[gregorio]

I agree whole-heartedly with Uncle Erik's post, however I don't think Mike's posts were directly related to this issue. As I see it and maybe I'm wrong, Mike is devoting his life to music composition. The fact that composers have been developing a large range and number of compositional tools for over 600 years, which are perceived by a huge number of people, Mike seems to interpret this as some sort of objective truth or reality. Based on that reality, Mike appears to believe that a sound system exists only to recreate musical illusions and that as all music is based on this shared perception of reality that therefore perception can be the only method of evaluation of a sound system. It seems obvious to me that Mike started this thread in response to a thread which was locked a couple of days ago by the system administrator, which dealt specifically with sound system evaluation. Mike's view, in my opinion, is flawed for a number of reasons. I question the limited scope of Mike's objective reality of music, I believe it is not a reality but a shared perception (a shared set of illusions) and I disagree that the purpose of a sound system is to actively participate in the perception process, even though in effect it often passively participates because of the inevitable distortion can affect perception.

For me Mike's premise that because the pitch of a note can be independently verified by others and is therefore an objective truth does not hold water. Millions of people can independently verify that time is constant but that doesn't make it an objective truth, it just makes it a truth about the human perception of time. It is a matter of life and death that we understand the reality of the fact that time is not a constant.

I think that Mike is so entrenched in his reality of music and so confident in his training in composition that he feels he has some insight which we are all missing or unable to understand. A far as Mike is concerned we are trapped in a narrow and simplistic scientific definition of sound waves and upon realising that he is "unable to get through to us" he has left the thread. From my point of view (and I think many others on this thread), I see the scientific understanding of sound waves as an explanation of audio reality which allows us to understand and appreciate that music is not a reality but a perception. This is not to belittle music, I have dedicated most of my adult life to music but simply to put music and audio perception into a wider context. It is a little bit like the difference between the idea that the Earth is the centre around which the sun and the stars revolve as opposed to the idea that the Earth is just a tiny part of the universe but which has particular significance to me because I am an Earthling. This thread has ground to a halt because Mike see's us as the one's with the Earth centric view whereas I see Mike as the one trapped in the Earth centric view of the universe.

I'm perfectly willing to accept that I may be entirely wrong in my understanding of Mike's position and motivation for these discussions. It's been an interesting thread for me nonetheless.

G

 

[mike1127]

 
Quote:

Gregorio wrote: "I'm perfectly willing to accept that I may be entirely wrong in my understanding of Mike's position and motivation for these discussions. "

 
Okay, I think I can participate if I keep my replies short. I'm also going to focus just on Gregorio's points.
 
 
Quote:

I agree whole-heartedly with Uncle Erik's post, however I don't think Mike's posts were directly related to this issue.

 
Thank you, at least one person acknowledges this.
 
Gregorio, the problem is that we don't have much of a shared language, and you have misinterpreted much of what I wrote in the past. And, I have written things that weren't phrased so well, Yet, you are hanging onto every single misinterpretation and clumsy phrasing on my part. You are responding to this grand aggregate of every single thing I wrote and every single interpretation no matter how much I have tried to correct it. Can you agree that we start from a blank slate?
 
for instance you wrote "I disagree that the purpose of a sound system is to actively participate in the perception process" I never said that, and that was based on a combination of a somewhat clumsy phrasing on my part and a misinterpretation on your part. And I have tried to clarify this, but you are still hanging onto it.
 
 
Quote:

though in effect it often passively participates because of the inevitable distortion can affect perception.

That's what I meant. See, we agree! Amazing! I have written several times but you never responded to it. For instance I wrote, "To the extent is distorts the sound it affects perception." You interpreted me as saying that every distortion, no matter how small, affects perception. That implication was only a clumsy phrasing on my part. I meant exactly what you wrote above. Yet, you wrote a paragraph attemtping to correct this mistaken meaning that you projected onto my sentence, while never mentioning the sense in which we completely agree.
 
I also think you are failing to distinguish between (1) simple ideas and (2) where those ideas might lead. The way I use the word "objective" it has nothing to do with tuning systems, world culture, or anything else. It's a very simple concept. I think I am using the word correctly based on my scientific training. I think your concern is where it might lead me astray if I were to take the concept further in a particular direction.
 
Do you understand this distinction? It's useless to proceed further if we cannot agree to a blank slate, and if you don't agree to keep this distinction in mind.
 
EDIT: the word "objective" specifically means not having to do with a perception. It is not necessary for anyone to form a perception in order to verify what keys are pressed on a piano. Either ask the person who played them, or if you don't trust them to remember, put some electrical contacts on the keys.
 
EDIT EDIT: On the other thread, I was just being provocative, as well as getting in the "insulting direction" because I was reacting to people insulting me. But, please leave aside the idea I'm a crusader. I'm pretty open-minded, actually. For one thing, I'm perfectly willing to accept that cables do nothing. I'm not sure how willing I am to accept your worldview, but I certainly accept that your worldview may be the only practical way to approach sound engineering. My ideas may be theoretical and not actually useful in the real world. I don't really think so, but I'm open to finding this out someday.

 

[gregorio]

for instance you wrote "I disagree that the purpose of a sound system is to actively participate in the perception process" I never said that, and that was based on a combination of a somewhat clumsy phrasing on my part and a misinterpretation on your part.

EDIT: the word "objective" specifically means not having to do with a perception. It is not necessary for anyone to form a perception in order to verify what keys are pressed on a piano. Either ask the person who played them, or if you don't trust them to remember, put some electrical contacts on the keys.
 
EDIT EDIT: On the other thread, I was just being provocative, as well as getting in the "insulting direction" because I was reacting to people insulting me. But, please leave aside the idea I'm a crusader. I'm pretty open-minded, actually. For one thing, I'm perfectly willing to accept that cables do nothing. I'm not sure how willing I am to accept your worldview, but I certainly accept that your worldview may be the only practical way to approach sound engineering. My ideas may be theoretical and not actually useful in the real world. I don't really think so, but I'm open to finding this out someday.

On the vast majority of points, in light of what you have said, I think we can agree. Although, for example, you have said a number of times words to the effect that a sound system's role is to assist in creating a perception. Assistance is active participation. So it doesn't appear to be entirely a case of simple misinterpretation.

Also, I'm still a little troubled by your use of the word "objective" when it comes to the perception of the pitch of notes, chords and music in general. Let me quote a couple of sentences I've just quoted in another related thread, taken from a scientific paper (linked to in the related thread):

"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."

What you have described as an "objective fact" which anyone trained in musical dictation can verify, this scientific paper describes as "a subjective or psychological quality" which "involves a widespread projective illusion".

G

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

On the vast majority of points, in light of what you have said, I think we can agree. I'm still a little troubled by your use of the word "objective" when it comes to the perception of the pitch of notes, chords and music in general. Let me quote a couple of sentences I've just quoted in another related thread, taken from a scientific paper (linked to in the related thread):

"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."

What you have described as an "objective fact" which anyone trained in musical dictation can verify, this scientific paper describes as "a subjective or psychological quality" which "involves a widespread projective illusion".

G
 

I'm not using the word "objective" to refer to the perception! Not at all! Not even close. I'm using it to refer to which keys on a piano are pressed. This is an objective fact that can verified by multiple independent observers. Can we agree on this point?

Notice how the paper says pitch is correlated with frequency. This is an important observation related to many of my ideas. What is your understanding of this idea? Can we try to come to some common understanding of what the word "correlated" means?
 
Can you also please write something about this disticintion: "simple ideas" and "where ideas lead". Can we come to some agreement on this distinction?
 

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

On the vast majority of points, in light of what you have said, I think we can agree. Although, for example, you have said a number of times words to the effect that a sound system's role is to assist in creating a perception. Assistance is active participation. So it doesn't appear to be entirely a case of simple misinterpretation.

 

 
No, it's not all a case of misinterpretation. However, the words "active" and "passive" have different implications than "assist." Saying "assist" is saying neither active nor passive. They are distinct concepts. I think "active" and "passive" are a little strange to apply to an audio system. It's always active. But I think perhaps we can clarify. I suspect that by "active" you mean that an audio system in some way "understands" or directly relates to musical concepts-- that somehow music understanding/interpretation is built in. And by "passive" you mean that the system's behavior is not linked to musical concepts, or that musical concepts are not helpful in characterizing the behavior of the system.
 

 

[gregorio]

I'm not using the word "objective" to refer to the perception! Not at all! Not even close. I'm using it to refer to which keys on a piano are pressed. This is an objective fact that can verified by multiple independent observers. Can we agree on this point?

Yes, but I don't see the relevance. You are talking about people visually confirming a visual event. Someone presses a key on a piano and other's watch them press that key, yes we can agree that is objective. If you are talking about someone pressing a key on a piano and others verifying which key was pressed just using sound (not seeing which key was pressed) then no, we cannot agree. Because pitch is a perception and therefore subjective. The ability of others to verify the key pressed would be based on their musical training, their shared perception and additionally of course, conditional on the tuning of the piano.

Notice how the paper says pitch is correlated with frequency. This is an important observation related to many of my ideas. What is your understanding of this idea? Can we try to come to some common understanding of what the word "correlated" means?
 
Can you also please write something about this disticintion: "simple ideas" and "where ideas lead". Can we come to some agreement on this distinction?

Let me quote the paper again with regards to pitch as it provides a description with which I agree, particularly the last sentence.

"In the case of pitch, psychoacoustics experiments show that pitch does not map straightforwardly onto frequency. Though each unique pitch corresponds to a unique frequency (or small frequency range), the relations among pitches do not match those among frequencies. In particular, equivalent pitch intervals do not correspond to equal frequency intervals. For example, the effect upon perceived pitch of a 100 hertz change in frequency varies dramatically across the frequency range. It is dramatic at low frequency and barely detectable at high frequency. Similarly, doubling frequency does not make for equivalent pitch intervals. A 1000 hertz tone must be tripled in frequency to produce the same increase in pitch as that produced by quadrupling the frequency of a 2000 hertz tone. Apparent pitch is a complex function of frequency; it is neither linear nor logarithmic (see, e.g., Hartmann 1997, ch 12, Gelfand 2004, ch 12, Zwicker and Fastl 2006, ch 5)."

Bare in mind though that a musical pitch is a much simpler construct than a note played on an instrument. With this caveat in mind, I take "correlated" to mean no more than obscurely related.

I agree with the clarification of "active" and "passive" in the last sentence of your last post.

G

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gregorio /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
Yes, but I don't see the relevance. You are talking about people visually confirming a visual event. Someone presses a key on a piano and other's watch them press that key, yes we can agree that is objective. If you are talking about someone pressing a key on a piano and others verifying which key was pressed just using sound (not seeing which key was pressed) then no, we cannot agree. Because pitch is a perception and therefore subjective. The ability of others to verify the key pressed would be based on their musical training, their shared perception and additionally of course, conditional on the tuning of the piano.

 
So person A plays notes on the piano, person B listens and through listening alone writes down those notes, and person C watches person A and then verifies what person B wrote.
 
You seem to have a grand sense of the word objective-- that no conditions are involved, that it applies to anyone anywhere, etc. That is not the meaning of objective. Objective simply means that it's data that exists outside of anyone's perception, it exists in the "real world" where it can be observed and verified by multiple people.
 
(another edit: I think you may not like my gravity example because I just realized the key idea for you is the fact that a subjecctive impression is involved-- nevertheless read the gravity example below and see what you think)
-----
There are instruments that measure gravity to a high degree of precision. Say we set up one of these instruments at a specific location and measure gravity. That measurement is objective data.
 
Now, you could point out that gravity is slightly different everywhere and then say the measurement isn't objective because it doesn't apply everywhere, at all times. That's what I see you doing.
 
But that's not correct. The word "objective" can exist in a context. Having a context doesn't make objective data into subjective data.
---
 
 
Person B has made an objective determination about the world through perception alone. of course this is inside a context-- person B's training, the tuning of the piano, etc. That doesn't turn objective data into subjective data. Not everyone could make that assessment through sound alone. of course.. but that doesn't make it a subjective determination. "Objective" has no implication that every single person on earth can confirm the data.
 
EDIT: I need to clarify something. Person B has perceived something. We agree that the "input" so to speak, to their mental process, is a perception. But they translate this perception into an objective statement of fact.
 
This is no different than looking at a stop light and naming the color. You perceive the color. Then you name it. The perception is subjective, the name is objective. And if you are right, then you have succeeded in making an objective determination of the world via your perception.
 
I don't know if you have this belief that perception can never be used to make an objective determination, but if you do, I think that idea is not correct at all. Any scientist would say it's not correct.
 
 
Quote:

Bare in mind though that a musical pitch is a much simpler construct than a note played on an instrument. With this caveat in mind, I take "correlated" to mean no more than obscurely related.

 
What I take to mean "correlated" is that perceived pitch is a function of the sound. Of course we need to clarify this. It is a function of (1) the sound and (2) the way the brain processes it.
 
In science, to say something is "correlated" has no implication that the correlation is a simple function. It could be a very complex function. It could be something that's extremely hard to determine. That doesn't make it uncorrelated.
 
To further amplify the idea of "correlated" to sound-- if perception of pitch were purely correlated to sound, then the following things would not affect perception of pitch:
 

1. If you are inside a dance club
2. What side of the bed you got out of
3. If you are in a bad mood
4. If you are under pressure to give the correct answer on a test

 
 
If it's purely correlated then it is a function of only the sound (and of course the brain's processing).
 
Now, of course different brains have different training. that doesn't make it uncorrelated. To say it is "purely correlated" means that the specific person's brain we are talking about derives the perception of the pitch only from the sound.
 
Now the truth is that no perception is purely correlated to our senses. Some odd non-sonic things affect perception.
 
However, if the context is the following (1) a highly trained musician (2) a piano tuned to a known temperament (3) the specific task is to perceive pitch (the task is NOT to determine the difference between two cables)... then the musician's perception of pitch is probably 99% correlated to sound. A trained musician is not going to get thrown by their mood. Perceived pitch is not more than 1% correlated to mood in this context.
 
 
EDIT: another statement-- you have said that I don't know much about music and sound. I agree you have more experience than me (from what I can tell) and that everything you write in useful in practice. However, I think I have more experience than you in thinking precisely about concepts-- I have math and science training, and an interest in philosophy. You may think my statements about music and sound are muddled-- and maybe so-- but I think your use of language is imprecise and muddled.
 
It would be cool, I think, if we could bridge this gap somehow. Not that it matters to how we each do our work, but it would still be neat.
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

[gregorio]

EDIT: I need to clarify something. Person B has perceived something. We agree that the "input" so to speak, to their mental process, is a perception. But they translate this perception into an objective statement of fact.
 
This is no different than looking at a stop light and naming the color. You perceive the color. Then you name it. The perception is subjective, the name is objective. And if you are right, then you have succeeded in making an objective determination of the world via your perception.
 
I don't know if you have this belief that perception can never be used to make an objective determination, but if you do, I think that idea is not correct at all. Any scientist would say it's not correct.

OK, this is starting to get complex! I would say your analogy of the stop light is not accurate. I do believe you can make an objective determination of the world via your perception. But in the case of a musical note, I would say that it's not possible to make an objective determination of a perception of a shared imaginary construct. This is different to the stop light analogy because a red colour wavelength does exist in reality, whereas a musical note does not. In other words, one can make an objective statement of fact about a perception of a reality but one can only make a subjective determination about an imaginary construct ("a subjective or psychological quality"). Let me give you an analogy in return: Let us say you make a determination that the Sistine Chapel Ceiling is beautiful, you could get a lot of other people to verify this determination but it can never be an objective determination because beauty is an imaginary construct, by definition it can only ever be a subjective determination. This would still be true even if you could invent a computer program to measure beauty.

To an extent Mike we are going round in circles. You still seem to me to be trapped within the same blind assumption as you started with; that music is a reality (like red light), rather than a highly structured but nevertheless abstract imaginary construct (or to use the Paper's scientific vocabulary "a widespread projective illusion"). If you can accept that music and musical notes are abstract imaginary constructs (albeit shared) then I believe you will re-evaluate the points you are trying make in just about all of your previous posts. If you can't, we are doomed to going round in circles until one of us gets too bored to continue.

G

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

OK, this is starting to get complex! I would say your analogy of the stop light is not accurate. I do believe you can make an objective determination of the world via your perception. But in the case of a musical note, I would say that it's not possible to make an objective determination of a perception of a shared imaginary construct. This is different to the stop light analogy because a red colour wavelength does exist in reality, whereas a musical note does not. In other words, one can make an objective statement of fact about a perception of a reality but one can only make a subjective determination about an imaginary construct ("a subjective or psychological quality"). Let me give you an analogy in return: Let us say you make a determination that the Sistine Chapel Ceiling is beautiful, you could get a lot of other people to verify this determination but it can never be an objective determination because beauty is an imaginary construct, by definition it can only ever be a subjective determination. This would still be true even if you could invent a computer program to measure beauty.

To an extent Mike we are going round in circles. You still seem to me to be trapped within the same blind assumption as you started with; that music is a reality (like red light), rather than a highly structured but nevertheless abstract imaginary construct (or to use the Paper's scientific vocabulary "a widespread projective illusion"). If you can accept that music and musical notes are abstract imaginary constructs (albeit shared) then I believe you will re-evaluate the points you are trying make in just about all of your previous posts. If you can't, we are doomed to going round in circles until one of us gets too bored to continue.

G

Okay, let's just focus on the highlighted point above. As best I can tell what you mean by it, I don't disagree with it. But it's hard for me to tell what you mean by it because your language is so different than mine. Let's be honest-- I don't know how you are using those words. But I bet we can clarify.
 
Let's start with something simple.
 
Say I look at a shelf and see two books. I perceive two books. I say out loud there are two books.  Other people look and agree.
 
Then we step over to the books and pick them up. As we pick them up, we get confirmation there are two books. In our hands are two separate masses, each of which has integrity in itself, and the two are not connected. We can drop the two books separately and hear two clunks. So we get multi-sensory confirmation of this statement: "there are two books"
 
Furthermore, we can bring instruments over. We can photograph the books, then write a fairly simple program that looks for rectangular objects. And it finds two of them.
 
Note that we perceive it as rectangular, and when we use the mathematical definition of rectangular we get a match!  A match between our perception and our objective ways of analyzing the world!
 
We can also weigh the books and note their weights sum to the total.
 
So in multiple sensory and analytical ways we can confirm there are two books. And nearly every sighted person in the world thinks there are two books.
 
now...
 
I play an interval of two notes on the piano. We have a roomful of classically-trained musicians (in the Western common-practice tradition) and they all agree there are two notes, and they agree on the size of the interval.
 
First problem is that we bring in someone from another musical tradition and they disagree in some way. Maybe they call the interval something else. Maybe they think it's only one note, or three notes.
 
And the next problem which I think is most key here, is that we bring out our instrumentation. We do a spectrum analysis on the sound, and we say, "Okay, huh, so we heard two notes, so let's look for two peaks in the spectrum. And since we heard them as a perfect fifth apart, let's look for peaks that are exactly (2 ^ 7/12) ratio apart."
 
And that's when we hit a wall.  We don't see two clear peaks (especially if we generate our interval with other combinations of instruments). We don't find any simple correlation to the interval size. It's not quite logarithmic, but not quite linear. And it is context-dependent.
 
Okay, does THIS have anything to do with your point?
 
Note that it doesn't change my point at all. You only think that because you don't understand my point. But perhaps we can get one step closer.

 
 
 

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

Let us say you make a determination that the Sistine Chapel Ceiling is beautiful, you could get a lot of other people to verify this determination but it can never be an objective determination because beauty is an imaginary construct, by definition it can only ever be a subjective determination. This would still be true even if you could invent a computer program to measure beauty.

 

 
I have an issue with calling beauty an "imaginary" construct. I think it would be more accurate to say it is "subjective."
 
The word "imaginary" has implications that it is uncorrelated with our senses.
 
If I take a bunch of LSD, then see a beautiful angel hovering over me and comment on how beautiful it is, I would call that "imaginary" because it's not coming from my senses. It is a construct of my brain that is not correlated with real-world objects and stimuli.
 
However, my perception of the Sistine Chapel ceiling begins with real, physical paint, with real, physical qualities, and real, physical light entering my eyes. From there, my brain takes over and constructs an internal perception.
 
Now, if someone altered the Sistine chapel ceiling in a significant way, it would alter my perception of it. That's one way of getting at the concept of "correlated." Because my perception is something that begins with real sensory input from the real world, then when you alter something in the real world, it may alter my perception. I.e. my perception is correlated to the objective world.
 
Oh, another example of imaginary: if someone tells me they have a great new cable, and they let me listen to it, and they wait for me to comment on how amazing it is, and then they tell me they changed nothing at all, then my perception of the change in the sound is imaginary.
 
However, everyone on this thread should carefully note that there is a difference between making a perception of one situation, and comparing two situations. Comparing cables is the latter. That is not what Gregorio and I are talking about. We are talking about how people construct a perception in a single situation.
 

 

[JadeEast]

I don't have the time at the moment to get into all the comments I'd like to make about this thread and topic. One thing that I do want to mention is that there is a concept called "inter-subjectivity". If we consider first person perspective (subjective) as the I, and the third person (objective) as the it, we still need the second person (intersubjective) as the we. 
 
 

 

[mike1127]

Quote:

I don't have the time at the moment to get into all the comments I'd like to make about this thread and topic. One thing that I do want to mention is that there is a concept called "inter-subjectivity". If we consider first person perspective (subjective) as the I, and the third person (objective) as the it, we still need the second person (intersubjective) as the we. 
 
 

I think we're still mainly trying to clarify what Gregorio means by the terms "real," "imaginary", "subjective," and "objective." My points are actually very simple, and I think it is a disagreement over definitions of words that is causing all the trouble.
 
 

 

[gregorio]

I play an interval of two notes on the piano. We have a roomful of classically-trained musicians (in the Western common-practice tradition) and they all agree there are two notes, and they agree on the size of the interval.

First problem is that we bring in someone from another musical tradition and they disagree in some way. Maybe they call the interval something else. Maybe they think it's only one note, or three notes.

And the next problem which I think is most key here, is that we bring out our instrumentation. We do a spectrum analysis on the sound, and we say, "Okay, huh, so we heard two notes, so let's look for two peaks in the spectrum. And since we heard them as a perfect fifth apart, let's look for peaks that are exactly (2 ^ 7/12) ratio apart."And that's when we hit a wall.  We don't see two clear peaks (especially if we generate our interval with other combinations of instruments). We don't find any simple correlation to the interval size. It's not quite logarithmic, but not quite linear. And it is context-dependent.
 
Okay, does THIS have anything to do with your point?

Yes, this does have a lot to do with my point but it is still a gross over simplification of the situation, because our spectrum analysis will reveal a whole lot more about the two notes than just just two pitches. If we take just a single note on the piano we see not a single pitch (frequency) but a whole range of frequencies spread almost throughout the full spectrum of human hearing. We see a fundamental plus maybe 15 or more harmonics, each one of which is of a different amplitude. To complicate matters further, we can see that each time we hit the same piano key with a variable amount of force the pitches (harmonics) which comprise our note change, we have a different number of harmonics and the amplitudes of those harmonics relative to the fundamental and to each other has also changed. If that is not enough, all of these frequencies (the fundamental and the harmonics) are not fixed but are constantly changing from millisecond to millisecond, throughout the duration of the note as the rate of decay of each of the harmonics is variable. So dramatic are these changes in frequency content and relative balance that in audio engineering we are forced to separate the life-span of this single note into different sections; Attack, sustain, decay, etc In fact there are so many variables in each single piano note that it is a virtual impossibility to ever produce two identical notes. So far we have talked only in terms of the same piano note. If we change the key we hit on the piano, say a tone higher we do not get the same frequency spectra as the previous note just shifted by a tone, we get slightly different harmonics and amplitudes of harmonics. Even though there are all these dramatic changes occurring throughout the life of even a very short piano note, due to the mechanical nature of note production on a piano there are fewer variations and variables than with most other instruments. A violin for example can have additionally have vibrato, sul ponticello, sforzando, etc,, etc., etc. Our brain constructs a perception of a simple single note with maybe some emotional content but the reality is that this single note is a highly complex, constantly evolving waveform. Now add to this chords, chord progressions, different instruments playing simultaneously with different articulations and relative balances in a concert venue with all sorts of reflections and absorptions. It's a true wonder that our brains are able to take this hugely complex abstract sonic chaos and not only construct a coherent perception but give it contextual meaning and attribute qualities and emotions to it.

When we look at say the Mona Lisa what we are actually seeing is a jumble of reflected light wavelengths which our brains interpret into a perception. But at this point the similarity with music ends because our perception of the Mona Lisa is based on an analogy of patterns of light wavelengths which exist in the real world. People's faces with some sort of landscape in the background is a reality of the natural world but the sound of a piano is not, nothing in nature sounds remotely like a piano and the sound of a piano did not exist until Christoforo invented it. We can take this example even further in the fact that a modern piano sounds quite different from the instrument which Christoforo invented but we would still recognise both as a piano. The same is true of chord progressions, equal temperament, cadences, key modulations, musical structure, implied harmonies and pretty much the whole of music in general. There is no analogy in nature to an orchestra or a jazz band, to a sonata or a rock ballad, they are completely abstract inventions with virtually no analogy or point of reference other than our own abstract human imagination. The fact that a completely abstract chaos of sound waves has been developed over many centuries into such a sophisticated structure of shared perception is for me one of the greatest marvels of human achievement.

G

 

[mike1127]

 
 
Quote:

Yes, this does have a lot to do with my point but it is still a gross over simplification of the situation, because our spectrum analysis will reveal a whole lot more about the two notes than just just two pitches.

Okay, we are getting somewhere. By the way, you seem very quick to attribute ignorance to me, when you see something you disagree with. When I said "we look for two peaks" I was merely trying to give a certain flavor to the situation-- that is, we perceive X, so we get the idea to try to measure X as something very simply correlated with the perception. Of course it is an oversimplication-- that was actually my point.
 
Now, thank you for going into such detail. Although I have seem realtime spectrum analysis of piano notes before, I didn't pay that much attention and didn't remember all the detail you have provided us with.
 
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.
 
Another thing I think we should acknowledge--
 
We hear two pitches, right?
 
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.
 

 

[upstateguy]

 
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.