Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup mills-tuning-list TUNING digest 780

There has been some recent discussion of non-octaval scales and the
perception of such on the List by McLaren, Morrison, etc. Some time
ago Paul Erlich sent me an unpublished paper with a reference to rats'
perceiving the octave (Blackwell, H. and H. Schlosberg. 1943. "Octave
Generalization, Pitch Discrimination and Loudness Threshold in the White
Rat." J. Experimental Psychology 33: 407.)

I have been exchanging email with James Murray, a cognitive
neurobiologist
at UCSD who has done studies of hearing in animals. He was kind enough
to do a quick & dirty literature search for recent papers on octave
generalization. The most relevant of the half dozen or so are those
below (the others mainly refer to starlings and dolphins, which are,
perhaps, not the primary audience for xenharmonic music):

" Sergeant, Desmond. "The octave: Percept or concept." Psychology of
Music, 1983, v11 (n1):3-18.

"Abstract: Investigated octave generalization in 90 4-9 yr olds by means
of responses to matching tasks based on judgments of similarity. In E
PI, 54 Subjects, presented with 5 tone bars differing in pitch within an
octave range, were asked to match a 6th bar to 1 of the 5 bars. Results
indicate a significant tendency for tonal similarity to be judged as
proximity of pitch. In Exp II, the probability of judgment on the basis
of pitch proximity was reduced by providing an array in which the 5
tones were clustered together in pitch. In Exp III, 36 Subjects were
asked to arrange 2 sets of 5 tone bars each so that the arrays were
similar. Although a few Subjects completed the task, no significant
ability
to solve this octave transportation task was found. It is concluded that
a concept of "octaveness" is developed experientially and is not of
perceptual origin.

"D'Amato, M. R.; Salmon, David P. "Tune discrimination in monkeys
(Cebus apella) and in rats." Animal Learning & Behavior, 1982 May,
10(n2):126-134.

"Abstract: Six 10-18 yr old monkeys and 8 female albino rats were trained
on an operant discrimination employing structured auditory stimuli (tunes).
Rats acquired the tune discrimination very rapidly and considerably faster
than monkeys. Both species generalized the discrimination across
intensity
and octave transformations. Discriminative performance remained at a high
level when only the 1st halves of the tunes were presented, but
substantially less generalization occurred to the 2nd halves. Rats
trained
with tones (broken or steady) required 3-4 times more training to reach
criterion than did the rats trained wth tunes. The potential of
structured auditory stimuli for investigations of information-processing
mechanisms
is pointed out. "

While the experimental designs, criteria, and stimuli were undoubtedly
very different, it appears that female rodents perceive octaves more
readily than apes and human children. The evolutionary and aesthetic
implications of these findings are somewhat unclear to me.

Anyway, does anyone know of any extant musical culture which does not
recognize octave equivalence (including stretched or shrunk octaves)?
The only counter-examples I can think of might be Eastern Orthodox chant,
which is sometimes based on chains of tetrachords or divided fifths.
Some Russian chant may be based on chains of divided thirds, but, of course,
the octave may still appear among the intervals and choruses may still
double in octaves. Some Andean panpipes seem to be tuned to an additive
scale, yet the pipes themselves overblow in octaves rather than twelfths
due to their deliberate and unusual construction. Does anyone have more
specific (especially contradictory) information? (Enrique?)

--John

TUNING digest 780

🔗tuning@eartha.mills.edu (by way of Steve Curtin <curtin@...>)

🔗John Chalmers <non12@...>