infinity again

Perhaps I am not as articulate as I would like...let me try to say
again what I am feeling about sound and perception. For example, on the
"tuning@eartha.mills.edu" CD, Carter Scholz says about his piece..."uses
the first 128 tones of the harmonic series." Now, unless I am missing
something, humans cannot hear frequencies that high up...can they? As I
said, I don't know the physical limits of tonal perception, where the
cutoff point is (and of course, it is surely a matter open to
discussion)...but, our sense organs are limited by our physical
construction as humans. My point is, when folks talk about those high
harmonics, or stacking 5ths to the 34th or 53rd...we can't really hear
the REAL pitch...it is a mathematical representation of that pitch,
brought down into the range of our hearing. For example, I have tuned
one of my fretless guitars to 1/1, 5/4, 3/2, 7/4, 35/32, and
21/16...but, the string tuned to 35/32 is not at the actual frequency of
the 35th harmonic; it is much lower. And in Danielou's book, "Music and
the Power of Sound," he speaks of cycles of hundreds and thousands of
5ths...surely, these are not in the range of human hearing. And, of
course, those sorts of concepts make me wonder, where ARE those sounds
in the Universe? What are they doing up there, and are there beings in
the Universe who CAN hear them?
My point? That theory and reality are often not the same thing in
music...just as an equal temperament is a representation of pure
pitches, not the actually perfect tones, so music that speaks of using
those really high harmonics is not really using those actual
harmonics...they cannot be heard, as far as I know, by human beings. I
apologize for my lack of math/scientific expertise...I tend to operate
more from an intuitive base of ideas and reasoning. I hope this post
makes more clear my point...
I am certainly open to learning more about the limits of perception. It
does seem, though, that humans do, indeed, have limits, as far as
vision, hearing, smell, etc. And, on the other hand, perhaps there are
ways to extend/expand on those limits, through techniques such as
meditation...which, of course, is another wide open area for discussion.
Which is the great thing about this list...there's a bunch of
interesting folks here, with viewpoints that are guaranteed to make one
think and stretch one's own concepts...Hstick

Neil Haverstick wrote:

> those sorts of concepts make me wonder, where ARE those sounds
> in the Universe? What are they doing up there, and are there beings in
> the Universe who CAN hear them?

As you are speaking of them, they're not doing anything. They are not up there. They're not even theys. That is to say, harmonic relationships between tones have no existential being, rather they constitute an abstract concept. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that English has no ability to designate gender in plural pronouns, so we are
forced to replace any plural noun with "they" and "them," unwittingly implying real existence where there may be none.

But there's a more subtle logical stumbling block, as well. Consider as an analogy the problem arising from the use of the word "chance" in speaking of the origins of the universe. Even scientists sometimes fall into this trap. Chance has no being, it is merely a concept that we use for things whose cause-effect relationship we don't understand;
chance cannot "do" anything because it's only an abstract concept of human invention, therefore it cannot have caused the Big Bang nor guided evolutionary processes. Something caused it, we just don't know what. The same is true of the set of harmonic relationships between tones: it's merely a system of mathematical abstractions used to grasp the
situation, but having no essence, no objective existence in the space-time continuum, no ability to participate in causal activity.

The question is, what may _I_ do with musical tones having various relationships to each other, and how does a change in the scalar relationships change my music's effect on the bodies, minds, and spirits of my fellow man? And also, how am I affected by the music I choose to expose myself to? How harmonic relationships pertain to these questions is
still largely a mystery. Thus, I applaud Mark C.'s involvement in attempting to unravel it.

There may or may not be mystical connections between real musical tones and real cosmological vibrations. In fact, there may or may not be physical relationships between them. Most of the great civilizations of ancient times believed that one or both kinds of relationships existed and were important to music. Cosmological vibrations are not very
well understood; they may or may not have nearly harmonic relationships among themselves. But we must be careful to distinguish between actual vibrations and the concepts we use to describe them. Intuition will not help you here; only clear reasoning will keep you on track.

> music that speaks of using
> those really high harmonics is not really using those actual
> harmonics...they cannot be heard, as far as I know, by human beings.

As some have already made strides toward pointing out, almost any arbitrarily chosen set of harmonic relationships, however high in the series, may potentially be intoned and "heard" by humans. At the time of their intonation, they become actual harmonics of an implied fundamental tone; this fundamental may well be below the range of human hearing.
Whether it is or not may have musical meaning in some contexts, but if it is, that does not invalidate the harmonicity of the relationships. The real existence of an implied fundamental may be seen in the wavelength of the combined waveform. So in a sense, the opposite of your point of view is true: by putting tones in a given harmonic relationship,
you create a fundamental tone.

There are two other matters, both of which have been discussed extensively in this forum, which impinge upon this subject: 1) how small an interval the human ear can discern, and 2) how high a harmonic relationship can be discerned _as such_ by the human auditory apparatus. The former seems to have an objective, if complex, answer. The latter seems
to be almost entirely a subjective matter of musical context. But certainly, our inability to hear frequencies above about 15k to 30k Hz does not interfere with our ability to hear high harmonic relationships, nor to put them to good musical use. And none of this is to say that we may not put non-harmonically related tones to good musical use.

--
David J. Finnamore
Nashville, TN, USA
http://members.xoom.com/dfinn.1
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