Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Temperaments as Descriptors of Tunings, Part I

Okay. I am starting this over, and I am going to try to rephrase my point without using value-loaded words that will throw off Mike and Cameron, because I know you guys do actually agree with me, and when you finally get what I'm driving at, you might even think it's trivial.

In our field, we distinguish between a "tuning" and a "temperament". A tuning is a finite set of discrete pitches; a temperament is a homomorphism between some tuning and JI. We are free to apply any temperament to any tuning, and we will not be logically or mathematically inconsistent. More generally, a temperament can be thought of as describing how JI is represented in a tuning. If we say "this tuning is a tuning of this temperament", we are saying "JI is represented in this tuning as described by this temperament". Saying a tuning is one temperament does not necessarily preculde it being another temperament as well, any more than describing me as "male" precludes describing me as "29 years old". So far so good, I hope?

Now, if we say that JI is represented in some way in a tuning, what are we saying? For a representation to be successful, it must trigger a perceived recognition of resemblance between the representation and that which is represented. For example: if you tell me a drawing represents a table, and I agree with you, it is because I know what a table "looks like", and I perceive a resemblance between the drawing and a table--I *recognize* the table in the drawing. If you tell me a drawing represents William Howard Taft and I disagree with you, it might be because I perceive no resemblance between the drawing and the man, or it might be because I don't know what the man looks like well enough to recognize him. In any case, I fail to perceive a resemblance between the representation and that which it is described as representing. So, when we say that JI is represented in some way in a tuning, we are asserting that there is a perceptible resemblance between the intervals of the tuning and whatever set of JI intervals we claim is being represented. If we want to say that JI is *not* represented in some way in a tuning, then we are asserting a failure to recognize or perceive a resemblance. If we want to say that JI is not ***representable*** in a certain way in a tuning, we are asserting the **impossibility** of perceiving a resemblance. There is a world of difference between saying "I am not recognizing the resemblance" and saying "there is no resemblance to recognize". Stop right here and request clarification if this isn't feeling right, and for the love of "Bob" do not read on or attempt to respond to later paragraphs.

Assuming the above is clear, let's talk about JI for a minute. JI is the "subject", we are the artists, and temperaments are our "portraits" of the subject. We can't paint what we can't see, we can't see what isn't there, and our skill as artists comes from our ability to both see "what is there", and to depict it in such a way that it can be recognized.

Now, let's say I'm a painter who's been hired to paint a picture of the British royal family. I sit down before a photo of them with paint and brush and go to work, and after several painstaking days of work, I am finished. I show them my painting, and it looks like this:

http://www.shuttlepresskit.com/images/iss/iss_top.jpg

They are flabbergasted and say, "you dolt, that's the international space station! You were supposed to render a portrait of our family!" And I say, "well, I tried my best to represent your family, and this is what came out." Let's say I'm even telling the truth--I just have some rare mental disorder that causes me to paint breathtakingly-accurate portraits of things completely unrelated to the subjects I am attempting to paint.

If you took my painting and asked a random person what it's representing, what is the likelihood of a sane or otherwise normal person--who knows what the royal family looks like--recognizing the royal family? What is the likelihood of a sane or otherwise normal person--who knows what the international space station looks like--recognizing the space station?

There is a sense in which this painting "is" a representation of the royal family--but it's an abstract sense, true only because I *intended* it to be a representation of the royal family. It gets its truth not because of physical properties of the painting, but because of abstract truths about my intention. There is another sense in which the painting "is not" a representation of the royal family--it's a physical sense, which derives its truth from facts about people in the world and the perceptions they have (or fail to have, as the case may be). For anyone who fails to perceive a resemblance to the royal family in my painting, then *it is true* that the painting does not represent the royal family. My intention as a painter fails to influence their perception and thus fails to determine their experience of reality. And these people can rightly say to me, "I don't care what you 'intended' to represent, I see something different and I think you failed in your representation".

Now, you might say that just because nobody sees the resemblance does not mean it isn't there; maybe someday someone will come along with a mental disorder that is complimentary to my own, and sees the royal family whenever he/she looks at a picture of the international space station. Such a person will see my painting and say "wow! Astonishing likeness! You really captured the Queen's eyes!" or something. And it will be true that for that person, the representation succeeds.

Are we good so far? Let's check in on the above before I go any further.

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

Thanks, Igliashon, for taking the time- I'll get to it as soon as I get the chance.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "cityoftheasleep" <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> Okay. I am starting this over, and I am going to try to rephrase my point without using value-loaded words that will throw off Mike and Cameron, because I know you guys do actually agree with me, and when you finally get what I'm driving at, you might even think it's trivial.
>
> In our field, we distinguish between a "tuning" and a "temperament". A tuning is a finite set of discrete pitches; a temperament is a homomorphism between some tuning and JI. We are free to apply any temperament to any tuning, and we will not be logically or mathematically inconsistent. More generally, a temperament can be thought of as describing how JI is represented in a tuning. If we say "this tuning is a tuning of this temperament", we are saying "JI is represented in this tuning as described by this temperament". Saying a tuning is one temperament does not necessarily preculde it being another temperament as well, any more than describing me as "male" precludes describing me as "29 years old". So far so good, I hope?
>
> Now, if we say that JI is represented in some way in a tuning, what are we saying? For a representation to be successful, it must trigger a perceived recognition of resemblance between the representation and that which is represented. For example: if you tell me a drawing represents a table, and I agree with you, it is because I know what a table "looks like", and I perceive a resemblance between the drawing and a table--I *recognize* the table in the drawing. If you tell me a drawing represents William Howard Taft and I disagree with you, it might be because I perceive no resemblance between the drawing and the man, or it might be because I don't know what the man looks like well enough to recognize him. In any case, I fail to perceive a resemblance between the representation and that which it is described as representing. So, when we say that JI is represented in some way in a tuning, we are asserting that there is a perceptible resemblance between the intervals of the tuning and whatever set of JI intervals we claim is being represented. If we want to say that JI is *not* represented in some way in a tuning, then we are asserting a failure to recognize or perceive a resemblance. If we want to say that JI is not ***representable*** in a certain way in a tuning, we are asserting the **impossibility** of perceiving a resemblance. There is a world of difference between saying "I am not recognizing the resemblance" and saying "there is no resemblance to recognize". Stop right here and request clarification if this isn't feeling right, and for the love of "Bob" do not read on or attempt to respond to later paragraphs.
>
> Assuming the above is clear, let's talk about JI for a minute. JI is the "subject", we are the artists, and temperaments are our "portraits" of the subject. We can't paint what we can't see, we can't see what isn't there, and our skill as artists comes from our ability to both see "what is there", and to depict it in such a way that it can be recognized.
>
> Now, let's say I'm a painter who's been hired to paint a picture of the British royal family. I sit down before a photo of them with paint and brush and go to work, and after several painstaking days of work, I am finished. I show them my painting, and it looks like this:
>
> http://www.shuttlepresskit.com/images/iss/iss_top.jpg
>
> They are flabbergasted and say, "you dolt, that's the international space station! You were supposed to render a portrait of our family!" And I say, "well, I tried my best to represent your family, and this is what came out." Let's say I'm even telling the truth--I just have some rare mental disorder that causes me to paint breathtakingly-accurate portraits of things completely unrelated to the subjects I am attempting to paint.
>
> If you took my painting and asked a random person what it's representing, what is the likelihood of a sane or otherwise normal person--who knows what the royal family looks like--recognizing the royal family? What is the likelihood of a sane or otherwise normal person--who knows what the international space station looks like--recognizing the space station?
>
> There is a sense in which this painting "is" a representation of the royal family--but it's an abstract sense, true only because I *intended* it to be a representation of the royal family. It gets its truth not because of physical properties of the painting, but because of abstract truths about my intention. There is another sense in which the painting "is not" a representation of the royal family--it's a physical sense, which derives its truth from facts about people in the world and the perceptions they have (or fail to have, as the case may be). For anyone who fails to perceive a resemblance to the royal family in my painting, then *it is true* that the painting does not represent the royal family. My intention as a painter fails to influence their perception and thus fails to determine their experience of reality. And these people can rightly say to me, "I don't care what you 'intended' to represent, I see something different and I think you failed in your representation".
>
> Now, you might say that just because nobody sees the resemblance does not mean it isn't there; maybe someday someone will come along with a mental disorder that is complimentary to my own, and sees the royal family whenever he/she looks at a picture of the international space station. Such a person will see my painting and say "wow! Astonishing likeness! You really captured the Queen's eyes!" or something. And it will be true that for that person, the representation succeeds.
>
> Are we good so far? Let's check in on the above before I go any further.
>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

🔗Freeman Gilmore <freeman.gilmore@...>

From Owen Jorgenson:

A *tuning *is a short term for just tuning.

*Just tuning *is the process of placing all the tones of the octave at
their correct frequencies by means of only just intervals of simple ratio.
That is, no tempering is done throughout the tuning scheme. …

*Just intonation *is any vertical sonority constructed from just intervals
only.

*Temper *The musical use of the verb temper dates from 1496. Tempering
is the act of altering the size of a just interval. A tempered interval
is thus made a small amount either larger or smaller, and this alteration
puts the interval out-of-tune and causes beating. The purpose in
tempering is to increase the harmonic resources by adding more usable
triads to the tuning system. …

A *temperament *is a musical scale in which the sizes of one or more of its
natural intervals has been altered (tempered) so that all (or at least a
large portion) of its intervals can be made to fit within an artificial
man-made pattern such as the conventional organ, harpsichord, or piano
keyboard arrangement. The antonym of temperament is just tuning whereby
only a small portion of the just intervals can be made to fit within the
conventional keyboard limits. In just tuning, the empty spaces were just
intervals cannot be made to fit are occupied by the false wolf intervals. The
elimination of wolf sounds is the purpose of a temperament.

From J. Murray Barbour:

*A Tuning *– A system all of whose intervals can be expressed in rational
numbers.

*Just Intonation* – A system of tuning based on the octave (2:1), the pure
fifth (3:2), and the pure major third (5:4).

*Temper* – To very the pitch slightly. A tempered fifth is specifically a
flattened fifth.

*Temperament* – A system, some or all of whose intervals cannot be
expressed in rational numbers.

Theses two knew each other but had different definitions; so I guess your
is as good as any. I favor Barbour.

ƒg

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 1:07 PM, cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>wrote:

> **
>
>
> Okay. I am starting this over, and I am going to try to rephrase my point
> without using value-loaded words that will throw off Mike and Cameron,
> because I know you guys do actually agree with me, and when you finally get
> what I'm driving at, you might even think it's trivial.
>
> In our field, we distinguish between a "tuning" and a "temperament". A
> tuning is a finite set of discrete pitches; a temperament is a homomorphism
> between some tuning and JI. We are free to apply any temperament to any
> tuning, and we will not be logically or mathematically inconsistent. More
> generally, a temperament can be thought of as describing how JI is
> represented in a tuning. If we say "this tuning is a tuning of this
> temperament", we are saying "JI is represented in this tuning as described
> by this temperament". Saying a tuning is one temperament does not
> necessarily preculde it being another temperament as well, any more than
> describing me as "male" precludes describing me as "29 years old". So far
> so good, I hope?
>
> Now, if we say that JI is represented in some way in a tuning, what are we
> saying? For a representation to be successful, it must trigger a perceived
> recognition of resemblance between the representation and that which is
> represented. For example: if you tell me a drawing represents a table, and
> I agree with you, it is because I know what a table "looks like", and I
> perceive a resemblance between the drawing and a table--I *recognize* the
> table in the drawing. If you tell me a drawing represents William Howard
> Taft and I disagree with you, it might be because I perceive no resemblance
> between the drawing and the man, or it might be because I don't know what
> the man looks like well enough to recognize him. In any case, I fail to
> perceive a resemblance between the representation and that which it is
> described as representing. So, when we say that JI is represented in some
> way in a tuning, we are asserting that there is a perceptible resemblance
> between the intervals of the tuning and whatever set of JI intervals we
> claim is being represented. If we want to say that JI is *not* represented
> in some way in a tuning, then we are asserting a failure to recognize or
> perceive a resemblance. If we want to say that JI is not
> ***representable*** in a certain way in a tuning, we are asserting the
> **impossibility** of perceiving a resemblance. There is a world of
> difference between saying "I am not recognizing the resemblance" and saying
> "there is no resemblance to recognize". Stop right here and request
> clarification if this isn't feeling right, and for the love of "Bob" do not
> read on or attempt to respond to later paragraphs.
>
> Assuming the above is clear, let's talk about JI for a minute. JI is the
> "subject", we are the artists, and temperaments are our "portraits" of the
> subject. We can't paint what we can't see, we can't see what isn't there,
> and our skill as artists comes from our ability to both see "what is
> there", and to depict it in such a way that it can be recognized.
>
> Now, let's say I'm a painter who's been hired to paint a picture of the
> British royal family. I sit down before a photo of them with paint and
> brush and go to work, and after several painstaking days of work, I am
> finished. I show them my painting, and it looks like this:
>
> http://www.shuttlepresskit.com/images/iss/iss_top.jpg
>
> They are flabbergasted and say, "you dolt, that's the international space
> station! You were supposed to render a portrait of our family!" And I say,
> "well, I tried my best to represent your family, and this is what came
> out." Let's say I'm even telling the truth--I just have some rare mental
> disorder that causes me to paint breathtakingly-accurate portraits of
> things completely unrelated to the subjects I am attempting to paint.
>
> If you took my painting and asked a random person what it's representing,
> what is the likelihood of a sane or otherwise normal person--who knows what
> the royal family looks like--recognizing the royal family? What is the
> likelihood of a sane or otherwise normal person--who knows what the
> international space station looks like--recognizing the space station?
>
> There is a sense in which this painting "is" a representation of the royal
> family--but it's an abstract sense, true only because I *intended* it to be
> a representation of the royal family. It gets its truth not because of
> physical properties of the painting, but because of abstract truths about
> my intention. There is another sense in which the painting "is not" a
> representation of the royal family--it's a physical sense, which derives
> its truth from facts about people in the world and the perceptions they
> have (or fail to have, as the case may be). For anyone who fails to
> perceive a resemblance to the royal family in my painting, then *it is
> true* that the painting does not represent the royal family. My intention
> as a painter fails to influence their perception and thus fails to
> determine their experience of reality. And these people can rightly say to
> me, "I don't care what you 'intended' to represent, I see something
> different and I think you failed in your representation".
>
> Now, you might say that just because nobody sees the resemblance does not
> mean it isn't there; maybe someday someone will come along with a mental
> disorder that is complimentary to my own, and sees the royal family
> whenever he/she looks at a picture of the international space station. Such
> a person will see my painting and say "wow! Astonishing likeness! You
> really captured the Queen's eyes!" or something. And it will be true that
> for that person, the representation succeeds.
>
> Are we good so far? Let's check in on the above before I go any further.
>
>
>

🔗Freeman Gilmore <freeman.gilmore@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 1:26 AM, cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
>
> > OK, so JI, as the "master temperament" from which all others are
> > derived, represents, to you, a collection of remembered intervals.
> > Right?
>
> That's a bit of an over-simplification. It's not simply that JI intervals are "remembered", it's that they all share common perceptible psychoacoustic qualities. One doesn't need to be able to recognize a 5/4 "as" a 5/4 to know that it's Just, for instance.

OK.

> Memory may not even be a part of it, because one can actively compare a bunch of known-to-be-Just intervals to a non-Just one and figure out which one's closest.

OK, so that sounds like you're talking about memory.

> I might hear a JI chord and say "that's a JI chord" but have no idea what it is. However, I'll be able to figure it out if I want to. Kind of like...I don't have to have memorized every species of tree to know that some plant is or is not a tree.

Right, assuming you agree this is a skill that you have to develop and
which I doubt the average listener will ever develop.

> > OK, the tuning. So the error in some tuning of some temperament
> > reflects in some meaningful sense how much resemblance you will
> > perceive between the representation of the tempered interval and the
> > JI thing you remember, and predicts in some sense how much you will
> > recognize the interval. Yes? So we're talking about intervallic
> > recognition here, which is the thing that I thought you weren't saying
> > we were talking about.
>
> You can think of it that way, I guess. I would assume that anyone using temperament is doing so because they're trying to represent JI in some meaningful way, which implies that they know what it is they're trying to represent and how they're comfortable with it being represented.

Right, so this is what I'd like to go into further. Right here:

"which implies that they know what it is they're trying to represent"

This is the crux of what I have a problem with, because this is
completely different for every single person using the theory. In
fact, if there's a single sticking point in this community where
nobody can agree on anything at all, it's how much of the perception
of 5/4 is psychoacoustic, vs learned/cultural/whatever, etc. I'm not
even talking about "major thirds" and stuff, I'm talking about 5/4
itself. We -don't know- where the psychoacoustic properties of 5/4 and
where the learned, cultural ones begin. What you think 5/4 "means" may
be very different from what I think, and it's probably also different
from what Carl thinks, and it's also different from what Cameron
thinks, I'll assume.

I'll give you an example: diminished chords are really dissonant. Is
this because they're higher in harmonic entropy? Does harmonic entropy
give chords "dissonance" like this? If so, 5/4 is consonant in the
same way that diminished chords are dissonant - is that because it's
low in HE? Or is it because something else I know in the general
region of 386 is consonant, for whatever reason, and I'm just saying
that's 5/4? I now think #2, but it took me years to get to this
understanding and I'm not even sure it's correct or if anyone else
agrees.

Obviously, you'd like to sidestep this whole thing in your definition
of 5/4 and JI in general, and just talk about psychoacoustics. Fine.
But, you end up un-sidestepping it if you then go and talk about the
following things:

1) Internal remembered representations of those intervals, and
subjective assessments of resemblance
2) Assumptions, even if they seem reasonable, about the practical
limitations on the results of training on the internal remembered
representations of those intervals
3) A thesis resulting the futility in using certain temperaments for a
certain person in a certain state, deriving from the assumption that
it doesn't adequately reflect their perception

You un-sidestep it because #1 is now referring to an undefined
conglomerate of psychoacoustic parameters, and it furthermore depends
on the individual's introspective ability to differentiate between
what is actually real, and what is remembered as being likely.

If we're really going to talk about someone's internal remembered
representation of 5/4, and then draw from that to make further
statements about when such a representation might break or not break,
it's almost certain that of our extremely limited knowledge in 2012
any listener is going to get it wrong. Thus, any assumptions about
practical limitations on the results of training on these -internal
representations- of sounds --- which is what you've stated you're
talking about --- will also almost certainly be wrong. This might be a
practical limitation; we might develop ear training techniques to help
one to make such introspective distinctions - except that nobody can
agree on what the right way to differentiate between the two even is.
And so what assumptions can we make?

There's one last thing. The above already implies a listener who's
perfectly able to discriminate between cultural and psychoacoustic
affects, which is a totally non-trivial thing which we can't talk
about because if we knew that, music theory would be totally solved
forever. But in addition to that, it implies that there -is- some kind
of harsh cutoff between cultural and psychoacoustic factors, which we
presumably just have to learn. Only if this even exists is the thing
that you're talking about, and all of the assumptions you're making,
something which actually exists. And the more I read from the
"perceptual learning" literature, the very name of which is an
oxymoron if you really believe in such "hard separation," the less I'm
sure that assumption is right to make.

> Goodness gracious I hope you can agree at least to the above.

Other than what I wrote above, yes, OK, people remember the sound of
5/4 and periodicity buzz and all that, and there comes a point where
temperaments are too far gone that that the stated description in the
mapping matrix doesn't correlate to the represented the things they
remember 5/4 as being. I get it.

-Mike

🔗lobawad <lobawad@...>

These definitions are too ethnocentric and dated to serve us here and now.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Freeman Gilmore <freeman.gilmore@...> wrote:
>
> From Owen Jorgenson:
>
>
>
> A *tuning *is a short term for just tuning.
>
>
>
> *Just tuning *is the process of placing all the tones of the octave at
> their correct frequencies by means of only just intervals of simple ratio.
> That is, no tempering is done throughout the tuning scheme. â¦
>
>
>
> *Just intonation *is any vertical sonority constructed from just intervals
> only.
>
>
>
> *Temper *The musical use of the verb temper dates from 1496. Tempering
> is the act of altering the size of a just interval. A tempered interval
> is thus made a small amount either larger or smaller, and this alteration
> puts the interval out-of-tune and causes beating. The purpose in
> tempering is to increase the harmonic resources by adding more usable
> triads to the tuning system. â¦
>
>
>
> A *temperament *is a musical scale in which the sizes of one or more of its
> natural intervals has been altered (tempered) so that all (or at least a
> large portion) of its intervals can be made to fit within an artificial
> man-made pattern such as the conventional organ, harpsichord, or piano
> keyboard arrangement. The antonym of temperament is just tuning whereby
> only a small portion of the just intervals can be made to fit within the
> conventional keyboard limits. In just tuning, the empty spaces were just
> intervals cannot be made to fit are occupied by the false wolf intervals. The
> elimination of wolf sounds is the purpose of a temperament.
>
>
>
> From J. Murray Barbour:
>
>
>
> *A Tuning *â" A system all of whose intervals can be expressed in rational
> numbers.
>
>
>
> *Just Intonation* â" A system of tuning based on the octave (2:1), the pure
> fifth (3:2), and the pure major third (5:4).
>
>
>
> *Temper* â" To very the pitch slightly. A tempered fifth is specifically a
> flattened fifth.
>
>
>
> *Temperament* â" A system, some or all of whose intervals cannot be
> expressed in rational numbers.
>
>
>
> Theses two knew each other but had different definitions; so I guess your
> is as good as any. I favor Barbour.
>
>
>
> Æ'g
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 1:07 PM, cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>wrote:
>
> > **
> >
> >
> > Okay. I am starting this over, and I am going to try to rephrase my point
> > without using value-loaded words that will throw off Mike and Cameron,
> > because I know you guys do actually agree with me, and when you finally get
> > what I'm driving at, you might even think it's trivial.
> >
> > In our field, we distinguish between a "tuning" and a "temperament". A
> > tuning is a finite set of discrete pitches; a temperament is a homomorphism
> > between some tuning and JI. We are free to apply any temperament to any
> > tuning, and we will not be logically or mathematically inconsistent. More
> > generally, a temperament can be thought of as describing how JI is
> > represented in a tuning. If we say "this tuning is a tuning of this
> > temperament", we are saying "JI is represented in this tuning as described
> > by this temperament". Saying a tuning is one temperament does not
> > necessarily preculde it being another temperament as well, any more than
> > describing me as "male" precludes describing me as "29 years old". So far
> > so good, I hope?
> >
> > Now, if we say that JI is represented in some way in a tuning, what are we
> > saying? For a representation to be successful, it must trigger a perceived
> > recognition of resemblance between the representation and that which is
> > represented. For example: if you tell me a drawing represents a table, and
> > I agree with you, it is because I know what a table "looks like", and I
> > perceive a resemblance between the drawing and a table--I *recognize* the
> > table in the drawing. If you tell me a drawing represents William Howard
> > Taft and I disagree with you, it might be because I perceive no resemblance
> > between the drawing and the man, or it might be because I don't know what
> > the man looks like well enough to recognize him. In any case, I fail to
> > perceive a resemblance between the representation and that which it is
> > described as representing. So, when we say that JI is represented in some
> > way in a tuning, we are asserting that there is a perceptible resemblance
> > between the intervals of the tuning and whatever set of JI intervals we
> > claim is being represented. If we want to say that JI is *not* represented
> > in some way in a tuning, then we are asserting a failure to recognize or
> > perceive a resemblance. If we want to say that JI is not
> > ***representable*** in a certain way in a tuning, we are asserting the
> > **impossibility** of perceiving a resemblance. There is a world of
> > difference between saying "I am not recognizing the resemblance" and saying
> > "there is no resemblance to recognize". Stop right here and request
> > clarification if this isn't feeling right, and for the love of "Bob" do not
> > read on or attempt to respond to later paragraphs.
> >
> > Assuming the above is clear, let's talk about JI for a minute. JI is the
> > "subject", we are the artists, and temperaments are our "portraits" of the
> > subject. We can't paint what we can't see, we can't see what isn't there,
> > and our skill as artists comes from our ability to both see "what is
> > there", and to depict it in such a way that it can be recognized.
> >
> > Now, let's say I'm a painter who's been hired to paint a picture of the
> > British royal family. I sit down before a photo of them with paint and
> > brush and go to work, and after several painstaking days of work, I am
> > finished. I show them my painting, and it looks like this:
> >
> > http://www.shuttlepresskit.com/images/iss/iss_top.jpg
> >
> > They are flabbergasted and say, "you dolt, that's the international space
> > station! You were supposed to render a portrait of our family!" And I say,
> > "well, I tried my best to represent your family, and this is what came
> > out." Let's say I'm even telling the truth--I just have some rare mental
> > disorder that causes me to paint breathtakingly-accurate portraits of
> > things completely unrelated to the subjects I am attempting to paint.
> >
> > If you took my painting and asked a random person what it's representing,
> > what is the likelihood of a sane or otherwise normal person--who knows what
> > the royal family looks like--recognizing the royal family? What is the
> > likelihood of a sane or otherwise normal person--who knows what the
> > international space station looks like--recognizing the space station?
> >
> > There is a sense in which this painting "is" a representation of the royal
> > family--but it's an abstract sense, true only because I *intended* it to be
> > a representation of the royal family. It gets its truth not because of
> > physical properties of the painting, but because of abstract truths about
> > my intention. There is another sense in which the painting "is not" a
> > representation of the royal family--it's a physical sense, which derives
> > its truth from facts about people in the world and the perceptions they
> > have (or fail to have, as the case may be). For anyone who fails to
> > perceive a resemblance to the royal family in my painting, then *it is
> > true* that the painting does not represent the royal family. My intention
> > as a painter fails to influence their perception and thus fails to
> > determine their experience of reality. And these people can rightly say to
> > me, "I don't care what you 'intended' to represent, I see something
> > different and I think you failed in your representation".
> >
> > Now, you might say that just because nobody sees the resemblance does not
> > mean it isn't there; maybe someday someone will come along with a mental
> > disorder that is complimentary to my own, and sees the royal family
> > whenever he/she looks at a picture of the international space station. Such
> > a person will see my painting and say "wow! Astonishing likeness! You
> > really captured the Queen's eyes!" or something. And it will be true that
> > for that person, the representation succeeds.
> >
> > Are we good so far? Let's check in on the above before I go any further.
> >
> >
> >
>

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> > Memory may not even be a part of it, because one can actively compare a bunch of
> > known-to-be-Just intervals to a non-Just one and figure out which one's closest.
>
> OK, so that sounds like you're talking about memory.

Okay, maybe "memory" but certainly not "memorization".

> > I might hear a JI chord and say "that's a JI chord" but have no idea what it is. However, I'll be able to figure it out if I want to. Kind of like...I don't have to have memorized every species of tree to know that some plant is or is not a tree.
> >
> Right, assuming you agree this is a skill that you have to develop and
> which I doubt the average listener will ever develop.

Learning to *call* the chord "JI" might have to be developed, because it's an unfamiliar term to most people, but are you saying that a listener has to learn how to experience the psychoacoustic effects associated with JI? Because...that seems pretty absurd.

> Right, so this is what I'd like to go into further. Right here:
>
> "which implies that they know what it is they're trying to represent"
>
> This is the crux of what I have a problem with, because this is
> completely different for every single person using the theory. In
> fact, if there's a single sticking point in this community where
> nobody can agree on anything at all, it's how much of the perception
> of 5/4 is psychoacoustic, vs learned/cultural/whatever, etc. I'm not
> even talking about "major thirds" and stuff, I'm talking about 5/4
> itself. We -don't know- where the psychoacoustic properties of 5/4 end and
> where the learned, cultural ones begin. What you think 5/4 "means" may
> be very different from what I think, and it's probably also different
> from what Carl thinks, and it's also different from what Cameron
> thinks, I'll assume.

I couldn't agree less! 5/4 doesn't have to mean anything. The only thing that varies among us is how much mistuning we're willing to say a 5/4 can take before it stops being recognizable as related to the original Just interval.

> I'll give you an example: diminished chords are really dissonant. Is
> this because they're higher in harmonic entropy? Does harmonic entropy
> give chords "dissonance" like this? If so, 5/4 is consonant in the
> same way that diminished chords are dissonant - is that because it's
> low in HE? Or is it because something else I know in the general
> region of 386 is consonant, for whatever reason, and I'm just saying
> that's 5/4? I now think #2, but it took me years to get to this
> understanding and I'm not even sure it's correct or if anyone else
> agrees.

This doesn't make any sense to me. And I'm not sure what you mean by consonant. Are you suggesting that it's just a coincidence that 5/4 and 3/2 (etc.) are low in HE, and also considered concordant? Seems pretty odd that Western music theorists have spent centuries playing around with our tuning system, trying to get the optimal mix of nearness to simple ratios and freedom of modulation. It seems like you're keen to forget that the specialness of simple-integer ratios has been recognized for millennia, across countless cultures, and that this recognition is built in to the scales and chords we use in our musical culture. So of course it's going to be confusing to try to separate "culture" from "concordance"!

> Obviously, you'd like to sidestep this whole thing in your definition
> of 5/4 and JI in general, and just talk about psychoacoustics. Fine.
> But, you end up un-sidestepping it if you then go and talk about the
> following things:

There is no "just psychoacoustics" as long as we're talking about *music*. So I'm not sure what you think I'm trying to side-step.

> 1) Internal remembered representations of those intervals, and
> subjective assessments of resemblance

Do I need to remember what the psychoacoustic effects of JI are before I can experience them? That's nuts, that's like saying I need to remember the wavelength of blue light before I can see the color blue!

> 2) Assumptions, even if they seem reasonable, about the practical
> limitations on the results of training on the internal remembered
> representations of those intervals

You should remember to distinguish between an assertion of non-existence and an assertion on impossibility. Seems like every time someone says "no one can hear this way", you take it as a statement that "no one can EVER hear this way", which is mistaken. If I say no one can run a 2-minute mile, I'm making a statement about the current state of affairs in the world. If I say no one can EVER run a 2-minute mile, I'm making a statement about all the potential states of affairs that will ever be the case in the universe. Just because I assert that there is no evidence that anyone possesses a certain ability, does not mean I am asserting the impossibility of someone ever possessing that ability.

> 3) A thesis resulting the futility in using certain temperaments for a
> certain person in a certain state, deriving from the assumption that
> it doesn't adequately reflect their perception

We haven't gotten here yet. You're still going off of what you thought I was saying before, which I told you was mistaken, so you should just stop.

> You un-sidestep it because #1 is now referring to an undefined
> conglomerate of psychoacoustic parameters, and it furthermore depends
> on the individual's introspective ability to differentiate between
> what is actually real, and what is remembered as being likely.

Well, we are talking about *music*, after all...

> If we're really going to talk about someone's internal remembered
> representation of 5/4, and then draw from that to make further
> statements about when such a representation might break or not break,
> it's almost certain that of our extremely limited knowledge in 2012
> any listener is going to get it wrong.

That's ridiculous. You really think that the state of our knowledge is so limited? Really? That we can't predict whether someone will recognize the resemblance between some interval and 5/4? So if I said "nobody is going to mistake 600 cents for 5/4", you'd think that prediction is almost certainly wrong?

> Thus, any assumptions about
> practical limitations on the results of training on these -internal
> representations- of sounds --- which is what you've stated you're
> talking about --- will also almost certainly be wrong.

I don't need to talk about the limitations of training any more than I need to talk about the limitations of our space program. Given what we know about how people hear, I can confidently say that no one is going to recognize the 7919-limit as JI in the near future, just as confidently as I can say that no one is going to colonize Mars in the near future. Hell, I think I can confidently say that the majority of listeners are not going to hear the 23-limit as JI in the near future--precisely because this is the state of affairs *now* and there is no evidence for interest in the sort of training that might alter that, because even people like you and me who *have* tried to train ourselves to recognize things like the 11, 13, 17, and 19-limits as JI tend to balk at the 23rd harmonic. You are concerned that my assertions might be disproved under exceptional circumstances. I am not concerned about exceptional circumstances, because they're statistically insignificant.

> This might be a
> practical limitation; we might develop ear training techniques to help
> one to make such introspective distinctions - except that nobody can
> agree on what the right way to differentiate between the two even is.
> And so what assumptions can we make?

What do you mean, nobody can agree on the right way to differentiate between the two?

> There's one last thing. The above already implies a listener who's
> perfectly able to discriminate between cultural and psychoacoustic
> affects, which is a totally non-trivial thing which we can't talk
> about because if we knew that, music theory would be totally solved
> forever. But in addition to that, it implies that there -is- some kind
> of harsh cutoff between cultural and psychoacoustic factors, which we
> presumably just have to learn. Only if this even exists is the thing
> that you're talking about, and all of the assumptions you're making,
> something which actually exists. And the more I read from the
> "perceptual learning" literature, the very name of which is an
> oxymoron if you really believe in such "hard separation," the less I'm
> sure that assumption is right to make.

Huh? This also doesn't make a lick of sense to me. When did cultural factors come into it?

> > Goodness gracious I hope you can agree at least to the above.
>
> Other than what I wrote above, yes, OK, people remember the sound of
> 5/4 and periodicity buzz and all that, and there comes a point where
> temperaments are too far gone that that the stated description in the
> mapping matrix doesn't correlate to the represented the things they
> remember 5/4 as being. I get it.

So...what's the problem, then?

-Igs

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 12:37 PM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> > > Memory may not even be a part of it, because one can actively compare a bunch of
> > > known-to-be-Just intervals to a non-Just one and figure out which one's closest.
> >
> > OK, so that sounds like you're talking about memory.
>
> Okay, maybe "memory" but certainly not "memorization".

Huh? What's the difference?

> > > I might hear a JI chord and say "that's a JI chord" but have no idea what it is. However, I'll be able to figure it out if I want to. Kind of like...I don't have to have memorized every species of tree to know that some plant is or is not a tree.
> > >
> > Right, assuming you agree this is a skill that you have to develop and
> > which I doubt the average listener will ever develop.
>
> Learning to *call* the chord "JI" might have to be developed, because it's an unfamiliar term to most people, but are you saying that a listener has to learn how to experience the psychoacoustic effects associated with JI? Because...that seems pretty absurd.

That's not what I'm saying. You said you might be able to recognize a
JI chord as a JI chord but have no idea what it is, but you'll be able
to figure out what it is if you want to. I'm saying that figuring out
the "identity", as you put it, of a JI chord is a learned skill, and
one which listeners will never develop.

> > where the learned, cultural ones begin. What you think 5/4 "means" may
> > be very different from what I think, and it's probably also different
> > from what Carl thinks, and it's also different from what Cameron
> > thinks, I'll assume.
>
> I couldn't agree less! 5/4 doesn't have to mean anything. The only thing that varies among us is how much mistuning we're willing to say a 5/4 can take before it stops being recognizable as related to the original Just interval.

If you're talking about an interval being "recognizable," then there
must be something about it that you're recognizing, and it's not clear
that everyone will be talking about the same thing. They can SAY they
are, and they can CALL it something "psychoacoustic," but they could
be totally wrong.

For instance, 5/4 as an augmented second in superpyth sounds very
dissonant to me, and to me that was unrecognizable as "5/4" at first,
because I thought that 5/4 was supposed to have this sweet quality to
it which I thought was coming from HE but was apparently coming from
being a "major third." My initial take on which parts of the sound
were "5/4" and which parts were other things was totally wrong. Any
one of Keenan's "warped diatonic" examples, or my hedgehog example,
totally apply here. My initial response was "whoa, that's not 5/4 at
all!" but it was - it's just that 5/4 itself sounds one way if it's a
major third, and another way if it's an augmented second, and from
that I realized that part of my internal representation of 5/4 wasn't
tied down to "5/4" at all. Paul had apparently caught onto that years
ago.

But, the point is, you keep talking about how much mistuning an
interval can take before it "stops being recognizable as the original"
as thought it were an objective thing, but it's obviously not. It's
very subjective what the listener is recognizing at all! You seem to
have a certain idea in your head about where psychoacoustics ends and
non-psychoacoustics begins, but I doubt that some new listener joining
is going to have that idea: they'll be, at first, just assuming that
the entire gestalt of 386 is 5/4, and inadvertently lump a bunch of
cultural stuff in there too until sooner or later they get
enlightened. 5/4 itself in strange scenarios was enough for me to
think it's "unrecognizable as 5/4" with zero mistuning - perhaps I was
recognizing the wrong thing.

My point is that there are a million different interpretations of a
ratio. There are a million different things that 5/4 can be. After
several years on here, I can now differentiate between a few of them,
and have some sort of rough idea of some things which are cultural and
other things which are psychoacoustic (and lately my "rough idea" is
that there is no real cutoff). For me to understand -exactly- what
you're talking about, I need to know -exactly- which interpretation it
is that you want to use! If it's something like "beatlessness," then
yes, obviously I'll admit that it's not likely that someone is going
to "train themselves" to hear 520 cents as more beatless than 702
cents, but then we have to get into a precise definition of
beatlessness because even that's a bit of a misnomer. If it's
periodicity buzz, same applies. If it's VFs, then that implies other
things. It might be a weighted average of these three. But what you
seem to be saying is that you're using the interpretation of 5/4 in
which "we're only talking about psychoacoustic things" - that's a
nontrivial statement! I have no idea how to perfectly separate all of
the psychoacoustic things from the nonpsychoacoustic things in my
perception! Don't you see that if I could do that we wouldn't even
have anything to talk about, because all of xenharmonic music theory
would already be instantly solved?

This conversation is really just the history of me trying to figure
out which -exact- interpretation of 5/4 you mean, so I can be sure to
say exactly what I mean and understand exactly what you're saying. Can
you please state explicitly what things I'm supposed to understand you
to mean?

> > I'll give you an example: diminished chords are really dissonant. Is
> > this because they're higher in harmonic entropy? Does harmonic entropy
> > give chords "dissonance" like this? If so, 5/4 is consonant in the
> > same way that diminished chords are dissonant - is that because it's
> > low in HE? Or is it because something else I know in the general
> > region of 386 is consonant, for whatever reason, and I'm just saying
> > that's 5/4? I now think #2, but it took me years to get to this
> > understanding and I'm not even sure it's correct or if anyone else
> > agrees.
>
> This doesn't make any sense to me. And I'm not sure what you mean by consonant. Are you suggesting that it's just a coincidence that 5/4 and 3/2 (etc.) are low in HE, and also considered concordant?

I don't know what you mean by concordant here. I mean that diminished
chords are dissonant in a certain sense that doesn't have to do with
their roughness or periodicity buzz or whatever. And, my point was,
you might say "that's because they're higher in triadic harmonic
entropy!!" but even 5:6:7 is dissonant if you hear 5 as the "root." Is
that psychoacoustic? Is it cultural?

The specific dimension in which I hear diminished chords as being
dissonant is the same as the one in which I hear 5/4 as being
consonant. Is that psychoacoustic? Is it cultural? Should I treat this
dimension as one of the "constellation of psychoacoustic factors" you
want me to consider when you talk about 5/4, or is this separate?

> Seems pretty odd that Western music theorists have spent centuries playing around with our tuning system, trying to get the optimal mix of nearness to simple ratios and freedom of modulation. It seems like you're keen to forget that the specialness of simple-integer ratios has been recognized for millennia, across countless cultures, and that this recognition is built in to the scales and chords we use in our musical culture. So of course it's going to be confusing to try to separate "culture" from "concordance"!

They've been playing around with the diatonic scale for longer. And I
note that once we mathematically figured out 3/2, we did a rather
peculiar thing to it - instead of just going up to 5/4, 7/4, etc, we
took it out to seven places and formed an MOS with it. The concept of
systematically studying simple-integer ratios came much, much, later.
So it's not clear to me what part of things I know is "culture," what
part is "concordance" (or what specifically you take "concordance" to
mean), and what part might be some trippy thing from the "scale" that
I don't know about, or what else.

This is why I'm hoping you might just say "these are the specific
psychoacoustic parameters I'm talking about, or these are the specific
phenomena I'm talking about," so it's completely clear to me. In fact,
if you could just not use the word "concordance" at all, I think it
might be tremendously helpful :)

> > Obviously, you'd like to sidestep this whole thing in your definition
> > of 5/4 and JI in general, and just talk about psychoacoustics. Fine.
> > But, you end up un-sidestepping it if you then go and talk about the
> > following things:
>
> There is no "just psychoacoustics" as long as we're talking about *music*. So I'm not sure what you think I'm trying to side-step.

You were talking about subjectively comparing a mistuned 5/4 to a
learned, remembered version, and I -thought- you were talking about
someone who was only remembering the psychoacoustic aspects of 5/4,
not the cultural ones. Yes or no?

> > 1) Internal remembered representations of those intervals, and
> > subjective assessments of resemblance
>
> Do I need to remember what the psychoacoustic effects of JI are before I can experience them? That's nuts, that's like saying I need to remember the wavelength of blue light before I can see the color blue!

No, but you need to remember what a JI interval "sounds like" before
you can subjectively assess a -resemblance- between that thing and an
altered version of that thing and make a same/different judgment. And
there are lots of things that 5/4 "sounds like," as you know, which
are not psychoacoustic, such as the constellation of features that go
into a "major third." And all of this is fine, until you want to
assume that the listener with perfect discrimination between the two!
And, even outside from the now-cliche "major third" example, there may
be other things one may "remember" about 5/4 other that aren't
psychoacoustic and aren't diatonic-based, but which still might be
"arbitrary" or "learned" or whatever. How, exactly do I distinguish
between these as I evaluate your claims?

> > 2) Assumptions, even if they seem reasonable, about the practical
> > limitations on the results of training on the internal remembered
> > representations of those intervals
>
> You should remember to distinguish between an assertion of non-existence and an assertion on impossibility. Seems like every time someone says "no one can hear this way", you take it as a statement that "no one can EVER hear this way", which is mistaken. If I say no one can run a 2-minute mile, I'm making a statement about the current state of affairs in the world. If I say no one can EVER run a 2-minute mile, I'm making a statement about all the potential states of affairs that will ever be the case in the universe. Just because I assert that there is no evidence that anyone possesses a certain ability, does not mean I am asserting the impossibility of someone ever possessing that ability.

Fair enough.

> > 3) A thesis resulting the futility in using certain temperaments for a
> > certain person in a certain state, deriving from the assumption that
> > it doesn't adequately reflect their perception
>
> We haven't gotten here yet. You're still going off of what you thought I was saying before, which I told you was mistaken, so you should just stop.

OK.

> > If we're really going to talk about someone's internal remembered
> > representation of 5/4, and then draw from that to make further
> > statements about when such a representation might break or not break,
> > it's almost certain that of our extremely limited knowledge in 2012
> > any listener is going to get it wrong.
>
> That's ridiculous. You really think that the state of our knowledge is so limited? Really? That we can't predict whether someone will recognize the resemblance between some interval and 5/4? So if I said "nobody is going to mistake 600 cents for 5/4", you'd think that prediction is almost certainly wrong?

Are you really talking about "mistake" in its subjective sense...?
There are plenty of people who mistake 3/2 and 2/1 every day, aren't
there? And people who mistake 800 cents and 900 cents? And people who
mistake 100 cents and 600 cents and so on, because they're both
"dissonant"? These are common ear training examples. So yes, I think
predictions about what the average listener will "mistake" will almost
certainly be wrong unless you're predicting "the average listener will
mistake almost everything for everything else," with few exceptions.
One of those exceptions is probably that they can differentiate
between beatless intervals and non-beatless intervals. But as for
whether or not they'll mistake one interval for another? People do it
all the time!

I have trouble interpreting your statements because they always
involve a hypothetical "subject" doing the mistaking and assessing the
resemblance, but I never quite know what the characteristics of this
subject are. You seem to want this subject to have some sort of ear
training specific to the task at hand. That's fine, but I wish I knew
explicitly what it was, because, you also often seem to assume that
the subject has SOMETHING that they're calling 5/4 and that they're
able to separate that SOMETHING from the characteristics of the
musical intervals being intoned as 5/4. And I don't know what it is. I
don't know what -features- of the signal are being remembered and
compared to other intervals, and I can tell you right now that those
features aren't going to be the same for everyone, and I need to know
exactly what they are before I can understand any statement being made
about "resemblances" - resemblances, specifically, to what? When this
listener hears 386 cents and a million effects happen, to which ones
does the listener say "this is 5/4" and to which ones does the
listener say "this is something cultural" or "this is from a 'major
third'" or something like that?

> > Thus, any assumptions about
> > practical limitations on the results of training on these -internal
> > representations- of sounds --- which is what you've stated you're
> > talking about --- will also almost certainly be wrong.
>
> I don't need to talk about the limitations of training any more than I need to talk about the limitations of our space program. Given what we know about how people hear, I can confidently say that no one is going to recognize the 7919-limit as JI in the near future, just as confidently as I can say that no one is going to colonize Mars in the near future.

Did you catch the subtle point I'm making? You're talking about
-internal representations- and I'm still not sure what factors of the
sound are being sliced and diced and stored. Yes, the 7919-limit is a
pretty good example of something which might not ever make any sense
to talk about in a useful way, but what about the middle ground? Just
don't mention any sort of gray area, middle ground-limits and we'll be
fine...

> Hell, I think I can confidently say that the majority of listeners are not going to hear the 23-limit as JI in the near future

Aw hell, you went there. Well, unfortunately, I disagree with every
single sentence in this paragraph. First off, before I touch on any
theoretical issues - this is your example of an unhearable thing? The
23-limit? I hear obvious crunchy periodicity buzz effects in
8:10:14:19:23 just fine. Put on a really bright timbre, like the GM
"Reed Organ" patch, and go into Scala's Chord List and go down to
"Yarman's Hendrix Chord," which is 8:10:14:19:23, and tell me you
don't hear obvious periodicity buzz. And if that doesn't work, just
build a larger chord until you hear it - in fact it sounds even
crunchier as 8:10:14:19:23:25:27:29, which is a 29-limit chord. Then
put it in 72-EDO and hear how it gets warblier, and then go back to JI
and hear it stop, which even satisfies your criteria of that chord
being the "minimum" of some kind of discordance.

So if you're pushing 23-limit as an example of some kind of thing that
can't be used to create the usual psychoacoustic effects, you aren't
describing my perception at all. I hear bzzzzzzzzzzz, and in fact, I
came across this chord in Scala years ago and I heard it that way too.
In fact, I've spent an embarrassing amount of hours tweaking random
numbers in Scala's chord generator because for a while it was the only
microtonal instrument I had, and I don't think there's a random number
you can throw at me under 40 that I can't find a crunchy chord
containing.

> --precisely because this is the state of affairs *now* and there is no evidence for interest in the sort of training that might alter that

What do you mean there is no "evidence" for "interest" in the sort of
training? There's plenty of people who want to explore higher-limit JI
and I'm sure they'd be happy if someone came out with an ear training
program for them.

And what do you mean by "interest?" I'm plenty interested in the
23-limit and even the 29-limit. Have you ever considered that the
solution to using these higher-limit tunings is just to play large
chords? 8:10:14:19:23:25:27:29 sounds like JI to me.
BZZZZZZZZZRRRRRRNNNNNNNMMMMMVVVVVVVRRRRRRRRZZZZZ

I asked Paul and here's what he had to say:

"In LaMonte Young's work, large harmonic series segment chords and
combinational tones are the thing, and the result of altering 23 or
even higher harmonics is audible, even if no individual dyad in the
chord would sound any different as a result."

That would seem to be a decent amount of interest.

> because even people like you and me who *have* tried to train ourselves to recognize things like the 11, 13, 17, and 19-limits as JI tend to balk at the 23rd harmonic.

Yeah, for the 23rd HARMONIC, or for something like 23/16, OK. So play
larger chords. I already gave you an example of a 23-limit tetrad
which has always sounded buzzy to me and exhibited the usual crunchy
JI effects. So yes, larger chords. Now what?

> You are concerned that my assertions might be disproved under exceptional circumstances. I am not concerned about exceptional circumstances, because they're statistically insignificant.

Again, this is the 23-limit you're talking about? Then I'm one of your
"exceptional circumstances," so I obviously don't care about any
statements which fail to represent the way I hear things. I mean, how
exceptional am I really? I've been in this community for what, 4
years? And I'm just one random musician? In my opinion, any theory
which makes so many "statistical judgments" that it fails to cover the
perception of a musician with only a couple years of microtonal
training just fails.

And statistically insignificant for what?? The only thing
statistically insignificant about the 23-limit is for you to describe
the extent to which most people currently hear things. That's about
it. That's good data for a study that'll make people be like "oh,
that's what the characteristics of the average person hearing stuff
are? Interesting." If that's what you want to study, that's cool, but
just say explicitly that this is what you're after. Then it's a whole
different thing we're talking about.

Outside of that, for my purposes it makes no sense to write things off
that haven't happened yet - so of course I view the 23-limit as a
potentially musically useful thing. According to Paul, LaMonte Young's
already used it in larger chords anyway.

But the deeper point is - if you'd just state specifically -what-
effects you're talking about, and for what specific chords and dyads
or whatever - instead of using vague language like "hearing the
23-limit as JI" (prime limit? odd-limit?), it would be easier for me
to evaluate what you're saying. Don't you see at this point that you
have some kind of internal understanding of the effects you're talking
about which I don't have and am struggling to figure out?

> > This might be a
> > practical limitation; we might develop ear training techniques to help
> > one to make such introspective distinctions - except that nobody can
> > agree on what the right way to differentiate between the two even is.
> > And so what assumptions can we make?
>
> What do you mean, nobody can agree on the right way to differentiate between the two?

For instance, consider the notion that minor chords sound "sad"
because there's a root/VF mismatch, and that 5:6:7 sounds similarly
"sad" or "dissonant" or "diminished" or whatever you I say about it
before if there's a root/VF mismatch. If that's true, then that's
another -psychoacoustic- attribute that 5:6:7 has we should be talking
about. Or is it entirely cultural, because as Kalle's pointed out,
this doesn't happen with 3:5? This sort of "dissonance," which factors
heavily into common practice music (diminished chords are "dissonant"
and it sounds nice if they resolve) - is it psychoacoustic or not? Do
I factor that sort of sensation into my internal representation of
5:6:7, or not? Is that one of the dimensions of experience for 5:6:7
that I'm supposed to be judging other mistuned 5:6:7's by?

> > There's one last thing. The above already implies a listener who's
> > perfectly able to discriminate between cultural and psychoacoustic
> > affects, which is a totally non-trivial thing which we can't talk
> > about because if we knew that, music theory would be totally solved
> > forever. But in addition to that, it implies that there -is- some kind
> > of harsh cutoff between cultural and psychoacoustic factors, which we
> > presumably just have to learn. Only if this even exists is the thing
> > that you're talking about, and all of the assumptions you're making,
> > something which actually exists. And the more I read from the
> > "perceptual learning" literature, the very name of which is an
> > oxymoron if you really believe in such "hard separation," the less I'm
> > sure that assumption is right to make.
>
> Huh? This also doesn't make a lick of sense to me. When did cultural factors come into it?

You're talking about remembering the sounds of things - of course
cultural factors are a part of that!

> > > Goodness gracious I hope you can agree at least to the above.
> >
> > Other than what I wrote above, yes, OK, people remember the sound of
> > 5/4 and periodicity buzz and all that, and there comes a point where
> > temperaments are too far gone that that the stated description in the
> > mapping matrix doesn't correlate to the represented the things they
> > remember 5/4 as being. I get it.
>
> So...what's the problem, then?

Well, nothing, I guess.

-Mike

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:

> > Okay, maybe "memory" but certainly not "memorization".
>
> Huh? What's the difference?

Short-term vs. long-term. Show me a picture, then show me a series of pictures and ask me to pick out the one that looks most like the original--I'm using my memory, but ask me again in two years and I won't be able to give a confident answer, because I didn't memorize the initial picture.

> That's not what I'm saying. You said you might be able to recognize a
> JI chord as a JI chord but have no idea what it is, but you'll be able
> to figure out what it is if you want to. I'm saying that figuring out
> the "identity", as you put it, of a JI chord is a learned skill, and
> one which listeners will never develop.

Well, figuring out whether a chord is a major 7th or a minor 9th or whatever is also a learned skill that most listeners will never develop. What's the point?

> If you're talking about an interval being "recognizable," then there
> must be something about it that you're recognizing, and it's not clear
> that everyone will be talking about the same thing. They can SAY they
> are, and they can CALL it something "psychoacoustic," but they could
> be totally wrong.

Yeah, whatever. What am I recognizing when I see the color blue, and is it the same as what you are? Why, my "blue" could be your "green", we don't know if we're all seeing colors the "same way"...woo woo woo. That's a non-starter. There's no way to compare our internal states and see if they are the same. I can't explain to you what I'm hearing that enables me to identify a 5/4. Furthermore, no matter what I do, I'll never be able to demonstrate that we are all hearing the "same thing" when we hear a 5/4. So what? This is a pseudo-problem. This is like, day 1 of "Philosophy of Mind 101". That we all use the terms consistently and consistently agree on their usage is all that matters.

> But, the point is, you keep talking about how much mistuning an
> interval can take before it "stops being recognizable as the original"
> as thought it were an objective thing, but it's obviously not.

No, I don't! You keep reading it that way, but recognizability is a context- and subject-dependent thing. Put enough make-up and costumery on him, and I won't even recognize my own father.

> It's very subjective what the listener is recognizing at all!

So what? There's still something "real" there that is being recognized--why are you so adamant that music cognition is nothing but a string of fictions arbitrarily created in the mind with no basis in reality? Listen to yourself! If I were to concede to your objections, I'd be left with the conclusion that there's no such thing as a 5/4, or JI, or temperament. Is this really how you think?

> You seem to
> have a certain idea in your head about where psychoacoustics ends and
> non-psychoacoustics begins,

The hell I do! Maybe where "acoustics" ends and "psychoacoustics" begins (hint: the line is crossed when the auditory system is activated). On the contrary, *you're* the one behaving as if there's a fine line, claiming there are all these culturally-conditioned factors that exist entirely apart from psychoacoustics. You tell me where psychoacoustics ends and culture begins, or why you think that they are two distinct things in the first place.

> 5/4 itself in strange scenarios was enough for me to
> think it's "unrecognizable as 5/4" with zero mistuning - perhaps I was
> recognizing the wrong thing.

Hence the idea of "all else being equal". Context can make *anything* unrecognizable, so that's why when we talk about recognizing something, it's completely stupid to bring up situations where the context obscures the subject.

> My point is that there are a million different interpretations of a
> ratio.

In your head, apparently. Why does it have to be *interpreted*? Why can't it just be *heard*?

> For me to understand -exactly- what
> you're talking about, I need to know -exactly- which interpretation it
> is that you want to use!

Why? Why do I have to know what interpretation I'm using?

What I think you're doing is confusing "things that 5/4 can mean" with "what 5/4 'is' ". There are lots of things, infinite things really, that 5/4 can mean, just like the phoneme [a]. And if you get hung up on the meanings of sounds, it's easy to ignore the sounds themselves. This is what happened when you played a Superpyth augmented 2nd--the "meaning" of augmented 2nd overrode the sound of 5/4, kind of like how if someone speaks in a foreign accent, they might switch out some phonemes in words you recognize, and when you focus on understanding them, you might not notice the swapped phonemes. But if you focus in on the sound, like you eventually did with the superpyth augmented 2nd, you recognize that, hey, there's that *sound*, in a different context and with a different meaning.

> I don't know what you mean by concordant here. I mean that diminished
> chords are dissonant in a certain sense that doesn't have to do with
> their roughness or periodicity buzz or whatever. And, my point was,
> you might say "that's because they're higher in triadic harmonic
> entropy!!" but even 5:6:7 is dissonant if you hear 5 as the "root." Is
> that psychoacoustic? Is it cultural?

Dissonance isn't a sound, it's a meaning. Discordance is a sound.

> The specific dimension in which I hear diminished chords as being
> dissonant is the same as the one in which I hear 5/4 as being
> consonant. Is that psychoacoustic? Is it cultural? Should I treat this
> dimension as one of the "constellation of psychoacoustic factors" you
> want me to consider when you talk about 5/4, or is this separate?

If the actual interval of 5/4 can be perceived apart from this context, then this context is not essential to 5/4. By that I mean if there is some context in which you can hear 5/4 as being "dissonant" (and there is, the superpyth augmented 2nd), then "consonant" is not an essential feature of 5/4.

> So it's not clear to me what part of things I know is "culture," what
> part is "concordance" (or what specifically you take "concordance" to
> mean), and what part might be some trippy thing from the "scale" that
> I don't know about, or what else.

Again, that's because you're conflating the signifier for that which is signified. The messager for the message. Strip away the meaning, and what you have left is what I'm talking about.

> This is why I'm hoping you might just say "these are the specific
> psychoacoustic parameters I'm talking about, or these are the specific
> phenomena I'm talking about," so it's completely clear to me. In fact,
> if you could just not use the word "concordance" at all, I think it
> might be tremendously helpful :)

I am talking about intervals as raw sounds. Nothing more. Think of the sound of your mother's voice, rather than anything she says. I can't list all the psychoacoustic factors, and I shouldn't have to.

> You were talking about subjectively comparing a mistuned 5/4 to a
> learned, remembered version, and I -thought- you were talking about
> someone who was only remembering the psychoacoustic aspects of 5/4,
> not the cultural ones. Yes or no?

Yes.

> > Do I need to remember what the psychoacoustic effects of JI are before I can
> > experience them? That's nuts, that's like saying I need to remember the wavelength of > > blue light before I can see the color blue!
>
> No, but you need to remember what a JI interval "sounds like" before
> you can subjectively assess a -resemblance- between that thing and an
> altered version of that thing and make a same/different judgment. And
> there are lots of things that 5/4 "sounds like," as you know, which
> are not psychoacoustic, such as the constellation of features that go
> into a "major third."

Those are not things 5/4 "sounds like"! A "major 3rd" is not a sound, it's a category. An abstraction. Think of what Cameron meant when he said "Just intonation is intonation 'of'." There is no one "sound" associated with a "major 3rd", no particular psychoacoustic qualities that can be pointed to that define the category. 5/4 doesn't "sound like" a major 3rd, it "means" a major 3rd (in some contexts).

> Are you really talking about "mistake" in its subjective sense...?
> There are plenty of people who mistake 3/2 and 2/1 every day, aren't
> there? And people who mistake 800 cents and 900 cents? And people who
> mistake 100 cents and 600 cents and so on, because they're both
> "dissonant"? These are common ear training examples. So yes, I think
> predictions about what the average listener will "mistake" will almost
> certainly be wrong unless you're predicting "the average listener will
> mistake almost everything for everything else," with few exceptions.
> One of those exceptions is probably that they can differentiate
> between beatless intervals and non-beatless intervals. But as for
> whether or not they'll mistake one interval for another? People do it
> all the time!

And yet, there are plenty of people who learn *not* to mistake these intervals. Tell me, how does that work? What allows people to train their ears? Psychic linking with their ear-training teacher?

> I have trouble interpreting your statements because they always
> involve a hypothetical "subject" doing the mistaking and assessing the
> resemblance, but I never quite know what the characteristics of this
> subject are. You seem to want this subject to have some sort of ear
> training specific to the task at hand. That's fine, but I wish I knew
> explicitly what it was, because, you also often seem to assume that
> the subject has SOMETHING that they're calling 5/4 and that they're
> able to separate that SOMETHING from the characteristics of the
> musical intervals being intoned as 5/4. And I don't know what it is. I
> don't know what -features- of the signal are being remembered and
> compared to other intervals, and I can tell you right now that those
> features aren't going to be the same for everyone, and I need to know
> exactly what they are before I can understand any statement being made
> about "resemblances" - resemblances, specifically, to what? When this
> listener hears 386 cents and a million effects happen, to which ones
> does the listener say "this is 5/4" and to which ones does the
> listener say "this is something cultural" or "this is from a 'major
> third'" or something like that?

I don't know, and it doesn't matter. Strip away all contextual factors, and whatever's left is what 5/4 "is". I'm talking phonology, you're talking semantics.

> Did you catch the subtle point I'm making? You're talking about
> -internal representations- and I'm still not sure what factors of the
> sound are being sliced and diced and stored.

How about *all the factors* of the *sound* itself, divorced from all the cognitive judgments about the meaning associated with the sound?

> Yes, the 7919-limit is a
> pretty good example of something which might not ever make any sense
> to talk about in a useful way, but what about the middle ground? Just
> don't mention any sort of gray area, middle ground-limits and we'll be
> fine...

Well, why? *Why* is the 7919-limit not a gray area? Why are you uncomfortable putting limitations lower, but comfortable with putting them here?

> Aw hell, you went there. Well, unfortunately, I disagree with every
> single sentence in this paragraph.

LOL, I don't actually think the 23-limit isn't JI. That was just bait, because I know how much you hate people claiming there are limits to human perception. So, thanks for taking the bait, because by disagreeing with this paragraph, you're agreeing to all the things you just disagreed with above, and demonstrating that you know exactly what I'm talking about. Now you're claiming that not only do you know what JI is, and not only do you know what the 23-limit is, but you believe the 23-limit is JI because there are 23-limit chords that you recognize as having the same qualities as other JI chords. All that nit-picking about "what a 5/4 is" went out the window, because you sure know what these big 23-limit chords are. What happened?

> And statistically insignificant for what?? The only thing
> statistically insignificant about the 23-limit is for you to describe
> the extent to which most people currently hear things. That's about
> it. That's good data for a study that'll make people be like "oh,
> that's what the characteristics of the average person hearing stuff
> are? Interesting." If that's what you want to study, that's cool, but
> just say explicitly that this is what you're after. Then it's a whole
> different thing we're talking about.

Do you want to know what I want? I want people to recognize that there's such a thing as reality, and that some descriptions of reality are incorrect and/or absurd. You are fighting me tooth-and-nail on this, insisting that no description of reality is absurd because anything is possible and there might come a day when some currently-absurd-looking description of reality suddenly becomes sensible. Well, by that logic I could say that there's an invisible pink unicorn floating in the sky above my house. There's no evidence I can point to that proves she's there, because we haven't yet invented the technology necessary to detect her. But someday we might invent something that can detect the tachyon q-waves she's reflecting, and then you'll see her!

> You're talking about remembering the sounds of things - of course
> cultural factors are a part of that!

Since when does culture determine our mnemonic ability?

-Igs

🔗cityoftheasleep <igliashon@...>

🔗Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...>

On Wed, Feb 1, 2012 at 11:01 PM, cityoftheasleep
<igliashon@...> wrote:
>
> Yeah, whatever. What am I recognizing when I see the color blue, and is it the same as what you are? Why, my "blue" could be your "green", we don't know if we're all seeing colors the "same way"...woo woo woo. That's a non-starter. There's no way to compare our internal states and see if they are the same. I can't explain to you what I'm hearing that enables me to identify a 5/4. Furthermore, no matter what I do, I'll never be able to demonstrate that we are all hearing the "same thing" when we hear a 5/4. So what? This is a pseudo-problem. This is like, day 1 of "Philosophy of Mind 101". That we all use the terms consistently and consistently agree on their usage is all that matters.

This a strawman. My point is that we don't use the terms consistently
at all, nor do we consistently agree on their usage, because the
entire fundamental question of our field of study is, using the
terminology you introduce later in your reply - how much, when we hear
a sound, are we "hearing the sound," vs hearing "a learned 'meaning'
for the sound?" Nobody agrees -at all- on that, and as a result, we
all have a different idea of what exactly the term "5/4" is referring
to. And many of our ideas differ tremendously with respect to
training, as well.

The question of whether the qualitative experience of one particular
sensation differs from person to person is not related to what I'm
saying here, which is that the sensation of someone hearing 5/4 is a
multidimensional phenomenon, and there is no consensus on which
dimensions are part of "the sound" and which are part of "the meaning
for the sound," and there's also no consistent usage for which
dimensions are regarded as fundamentally more important than the
others. Hence, when you talk about "how much the sound of 5/4 changes
with respect to mistuning," you could be talking about potentially
anything. This has nothing to do with whether the perceptual sensation
of periodicity buzz is different for me than it is for you, in the
same way that my blue may be different from your blue.

> > But, the point is, you keep talking about how much mistuning an
> > interval can take before it "stops being recognizable as the original"
> > as thought it were an objective thing, but it's obviously not.
>
> No, I don't! You keep reading it that way, but recognizability is a context- and subject-dependent thing. Put enough make-up and costumery on him, and I won't even recognize my own father.

You said this:

"No one is born knowing what a 5/4 is, or a 7/4, or any of that. All
that must be learned. However, those interval categories exist to some
extent *objectively*, because they are defined by psychoacoustic
properties, not by arbitrary musico-linguistic category distinctions."

Who's defining them, and by what specific psychoacoustic properties?
How do you know which percepts are psychoacoustic, and which are
associated, remembered things, evoked with their corresponding
musico-linguistic categories? Categorical perception is not the same
as the arbitrary labeling along a continuous percept.

> > It's very subjective what the listener is recognizing at all!
>
> So what? There's still something "real" there that is being recognized--why are you so adamant that music cognition is nothing but a string of fictions arbitrarily created in the mind with no basis in reality? Listen to yourself! If I were to concede to your objections, I'd be left with the conclusion that there's no such thing as a 5/4, or JI, or temperament. Is this really how you think?

No, I never said anything about music cognition being a "string of
fictions" at all. I don't even know what that means, obviously there
has to be an initial "real" stimulus to be a cognization of that
stimulus at all.

I'm simply pointing out that different listeners recognize different
parts of the stimulus and can prioritize different features
differently, such that the "5/4-defining" part for one listener may
not be the most important "5/4-defining" part for another listener.
Furthermore, listeners such as myself sometimes display a
characteristic failure to distinguish between the perception itself
and our own schematic representation of that perception, so that the
thing I might -CALL- a 5/4-defining thing is actually something
independent of its intonation, prone to one or more illusions so that
I may perceive my "5/4-ness" on a 6/5 in certain strange musical
situations, or perceive no "5/4-ness" on a perfect 5/4. AND,
furthermore, the thing I might call a "strange musical situation"
might be a "normal musical situation" for someone in another culture!
Therefore, if we're talking about subjective "recognitions" of 5/4,
you're leaving open the possibility that a particular subject may,
unwittingly, prioritize a certain "cardinal feature" for 5/4 which
doesn't happen to actually be something related to its intonation.

You said this:

"So, when we say that JI is represented in some way in a tuning, we
are asserting that there is a perceptible resemblance between the
intervals of the tuning and whatever set of JI intervals we claim is
being represented. If we want to say that JI is *not* represented in
some way in a tuning, then we are asserting a failure to recognize or
perceive a resemblance."

This is absolutely correct, assuming you understand that any
listener's believed "essence of 5/4-ness" could be completely wrong,
and fall prey to one or more of the illusions I mentioned above that
they just haven't experienced yet, like one of Rumsfeld's "unknown
unknown's." If you don't want to leave open this possibility, you'll
need to NOT leave arbitration of "5/4-ness" open to the interpretation
of the subject, which is unfortunately inherent if you talk about a
subject consciously "recognizing" 5/4-ness in another interval.

But in the past, you've stated you DON'T want to include these
possibilities - you seem to want to limit yourself to a "constellation
of psychoacoustic phenomena." Unfortunately, I DON'T KNOW what
specific psychoacoustic features you're talking about, specifically,
so I don't know what their properties are or how to evaluate any
statement about training and mistuning. I can make gut feelings about
how it's probably near impossible for the 1917-limit to do anything
musically unique that the 23-limit can't do, or whatever, but if
you're going to leave it totally open to a completely undefined
"constellation of psychoacoustic phenomena," how can I say even that?
I can't really say that there's NO possible effect at all that one
could ever do with 1917/1024, no matter what, or how clever and out of
the box someone might think.

What I can do is say that I doubt specifically that one will ever be
able to hear something like "periodicity buzz" or "beatlessness" or
critical band effects for something crazy like 1917/1024. This should
get you to shut up about me being a "nihilist." But, I'm never quite
sure if that IS what you're talking about. AND, of all of the features
I experience, I don't even know which ones are in your constellation
of psychoacoustic effects and which ones aren't! So all I want you to
do is clarify this one point.

In fact, the whole concept of a "constellation of psychoacoustic
phenomena" - what's the difference between that and a "constellation
of musical phenomena?" I assume that means that you want to exclude
phenomena deriving from non-psychoacoustic, culturally-conditioned,
habitually imagined "contexts" as well, right? I'm not even sure there
is a fine line between the two. You tell me where psychoacoustics ends
and culture begins, or why you think that they are two distinct things
in the first place.

> > You seem to
> > have a certain idea in your head about where psychoacoustics ends and
> > non-psychoacoustics begins,
>
> The hell I do! Maybe where "acoustics" ends and "psychoacoustics" begins (hint: the line is crossed when the auditory system is activated). On the contrary, *you're* the one behaving as if there's a fine line, claiming there are all these culturally-conditioned factors that exist entirely apart from psychoacoustics. You tell me where psychoacoustics ends and culture begins, or why you think that they are two distinct things in the first place.

No, you, god damn it! I -DON'T- want to make that assumption, but you
keep forcing me to by talking about "constellations of psychoacoustic
phenomena," an ill-defined set without a clear rule for deciding what
phenomena are members and which ones aren't. I'd assume, given a
half-assed way of evaluating, periodicity buzz and beatlessness are in
the set. Is that right? Are there other things?

> > 5/4 itself in strange scenarios was enough for me to
> > think it's "unrecognizable as 5/4" with zero mistuning - perhaps I was
> > recognizing the wrong thing.
>
> Hence the idea of "all else being equal". Context can make *anything* unrecognizable, so that's why when we talk about recognizing something, it's completely stupid to bring up situations where the context obscures the subject.

It's completely stupid to pretend like the sound of a raw 5/4 dyad by
itself doesn't come with any implicit "context" in my mind. It
obviously does, since I also hear a "major third" every time you play
it, which evokes percepts that have nothing to do with the intonation
of that interval. The only thing is that "major thirdness" and
"5/4-ness" are only correlated in meantone, and differ in other
tunings. If you want us to talk about context-free situations, that
would imply that there is a completely "context-free" way to hear an
interval. There may be, but I don't know what it is.

A habitually imagined "context" IS an example of cultural
conditioning, and since you've agree it's a non-trivial problem to
separate "cultural conditioning" from "psychoacoustics," maybe one
that doesn't even have a solution, it thus follows that it's a
non-trivial problem to separate "habitually imagined contexts" from
"psychoacoustics." Which ultimately goes back to the same thing YOU
just said above: where is the fine line between "context," "habitually
imagined context," "culturally conditioned, habitually imagined
context," and "psychoacoustics?"

Keep in mind I have no PROBLEMS with this, I'm just pointing out
that's what your concept of "recognization" is including: habitually
imagined contexts, which are non-trivial to a) identify and b) shut
off. This conflicts with your other, earlier definition, about ratios
being "constellations of psychoacoustic features," or at least alters
it so that this constellation also includes things which are obviously
SO responsive to learning that it makes no sense to ever place limits
on almost anything. That sums up the entirety of everything I've ever
written.

If you're comfortable with that being in your definition, then let's
proceed. If you're not, then please state explicitly how you want to
rule out these effects, which are again non-trivial to identify, so I
can go on.

For example, consider someone who's actually used to superpyth, so
that they hypothetically hear 5/4 as a dissonant aug2. Do you want
them to have a different idea of 5/4 than someone who's used to
meantone? If so, are you okay with this gestalt "breaking" with
mistuning differently from person to person?

> > My point is that there are a million different interpretations of a
> > ratio.
>
> In your head, apparently. Why does it have to be *interpreted*? Why can't it just be *heard*?

I mean that in the English language, there are a million possible ways
for me to interpret what you mean when you talk about a ratio, and
this conversation is a series of questions in which I try to get you
to tell me which one and in which you seem, to me, to keep changing
it.

> What I think you're doing is confusing "things that 5/4 can mean" with "what 5/4 'is' ". There are lots of things, infinite things really, that 5/4 can mean, just like the phoneme [a]. And if you get hung up on the meanings of sounds, it's easy to ignore the sounds themselves. This is what happened when you played a Superpyth augmented 2nd--the "meaning" of augmented 2nd overrode the sound of 5/4, kind of like how if someone speaks in a foreign accent, they might switch out some phonemes in words you recognize, and when you focus on understanding them, you might not notice the swapped phonemes. But if you focus in on the sound, like you eventually did with the superpyth augmented 2nd, you recognize that, hey, there's that *sound*, in a different context and with a different meaning.
//snip
> If the actual interval of 5/4 can be perceived apart from this context, then this context is not essential to 5/4. By that I mean if there is some context in which you can hear 5/4 as being "dissonant" (and there is, the superpyth augmented 2nd), then "consonant" is not an essential feature of 5/4.
//snip
> Again, that's because you're conflating the signifier for that which is signified. The messager for the message. Strip away the meaning, and what you have left is what I'm talking about.

!@&^#&*!#@^

But that's what ---I--- am saying. Separating the two in all cases is
NOT TRIVIAL. What you just said, this whole thing about focusing in on
the aug2 vs the M3, is a specific clever illusion demonstrating that
these two things are not the same. The way you aimed to show it to me
is, "just play these two in two situations in which they sound
different, then you'll recognize the part which sounds the same."
Except I'm the one who gave the situation to you, so obviously now
that I know about it I know it doesn't sound the same. So for me to
separate what 5/4 "is" from what 5/4 "means," can you please give me
an exhaustive list of every single crazy mind-bending illusion like
that, so I can do them all and learn what 5/4 "is," and prove that
there's no further illusions that aren't on that list?

Lastly, when you talk about learning how "the sound of 5/4" is the
same in both cases, that seems to me to be also similar to this: in
12-EDO, C-E-F#-B-D# and C-Eb-G are different chords, but Eb/D# is
there in both of them. I learned, at some point, that in the first
context, D# gives it this really poignant wistful sound, and in the
second context, it's minor. And in C-E-Bb-Eb, it's Hendrix or the
blues or something. Does that mean that there's something that 3\12
"is" which I just have to learn, based on its properties in different
contexts? How do you separate this from that?

This all brings me back to the same point, again. I keep thinking I
know what the sound of 5/4 "is." Then, I continually discover that
part of what I thought the sound "is" is just something that it
"meant." Finally it's at the point where I've admitted that I don't
know how it works. This is, also, a way heavier question than anything
really dealt with on the list in models like HE, so I don't think
anyone else knows either. Since we don't have an answer yet as to how
much of any sound is part of "the sound," and how much of it is part
of "a learned meaning for the sound," which is the same thing as
"cultural conditioning" or "a habitually imagined musical context"
using different words, it's impossible for me to talk about
"temperaments which are sensible representations of perception."

In fact, I don't even know if part of what a sound "means" can't go
and cause me to reconfigure some psychoacoustic parameter, which would
also change what it "is." In fact, I believe that that's the case.
Because, again, I believe that there's no "fine line" between
psychoacoustics and cultural phenomena.

> I am talking about intervals as raw sounds. Nothing more. Think of the sound of your mother's voice, rather than anything she says. I can't list all the psychoacoustic factors, and I shouldn't have to.

You don't have to list all of the psychoacoustic factors. You just
need to, for starters, give me a way to distinguish between what 5/4
"is" and what it "means." I'm not saying there isn't one, but I don't
know what it is.

> > > Do I need to remember what the psychoacoustic effects of JI are before I can
> > > experience them? That's nuts, that's like saying I need to remember the wavelength of > > blue light before I can see the color blue!
> >
> > No, but you need to remember what a JI interval "sounds like" before
> > you can subjectively assess a -resemblance- between that thing and an
> > altered version of that thing and make a same/different judgment. And
> > there are lots of things that 5/4 "sounds like," as you know, which
> > are not psychoacoustic, such as the constellation of features that go
> > into a "major third."
>
> Those are not things 5/4 "sounds like"! A "major 3rd" is not a sound, it's a category. An abstraction. Think of what Cameron meant when he said "Just intonation is intonation 'of'." There is no one "sound" associated with a "major 3rd", no particular psychoacoustic qualities that can be pointed to that define the category. 5/4 doesn't "sound like" a major 3rd, it "means" a major 3rd (in some contexts).

That's not true for me. Major thirds do have their own sound which is
intonation-dependent, and that sound might vaguely be described in
cliche western terms as "happy." And, back when I was trying to be hip
and equate major third with "5/4," it really was something that 5/4
"sounded like," because "5/4" became the name I had unwittingly
assigned to an interval category. If you're going to talk about
subjective resemblances, such as that someone blindly takes the sound
they hear and calls it 5/4, same as they would their mother's voice,
you're leaving it open to that as well. That's all I'm saying, nothing
more, nothing less.

Again, categorical perception is more than just labeling the interval
spectrum; it's a perceptual warping that has a number of strange
features, such as reducing intra-category discriminability.

> And yet, there are plenty of people who learn *not* to mistake these intervals. Tell me, how does that work? What allows people to train their ears? Psychic linking with their ear-training teacher?

They just learn to identify beatlessness by listening for when the beats stop.

> Strip away all contextual factors, and whatever's left is what 5/4 "is". I'm talking phonology, you're talking semantics.
//snip
> How about *all the factors* of the *sound* itself, divorced from all the cognitive judgments about the meaning associated with the sound?

This assumes that contextual factors have no bearing on
psychoacoustics, which I doubt is true. Contextual factors may cause
me to change my level of "s," for instance, and there's always the
habitual context in my mind. I'm also not sure which setting for an
interval contains no setting.

> > Yes, the 7919-limit is a
> > pretty good example of something which might not ever make any sense
> > to talk about in a useful way, but what about the middle ground? Just
> > don't mention any sort of gray area, middle ground-limits and we'll be
> > fine...
>
> Well, why? *Why* is the 7919-limit not a gray area? Why are you uncomfortable putting limitations lower, but comfortable with putting them here?

I'm applying the last definition of a "ratio" from you which I
understood, which was that it had to do with a constellation of
psychoacoustic features. The three I know of which are relevant are
periodicity buzz, beatlessness, and virtual pitch integration. The
last one, I don't believe, occurs all that much except for all but the
simplest ratios. So that leaves two, periodicity buzz, and
beatlessness. And, practically speaking, given what I know about
training and periodicity buzz, I doubt that it's possible for anyone
to learn to identify the phenomena 7919/4096 that are congruent with
your stated definition.

And you know what? Even with my extreme doubt, I'm STILL not going to
make the leap and say it's "impossible." Even though I agree that it
seems extremely practically unlikely, and that it may never be
possible, I STILL won't say it's impossible. I don't see any reason to
use that sort of language. If we're going to talk on this symbolic
level about what our choice of language means, all I can say is that I
think it's clearer, if I think that something is practically unlikely,
to say that and nothing more. And I also never really know.

> > Aw hell, you went there. Well, unfortunately, I disagree with every
> > single sentence in this paragraph.
>
> LOL, I don't actually think the 23-limit isn't JI. That was just bait, because I know how much you hate people claiming there are limits to human perception. So, thanks for taking the bait, because by disagreeing with this paragraph, you're agreeing to all the things you just disagreed with above, and demonstrating that you know exactly what I'm talking about. Now you're claiming that not only do you know what JI is, and not only do you know what the 23-limit is, but you believe the 23-limit is JI because there are 23-limit chords that you recognize as having the same qualities as other JI chords. All that nit-picking about "what a 5/4 is" went out the window, because you sure know what these big 23-limit chords are. What happened?

What happened is that I applied the last, semi-operational definition
of JI that you gave, and saw that the thing you were talking about is
clearly in contradiction with that. If you throw in intentional
contradictions like this to "test me," it makes it difficult for me to
understand the unintentional contradictions that you also seem to be
making.

My opinion is that I don't know what the difference is between what JI
"is" and what it "means," and I don't think anyone here does. And if
someone does, there's no consensus on what the difference is. In fact,
you seemed to agree earlier that there may be no fine line between the
two, but a gradient, caused perhaps by cultural factors influencing
directly the operation of psychoacoustical "hardware." Therefore, if
you're going to talk about what temperaments are "real" or "useful" or
"good representations," you need to give an exact definition of in
what sense you're even talking about ratios, JI, and temperament at
all. If you're talking about someone's totally subjective experience
of the sound, then that allows for introspective confusion about the
difference between a ratio's "existence" and "meaning." If you're
going to leave that possibility in there, then I'm not sure I agree
with any limitations on "resemblance" at all.

> Do you want to know what I want? I want people to recognize that there's such a thing as reality, and that some descriptions of reality are incorrect and/or absurd.

Well, we both agree there. I do believe that there is reality.

> You are fighting me tooth-and-nail on this, insisting that no description of reality is absurd because anything is possible and there might come a day when some currently-absurd-looking description of reality suddenly becomes sensible.

No shit. That's how science works. You don't just decide what you
think is "likely" based on your own half-assed initial understanding
of

1) a subject in a brand new field
2) with no literature and no serious experiments
3) in which the central question is to figure out what's possible
4) in which our best models and experiments don't even begin to
address the complex philosophical problems we're discussing now
5) partial lit reviews of the psychoacoustics literature

and then pretend that's the end of the story. You openly acknowledge
what the open questions are. You also openly acknowledge what sorts of
questions are beyond your horizon to answer. That seems obvious to me.

Do you know what was an absurd-looking description of reality circa
1900? The idea that something happening here can influence something
across the other side of the universe instantly.

I've replaced the phrase "pink unicorn" with "dark matter" below.

> Well, by that logic I could say that there's invisible 'dark matter' floating in the sky above my house. There's no evidence I can point to that proves it's there, because we haven't yet invented the technology necessary to detect it. But someday we might invent something that can detect the gravitational lensing around it, and then you'll see it!

This is the equivalent to a 19th century physicist of what you just
said. And, you know what? There might be intelligent life in the
universe composed of dark matter too. And there's probably dark matter
around us on Earth. And, so, maybe there's dark life in this Earthly
dark matter. And, maybe one of those lifeforms is a horse with a horn.
Yep, definitely a possibility. Might not be pink though, probably just
dark.

And so what? What is your goal with this, exactly?

-Mike

Temperaments as Descriptors of Tunings, Part I

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