color and pitch

>I feel this is a real underestimation of the human mind. Why would our
>perceptions of intervals be any more limited than colour.

Aren't there fewer primary colors than there are 19-limit intervals?

While many people with absolute pitch liken the feeling of discriminating
pitch to the feeling of discriminating color, and while it may be helpful
to pair color with pitch while training for absolute pitch (just a training
device, no more effective than pairing with smells), I think there's almost
no resemblance between the way our minds perceive the two (beyond the basic
fact that they both work by discriminating frequency), almost no
resemblance between the way we perceive harmony and the mixing of colors,
etc. If you don't agree, try coming up with a color scheme that would
allow a deaf person to perceive the kind of pitch relationships in music.

The only other thing is synethesia (sp?), but I don't enough about it to
comment.

C.

Carl Lumma wrote:

>
>
> Aren't there fewer primary colors than there are 19-limit intervals?

The primary colors are three but the eye can perceive millions of colors! My
point is the mind is capable of processing a hell of a lot more than a few
simple low number ratios! The limit of music no more be determined than the
limit of consciousness itself. And for that matter we don't even know what
consciousness is. All this falls into the myth that science and figured
everything out, or can. All we have is a few general principles that work
pretty close most of the time. Yet adjustments are always being made! Music is
as much as psychological things as much as a science and psychology has pretty
much stopped in its tracks. No amount of number explain why I hear the pushes
and pulls in a piece of music, or why it effects me the way it does, or why it
doesn't in other cases.

>
>
> While many people with absolute pitch liken the feeling of discriminating
> pitch to the feeling of discriminating color, and while it may be helpful
> to pair color with pitch while training for absolute pitch (just a training
> device, no more effective than pairing with smells), I think there's almost
> no resemblance between the way our minds perceive the two (beyond the basic
> fact that they both work by discriminating frequency), almost no
> resemblance between the way we perceive harmony and the mixing of colors,
> etc. If you don't agree, try coming up with a color scheme that would
> allow a deaf person to perceive the kind of pitch relationships in music.
>
> The only other thing is synethesia (sp?), but I don't enough about it to
> comment.
>
>

-- Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
www.anaphoria.com

Kraig
I agree science is not always correct
what's that old Woody Allen joke, "everything my parents told me was good for me
was wrong...Milk...the Sun.......College.

Kraig Grady wrote:

> From: Kraig Grady <kraiggrady@anaphoria.com>
>
> Carl Lumma wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > Aren't there fewer primary colors than there are 19-limit intervals?
>
> The primary colors are three but the eye can perceive millions of colors! My
> point is the mind is capable of processing a hell of a lot more than a few
> simple low number ratios! The limit of music no more be determined than the
> limit of consciousness itself. And for that matter we don't even know what
> consciousness is. All this falls into the myth that science and figured
> everything out, or can. All we have is a few general principles that work
> pretty close most of the time. Yet adjustments are always being made! Music is
> as much as psychological things as much as a science and psychology has pretty
> much stopped in its tracks. No amount of number explain why I hear the pushes
> and pulls in a piece of music, or why it effects me the way it does, or why it
> doesn't in other cases.
>
> >
> >
> > While many people with absolute pitch liken the feeling of discriminating
> > pitch to the feeling of discriminating color, and while it may be helpful
> > to pair color with pitch while training for absolute pitch (just a training
> > device, no more effective than pairing with smells), I think there's almost
> > no resemblance between the way our minds perceive the two (beyond the basic
> > fact that they both work by discriminating frequency), almost no
> > resemblance between the way we perceive harmony and the mixing of colors,
> > etc. If you don't agree, try coming up with a color scheme that would
> > allow a deaf person to perceive the kind of pitch relationships in music.
> >
> > The only other thing is synethesia (sp?), but I don't enough about it to
> > comment.
> >
> >
>
> -- Kraig Grady
> North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
> www.anaphoria.com
>
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i agree that color has has limited value as an anlaogy to sound.

Antriasian@aol.com, the Evil Master writes:

>i agree that color has has limited value as an anlaogy to sound.

Hmmmm....sound is vibration. Light is vibration.
So Sound and Light are vibration.
Sound travels at the speed of sound and
Light travels at the speed of light.

So Sound and Light are closely related.

--
* D a v i d B e a r d s l e y
* xouoxno@virtulink.com
*
* J u x t a p o s i t i o n E z i n e
* M E L A v i r t u a l d r e a m house monitor
*
* http://www.virtulink.com/immp/lookhere.htm

> Hmmmm....sound is vibration. Light is vibration.
> So Sound and Light are vibration.
> Sound travels at the speed of sound and
> Light travels at the speed of light.
>
> So Sound and Light are closely related.

Well...

Here are some dissimilarities:
1. Human-audible sound spans over about 10 octaves, whereas
human-visible light spans over less than a single octave.
2. Colors tend to mix to form a composite color, whereas individual
frequencies of sound remain distinct.
3. Light travels in straight lines and sound penetrates many objects
or flows around them.

Gary Morrison's dissimilarities are thought-provoking. Perhaps someone with
a better physics background could respond.

Morrison wrote:

> Here are some dissimilarities:
>1. Human-audible sound spans over about 10 octaves, whereas
> human-visible light spans over less than a single octave.

But within that single octave, how discriminate is the visual sense? I
think what is important here is simply that an octave analogy (with octave
equivalence and all that) is not applicable in the visual domain. This
makes it extremely difficult to imagine a meaningful one-to-one
correspondance between sound and light frequencies.

>2. Colors tend to mix to form a composite color, whereas individual
> frequencies of sound remain distinct.

Here, the analogy is more interesting. For sounds, we distinguish between
composite and complexes of individual wave forms, e.g. between a timbre and
a chord. It might be interesting to make a music with visual accompaniment
where patterns of cohesion and separation are played out in the individual
domains in parallel or contrapuntal motion...

>3. Light travels in straight lines and sound penetrates many objects
> or flows around them.
<

Sound travels in straight lines from a source as well, but reflects off of
a wider variety of surfaces and has a different absorbtion pattern, one in
which many different materials radiate the sound further. The difference
between light and sound here is a matter of exactly which surfaces will
reflect or absorb the given waves.

Gary -

Brilliant! I wonder why your No. 2 is true? Does this have to do with the
wave form of electromagnetic energy? I've seen the pictures of the complex
wave consisting of electric potential pulsating up and down while magnetic
potential goes sideways. It's only an abstraction, of course, but might
show why two such waves can't exist simultaneously in the same place, but
must combine into some sort of "compromise" wave of a different color.
Also, it would seem that two sources of the same color -- say, yellow --
could be out of phase by 180 degrees and add by cancelling each other out,
as seems to be possible with two sound sources. But I never heard of that
happening, either.

So it seems as if we're treating two different animals!

Dad

----------
> From: Gary Morrison <mr88cet@texas.net>
> To: tuning@onelist.com
> Subject: [tuning] Re: color and pitch
> Date: Sunday, February 28, 1999 3:30 PM
>
> From: Gary Morrison <mr88cet@texas.net>
>
> > Hmmmm....sound is vibration. Light is vibration.
> > So Sound and Light are vibration.
> > Sound travels at the speed of sound and
> > Light travels at the speed of light.
> >
> > So Sound and Light are closely related.
>
> Well...
>
> Here are some dissimilarities:
> 1. Human-audible sound spans over about 10 octaves, whereas
> human-visible light spans over less than a single octave.
> 2. Colors tend to mix to form a composite color, whereas individual
> frequencies of sound remain distinct.
> 3. Light travels in straight lines and sound penetrates many objects
> or flows around them.
>
>
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>

> Here are some dissimilarities:
>1. Human-audible sound spans over about 10 octaves, whereas
> human-visible light spans over less than a single octave.
>2. Colors tend to mix to form a composite color, whereas individual
> frequencies of sound remain distinct.

Well, different colors can be distinct if presented in different parts
of the visual field. There is a more important difference in how color
and sound are perceived. Essentially, our retinas are lined with
millions of color detectors, which come in only three types. Each has a
very different response curve as a function of frequency. Our brain can
determine the frequency-correlate at each point on the retina by
comparing the magnitude of the responses from the three types of
receptors. That is why we usually need only three primary colors --
mixing different amounts of three widely separated, fixed frequencies
can mimic almost the entire range of responses to one continuously
variable frequency. There is nothing analogous in sound whatsoever.

>3. Light travels in straight lines and sound penetrates many objects
> or flows around them.

Actually, on small scales light flows around objects (diffraction) and
certainly light penetrates glass. But while sound requires a medium to
propogate, light does not (light is electric and magnetic fields
mutually inducing one another). Electromagntic radiation in the audible
spectrum probably exists in the universe, but that doesn't mean it has
anything to do with sound (it certainly isn't audible).

Gary Morrison wrote,

>> 2. Colors tend to mix to form a composite color, whereas individual
>> frequencies of sound remain distinct.

His dad wrote,

>I wonder why your No. 2 is true? Does this have to do with the
>wave form of electromagnetic energy? I've seen the pictures of the
complex
>wave consisting of electric potential pulsating up and down while
magnetic
>potential goes sideways. It's only an abstraction, of course, but
might
>show why two such waves can't exist simultaneously in the same place,
but
>must combine into some sort of "compromise" wave of a different color.

As I explained last night, is only our limited means of perceiving color
that makes the combination of two different colors appear to be a single
color. Two waves of different frequency can exist in the same place,
regardless of the medium (if the medium is nonlinear, sum and difference
frequencies and higher harmonics will be present as well -- there are
crystals that do this for light).

>Also, it would seem that two sources of the same color -- say, yellow
--
>could be out of phase by 180 degrees and add by cancelling each other
out,
>as seems to be possible with two sound sources. But I never heard of
that
>happening, either.

It happens very often in the optics lab -- that's why you get
interference fringes if you pass a laser through a double slit. But you
can do that with objects that classically wouldn't even be considered
waves -- such as electrons or helium nuclei -- because quantum
mechanically, everything is a wave!

Paul Erlich's explanation of our sensitivity
to only 3 primary colors, etc. etc., reminded
me of something I read once regarding language.
There are some Native American tribes of
the Pacific northwest that have words for
only 3 colors, which would translate loosely
as red-orange, yellow-green, and blue-violet.
Which once again proves that our understanding
and analysis of our perceptions is largely based
on our experience and social conditioning.

- Monzo

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Message text written by INTERNET:tuning@onelist.com
>
From: Joseph L Monzo <monz@juno.com>

Paul Erlich's explanation of our sensitivity
to only 3 primary colors, etc. etc., reminded
me of something I read once regarding language.
There are some Native American tribes of
the Pacific northwest that have words for
only 3 colors, which would translate loosely
as red-orange, yellow-green, and blue-violet.
Which once again proves that our understanding
and analysis of our perceptions is largely based
on our experience and social conditioning.
<

Attic Greek only had one word for blue and green, but that doesn't mean
that they perceived color differently from contemporary English speakers
who have two words. When it is necessary to discriminate between two
colors auxilliary words will come into play, so the number of terms
available in any language is essentially uncountable. Simply comparing
numbers of words in lexicons will not adequate describe their usage.

There is a widely anthologized article by the linguist Geoffrey Pullam on
'The Great Eskimo Hoax', which describes the similar journey of a linguist
myth through the popular imagination. (In short, Eskimos have just as many
terms for snow as the anglophone arctic dwellers have --- in short: big
deal.)

> In short, Eskimos have just as many
> terms for snow as the anglophone arctic
> dwellers have

It was always my understanding that the
Inuit (the Eskimos' own name for themselves)
have about 30 words to describe snow
- far more than the anglophones. Is this the
hoax you're referring to?

At any rate, it's certainly true that English
has many terms for bovines (cow, calf, bull,
steer, ox, veal, etc.) and only one for "camel",
while it's quite the opposite for the Arabs.

I see us both making essentially the same point:
a language develops according to the needs
of its users. At the same time, the language
itself shapes its users' thought processes.

- Monzo
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Message text written by INTERNET:tuning@onelist.com
>I see us both making essentially the same point:
a language develops according to the needs
of its users. At the same time, the language
itself shapes its users' thought processes.

- Monzo<

That's not what I was saying at all. Read the Pullam article (which is a
history of how a casual, and false, statement by an amateur linguist about
Eskimo words for snow has become folklore and an academic commonplace
although it is totally without basis in truth) and maybe a good
introduction to modern linguistics (Pinker is pretty good). In short,
while the general capacity for language shapes thinking, particular
languages do not. It is rather the user who shapes her own idiolect,
creating the language she needs from innate linguistic structure, an
aquired, parameterized lexicon (which may not correspond to a single,
generally recognized dialect), and individual creativity.

Now, this does not disregard the way in which individuals or societies use
and abuse language as a means of shaping the thinking of others. This kind
of manipulation can be subtle or crass, but this is not a unique property
of a specific language, and it is not isolated to linguistic activities.
Muzac was one attempt to do just this, and the Chinese tone for well-being,
mentioned earlier on this list, was another.

> Actually, on small scales light flows around objects (diffraction)

From what I recall of my EM Theory class from many years ago, this is
related to frequency. Radio waves can diffract around buildings up to a
point, but light can barely do so at all. I can't recall for sure how that
process worked, but it would not surprise me if there is an analogous
effect applying to sound waves that might help explain why they can
diffract around objects fairly easily too (or easier than light anyway!).

> >Also, it would seem that two sources of the same color -- say, yellow
> --
> >could be out of phase by 180 degrees and add by cancelling each other
> out,
> >as seems to be possible with two sound sources. But I never heard of
> that
> >happening, either.
>
> It happens very often in the optics lab -- that's why you get
> interference fringes if you pass a laser through a double slit.

This is the basis of interferometry, which is being used for many
purposes, including (shortly) in an attempt to detect gravity waves. I
remember doing a lab back at UT to measure the index of refraction of
various gasses by interferometry. The trick though is that you have to
have a coherent source of light, like a laser.