Intonation and human/animal biology

Hello -

I have a theory which, if carefully researched, might prove
to be near the truth.

I've found that some people really love JI and find the usual
EQT to be much less appealing. For others, particularly musicians
and those with considerable musical background, the reverse is
true - they find EQT much preferable to JI.

My theory can explain both these phenomena. In many areas,
there is a powerful tendency for people to greatly prefer what
they perceive as authentic over what they perceive to be fake.
Generally, what they perceive to be authentic is what they have
been long familiar with. I believe that human and animal ears
are particularly sensitive in the area of distinguishing between
the sound (voice, call) of another animal from the sound of
inanimate objects - leaves rustling in the breeze, running water,
raindrops falling, etc., etc.

If I am not mistaken, the voices of birds and mammals are
based on the principle of the horn, and the overtones of horn
tones are essentially in a series of perfect integer multiples
of the frequency of the fundamental, with this relationship
being maintained even as the fundamental frequency varies
over time (vibrato, glides).

A clue for an animal or human telling that a sound was made
by another animal or was inanimate would be whether or not the
sound had the horn-like overtone structure or not. If it had a
horn-like overtone structure, it would be from another animal.
If not, it would not be from another living creature and it
probably would be less interesting.

Although a polyphonic musical chord in just intonation is not
identical with a horn like single musical note, it seems to me that
it has something of the quality of a "living" sound - with something
resembling the emotional character of being from another living
creature. I propose that there are mechanisms in our hearing
system (and that of mammals, birds, and other vertebrates) which
are very sensitive to detecting whether even these polyphonic
chords truly have the living horn-like character or not.

This could explain the fact that many people find the sound of
justly intoned chords much warmer and more emotionally appealing
than that of even slightly deviating chords performed in 12-EQT.

On the other hand, those with extensive musical background in
12-EQT performed music would have had a training-related alteration
in their auditory sound processing systems leading them to respond
to 12-EQT chords as "right" and having "the true musical sound" with
chords in JI sounding "off" and "strange" to them, giving rise in them
to reactions of distaste and even great antipathy.

Ralph David Hill Borrego Springs, CA

Hi Dave!

>If I am not mistaken, the voices of birds and mammals are
>based on the principle of the horn, and the overtones of horn
>tones are essentially in a series of perfect integer multiples
>of the frequency of the fundamental, with this relationship
>being maintained even as the fundamental frequency varies
>over time (vibrato, glides).

I'm not sure about birds, but human voices, as I'm sure you
know, are perfectly harmonic.

> A clue for an animal or human telling that a sound was made
>by another animal or was inanimate would be whether or not the
>sound had the horn-like overtone structure or not. If it had a
>horn-like overtone structure, it would be from another animal.
>If not, it would not be from another living creature and it
>probably would be less interesting.

I think many of us here have postulated something like this at
one time or another.

> Although a polyphonic musical chord in just intonation is not
>identical with a horn like single musical note, it seems to me that
>it has something of the quality of a "living" sound - with something
>resembling the emotional character of being from another living
>creature. I propose that there are mechanisms in our hearing
>system (and that of mammals, birds, and other vertebrates) which
>are very sensitive to detecting whether even these polyphonic
>chords truly have the living horn-like character or not.

I often think of music as 'fake speech'. I think we use a lot of
the same machinery to hear vowels and intonation in speech that we
use to listen to music.

If you've been following the list recently, you saw this:

/tuning/topicId_46259.html#46355

-Carl