyze what his ears have detected with his brain.  Although he may be able to transcribe correctly, he is doing it subjectively by ear rather than objectively by measurement.
 

---

 
You may take issue with my examples, but the fallacies are there and your definition of objective and subjective are incorrect.
 
In Sound Science, "Objective" is verified measurement by scientific instrument.  "Subjective" is your opinion.
 
 

 

[gregorio]

My "objective" I mean something from the physical world that can be verified by multiple independent observers, as contrasted with subjective which relates to an individual's perception and cannot be observed by anyone other than that individual.
 
What do you mean by it?

So by your definition, the human illusion of the constant passage of time is objective, as is the perception that the stars revolve around the earth?

Using semantics (and as upstateguy has said, logical fallacy) you are trying to fit the facts to your understanding of reality, rather than the other way around. Your example of the piano, a musician hitting a single piano key being correlated to an observer hearing a single note is irrelevant. What about a musician hitting a single key (on a synth) and an entire piece of music with 500 notes is produced, have we now totally defeated the ability of musical dictation?

You say that it is possible to determine pitch because the brain "abstractly correlates" the fundamental of the note with it's frequency and therefore the note is a reality rather than an imaginary construct. OK, how about if we take your piano note and remove the fundamental frequency, what pitch of note would the trained musician hear now, the first harmonic maybe? No, the musician (or audience) will perceive exactly the same pitch! The brain will favour it's artificial construct (the note) and invent the fundamental. So how does this leave your description, should we say that pitch is now "abstractly correlated" to a frequency which does not even exist?

If you really are studying composition you must have come across counterpoint and implied harmonies? Where is the analogy in reality to a plagal or perfect cadence, the cornerstones of western tonal music? You must know that the romantic and impressionist eras of music were based almost entirely upon the manipulation of expectation of harmonic resolution? There are virtually countless other examples, because all of music is an illusion or a series of illusions and, if you don't agree with this then I cannot believe your claim that you are studying composition. Are notes and music abstractly related to real physical events, yes of course but that doesn't make them real or non-imaginary. Your example of an imaginary angel can also be abstractly correlated to reality, an angel has the body of a human and wings (like a bird) both of which are real (and indeed the existence of angels has been perceived by multiple observers). You can't have it both ways Mike! As far as I can see, your definition of imaginary means that we can never describe anything as imaginary because everything that we can imagine has some element correlating (albeit abstractly) to something which is real.

Whether we have evolved the ability to construct the illusion of notes and music, whether we have consciously invented the ability or whether it's a combination of both is irrelevant from the point of view of the fact that it is an illusion.

We are back to where we started. Again, I don't understand your motivation for your arguments. If you really are studying composition, it is inconceivable that you would not understand that music is an illusion (and constructed from illusion), in which case your motivation can only be trolling (and argument). If however you really are completely ignorant and are trying to gain knowledge, then enough knowledge has been provided to enable you to re-evaluate your position.

G

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

As far as I can see, your definition of imaginary means that we can never describe anything as imaginary because everything that we can imagine has some element correlating (albeit abstractly) to something which is real.
 

You use of the word "correlate" here has nothing to do with the phrase "certain experiences are correlated to our senses." I don't think we're going to get anywhere because you are playing fast-and-loose with terms like "correlate" and "imagination" and "illusion." The phrase "albeit abstractly" makes it seem like you don't know what the word "abstract" means. We probably agree on a lot more than it seems like but you keep finding the one thing you want to misconstrue.
 
I can't believe you are fighting me on the distinction between a hallucinated angel and a painting of an angel.
 

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

 

By your definition if a few people (multiple independent observers) listened to a silver cable and all of them claimed it sounded brighter than a copper cable (verified), it would be considered an "objective" determination.  That is just not the case. 

Leaving out the improper use of the word "objective" and the ambiguous phrase "make an objective determination of the state of the world ". (state of the world?????)
 
You might say, a trained musician can take harmonic dictation, and by ear alone, determine which keys were pressed.
 
Further, the "perception" that a musician taking dictation is using, is an "individual's perception".  It is something that is unique to him, because no one else can hear through his ears or analyze what his ears have detected with his brain.  Although he may be able to transcribe correctly, he is doing it subjectively by ear rather than objectively by measurement.

 

You're not thinking like a scientist. In science the word "observer" would never refer to observing someone else's experience. You can't have multiple independent observers of an experience. And the word "verify" would never apply to a subjective experience. Almost by definition it is something that can't be verified. So no, my definition would not open the door to "proving" cable effects.
 
The phrase "state of the world" comes from physics and information theory.
 
 
 
Quote:

Although he may be able to transcribe correctly, he is doing it subjectively by ear rather than objectively by measurement.

 
The phrase "do it subjectively" is a mess. Any editor would tell you that you need to find something less messy. Maybe you mean he does it by his senses and brain.
 
Quote:

In Sound Science, "Objective" is verified measurement by scientific instrument.  "Subjective" is your opinion.

"Objective" doesn't mean specifically "measurement." There are objective things that can be observed directly in a reliable manner. An example: most people would consider the number of voters who vote for candidate "A" to be an objective fact. Most cities are content to determine this fact by having people use their brains and senses. Tools are sometimes used but only to speed up the process.
 
Instruments are used to extend the senses and brain beyond its limits. Even reading the scientific instrument and reporting the results requires that scientists trust each other's senses and brains enough not to screw it up.
 
Cable effects on hearing are not something that can be observed directly. So don't worry, I'm not trying to bolster support for cables.
 
Talk about sloppy language-- "subjective" in the context I have been using it over and over refers to an experience, not an "opinion," which should be remarkable clear from reading my prior posts.
 
 

 

[mike1127]

 
Quote:

So by your definition, the human illusion of the constant passage of time is objective, as is the perception that the stars revolve around the earth?

No and no. "passage of time" is an experience, not an objectively verifiable fact. You have subtly altered the word "perception" in talking about stars revolving around the earth. You are now talking about a "model," not a direct experience.
 
 
Quote:

Your example of the piano, a musician hitting a single piano key being correlated to an observer hearing a single note is irrelevant. What about a musician hitting a single key (on a synth) and an entire piece of music with 500 notes is produced, have we now totally defeated the ability of musical dictation?

Huh? I cannot figure out what this has to do with anything.
 
 
Sorry for two replies, I just found the time to get more detailed here.
Quote:

You say that it is possible to determine pitch because the brain "abstractly correlates" the fundamental of the note with it's frequency and therefore the note is a reality rather than an imaginary construct. OK, how about if we take your piano note and remove the fundamental frequency, what pitch of note would the trained musician hear now, the first harmonic maybe? No, the musician (or audience) will perceive exactly the same pitch! The brain will favour it's artificial construct (the note) and invent the fundamental. So how does this leave your description, should we say that pitch is now "abstractly correlated" to a frequency which does not even exist?

Don't quote me as saying anything as silly as "abstractly correlates." I have no idea what "abstractly correlates" means. I said that the brain infers a fundamental. We understand perfectly well what physical features of the sound allow the inference of the fundamental.. the spacing of the harmonics. So the perception of the fundamental is still correlated with the physical reality.
 
I think you have the idea that "correlate" means "simply and obviously correlated" or "correlated according to the first naive assumption we might make."
 
 
Quote:

If you really are studying composition you must have come across counterpoint and implied harmonies? Where is the analogy in reality to a plagal or perfect cadence, the cornerstones of western tonal music? You must know that the romantic and impressionist eras of music were based almost entirely upon the manipulation of expectation of harmonic resolution? There are virtually countless other examples, because all of music is an illusion or a series of illusions and, if you don't agree with this then I cannot believe your claim that you are studying composition.

Okay, now you're confusing the act of parsing sound with the act of parsing music. Using your ear to assess the number of people speaking in a room has nothing to do with parsing the patterns within music. You are also sloppy with the word "illusion." Having common harmonic progressions in music and detecting/following/predicting those patterns is not an illusion. It's not perceiving something that isn't there.
 
 
 
Quote:

Your example of an imaginary angel can also be abstractly correlated to reality, an angel has the body of a human and wings (like a bird) both of which are real (and indeed the existence of angels has been perceived by multiple observers).

You have no idea what "correlated" means. Or "abstractly."
 
 
 
 
 

 

[rroseperry]

Hey Mike, you're not the only person trained as a scientist on this forum and there are absolutely areas of research where someone monitoring behaviors (human and animal) are called observers. I don't want to wade into this swamp, but your (wrongly , imo) taking ownership of language used by different scientists, researchers, and technicians is beginning to get on my nerves.

Also objectively is not generally very meaningful if you're talking about unaided perception as both the problems with eyewitnesses and the selective attention video show.

 

[gregorio]

I said that the brain infers a fundamental. We understand perfectly well what physical features of the sound allow the inference of the fundamental.. the spacing of the harmonics. So the perception of the fundamental is still correlated with the physical reality.

Mike, you are still playing the semantics game and at the same time quoting inaccurate facts as some sort of truth. The section I've quoted above is how we teach psychoacoustic pitch perception to 15 year olds. If you are studying composition at university level you need a better understanding than that! Essentially you have quoted Pattern Theory to me, which is a reasonable model but is deeply flawed in that it is incapable of explaining how we can perceive pitch when the sound does not contain resolved harmonics. Furthermore, your use of the word "infer" is incorrect. An inference is a derived logical conclusion based on known premises. While you could argue (I wouldn't) that the pitch of the fundamental could be inferred, you could not infer that the fundamental actually exists when the known premise is that it does not! The existence of a fundamental (when it has been removed) is not inferred, it is an illusion! How can you possibly argue rationally that a perception is reality because it can be correlated with something which does not exist ("the physical reality" of a missing fundamental)? This goes beyond logical fallacy and into the realm of completely nonsensical. Here is a more accurate understanding:

"S. S. Stevens famously argued on the basis of results drawn from psychoacoustic experiments that pitch is not frequency (see, e.g., Stevens et al. 1937, Stevens and Volkmann 1940). In light of similar results, contemporary psychoacoustics researchers commonly reject the identification of pitch with frequency or periodicity. " - Stanford University Encyclopaedia.

No and no. "passage of time" is an experience, not an objectively verifiable fact.

So, you admit that an experience is not an objectively verifiable fact, good, now we are getting somewhere: "The received scientific view thus holds that pitch is a subjective or psychological quality that is no more than correlated with objective frequency (see, e.g., Gelfand 2004, Houtsma 1995). Pitch, on this understanding, belongs only to experiences. The received view of pitch therefore implies an error theory according to which pitch experience involves a widespread projective illusion."

Also, I suggest it is you who have no idea what correlated means. Correlated means just some form of relationship. Just because an experience or an illusion can be correlated with a physical reality does not make it a physical reality itself.

Having common harmonic progressions in music and detecting/following/predicting those patterns is not an illusion. It's not perceiving something that isn't there.

Obviously not for you, because you are blindly trapped in a world where your shared experience is an objective proof of reality. Composers have understood and used the fact that music is an illusion for many centuries. Again, you need to look at counterpoint and implied harmonies, which is entirely based on "perceiving something which isn't there." Harmony in it's entirety is based upon consonance and dissonance, without consonance and dissonance there is no harmony. The definitions of consonance and dissonance not only vary between cultures but have even changed and evolved dramatically within western classical music. Do chords exist? Of course they do, they exist as a shared illusion.

Mike, your counter arguments are based on semantics and logical fallacies, with seemingly no regard for the science of psychoacoustics or the knowledge and art of composition. In a desperate attempt to cling to your misguided understanding of musical reality your arguments are becoming more and more nonsensical.

G

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

Hey Mike, you're not the only person trained as a scientist on this forum and there are absolutely areas of research where someone monitoring behaviors (human and animal) are called observers. I don't want to wade into this swamp, but your (wrongly , imo) taking ownership of language used by different scientists, researchers, and technicians is beginning to get on my nerves.

Also objectively is not generally very meaningful if you're talking about unaided perception as both the problems with eyewitnesses and the selective attention video show.

 
I very clearly said I was talking about subjective experience, not behaviors. Behaviors can be objectively quantified. I don't mean to "take ownership" of language but I think gregorio is attributing the wrong meaning to what I'm saying, so I have to explain what I mean by the words. Please look at the fundamental meaning of what I'm saying, even if you would say it some other way.

The reason I revived this thread is that I recently did an experiment which gregorio might be interested in. I took some samples of piano notes. As he is no doubt aware, piano is not an exactly harmonic sound source. I analyzed the frequency-time-energy space (whatever you would call that) and created an approximation of each piano note which was precisely harmonic. Now, if the inharmonicity of the piano is critical to its recognizable sound, you might think my approximation would not sound like a piano. But it did. It was clearly a piano, especially the attack (the attack may be the most inharmonic part of the piano sound, I'm not sure). When I played back an entire composition from these sampled sounds, it blended like a piano.
 
To address harmony for a moment and whether something is an illusion-- there are several meanings of "illusion" which have to be distinguished, I think.
 
There are illusions uncorrelated to reality, such as LSD hallucinations.
 
There are illusions correlated to reality, such as an optical illusion in which parallel lines don't look parallel. The critical difference is that we understand where the illusion comes from and can predict how it will be perceived. Do we understand it perfectly? Are there situations we don't understand? Of course it's not perfect. But that doesn't make it into an LSD halluncination.
 
Now, regarding harmony and counterpoint, let's take an example. Let's say we have a harmonic passage in a particular key, but the passage never arrives at the tonic chord. Depending on the passage, it might strongly project a sense of the right key and thus the tonic note. Does that mean the tonic note is an "illusion"? Not in either of the senses I described above. The tonic is implied by patterns within the harmony.
 
I call these patterns "objective." This seems to be a sticking point. But It is certainly not right to say these patterns are "subjective" for reasons such as these:
 

1. they are not in the realm of pure experience. They can be seen on paper and people agree what is written on that paper
2. in most cases, the patterns are within established music theories. Look folks, this doesn't mean that music theory provides a universal description of all music, but we have to understand that music theory itself is not wishy-washy and open to any interpretation you like---it's easy to see what patterns it describes.This is not the same thing as saying music is a fixed theory--- please, let's make this distinction.

 
If you don't like the word "objective" call it whatever you like. But it certainly isn't subjective--- the patterns in the harmony that imply the tonal center are not subjective patterns.
 
It's not right to call these patterns an "illusion" either: it's not an LSD illusion and it's not an "optical-illusion-type" experience.
 
Are there extreme outside cases that are hard to explain with theory? Does Bach write some fantastic harmonic progressions that stretch the boundaries yet still imply a key? Of course. That doesn't mean the whole of music is now an "illusion."