Re: Digest Number 514

>>To my impertinent post:
>>
>>>>At the risk of appearing to gang up, The chord John played to me did
> indeed
>>>>NOT sound like a sus chord. The context was simply a major chord OUT OF
>>>>CONTEXT. Context, shamtext! The chord BY ITSELF sounded great! Context is
>>>>ANOTHER thing. (Sorry for the SHOUTING.)
>
>>Paul Erlich responded:
>>
>>> As I mentioned, I'm willing to bet that Joe's chord wouldn't sound like a
>>> sus chord either in a different context, or if there were not context at
>>> all.
>
Me:

>>Exactly my point, Paul.

Paul:

> Huh?

Where did the train jump the tracks?

Jerry wrote,

>Where did the train jump the tracks?

You said,

>>>>>At the risk of appearing to gang up, The chord John played to me did
>> indeed
>>>>>NOT sound like a sus chord. The context was simply a major chord OUT OF
>>>>>CONTEXT. Context, shamtext! The chord BY ITSELF sounded great! Context
is
>>>>>ANOTHER thing. (Sorry for the SHOUTING.)

To which I responded,

>>>> As I mentioned, I'm willing to bet that Joe's chord wouldn't sound like
a
>>>> sus chord either in a different context, or if there were not context
at
>>>> all.

There is a non-vacuous psychological phenomenon known as categorical
perception in which Western musicians (aside from those with serious
exposure to microtonal music) tend to hear all intervals in terms as falling
into one or another familiar category. Tests have shown that these
categorical intervals are bounded at around 50� above and below the 12-tET
intervals, except for the unison-semitone boundary, which is about 25� above
and below the unison. In other words, the fact that you heard John's chord
out of context means that your ear/brain most likely perceived the 435�
interval as falling into the "major third" category; meanwhile, Joe Monzo's
example started with the 386� interval, which you heard as a major third;
then the upper voice of the major third ascended by small intervals, ending
up 49� higher -- enough higher so that, categorically speaking, it sounded
like it had climbed a semitone -- hence the "fourth" perception.

Joe says he's created a MIDI file where a sus chord "resolves" down to a
14:18:21 -- maybe he can e-mail it to a few of us -- I'm willing to bet that
in this context, you'll hear the latter chord as a definite (but dissonant)
major chord, though it's exactly the same chord you heard at the end of
Joe's other MIDI file. It's much like the situation where, with two
identical regions of exactly the same color, one surrounded by white and the
other surrounded by black, the first appears much darker than the second.

To my naive post:
>
>>Play with it. See what seems to facilitate "locking." Is decay going to be
>>helpful or distracting? I think constant loudness is better for this sort
> of
>>thing.

To which Joseph Pehrson kindly and diplomatically responded:
>
> I think he means decay as a function of frequency, not a function of time.
> Maybe you knew that. Well, then, I like the 0.88 suggestion (since using
> harmonics of constant loudness would sound unnatural and especially the
> highest harmonic would stick out like a sore thumb), but I'd definitely use
> much more than 8 harmonics.
>
>>Since our concerns are with relativity, I wouldn't think the base would
>>matter. Am I mistaken???
>
> It matters a bit. Somthing in the range of middle C for the "7" might be
> good.
>
Thanks for coming to my rescue, Joseph. I learn a great deal every time I
pull up a new Tuning List Digest, largely to the credit of the kind folks
like you.

Gratefully,

Jerry

I wrote those things, Jerry.

-----Original Message-----
From: Gerald Eskelin [mailto:stg3music@earthlink.net]
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2000 8:39 PM
To: tuning@onelist.com
Subject: Re: [tuning] Digest Number 514

From: "Gerald Eskelin" <stg3music@earthlink.net>

To my naive post:
>
>>Play with it. See what seems to facilitate "locking." Is decay going to be
>>helpful or distracting? I think constant loudness is better for this sort
> of
>>thing.

To which Joseph Pehrson kindly and diplomatically responded:
>
> I think he means decay as a function of frequency, not a function of time.
> Maybe you knew that. Well, then, I like the 0.88 suggestion (since using
> harmonics of constant loudness would sound unnatural and especially the
> highest harmonic would stick out like a sore thumb), but I'd definitely
use
> much more than 8 harmonics.
>
>>Since our concerns are with relativity, I wouldn't think the base would
>>matter. Am I mistaken???
>
> It matters a bit. Somthing in the range of middle C for the "7" might be
> good.
>
Thanks for coming to my rescue, Joseph. I learn a great deal every time I
pull up a new Tuning List Digest, largely to the credit of the kind folks
like you.

Gratefully,

Jerry

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