Re: Up-down pitch perception

[Alexandra Hettergott <a.hettergott@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Kevin Austin wrote:
>Thank you for the summary of responses. Most interesting.

I join the thanks, to me this was also of particular interest.

>I have found that up to about 10% of students in my courses, at some time
>(and sometimes regularly), demonstrate up/down discrimination
>difficulties. The circumstances can either be intervals played in
>isolation, or within melodic passages. Since my findings are shown in the
>form of 'writing' rather than 'asking' which is higher (and given that
>the students are spending 10 or more hours per week studying music), I
>have come to accept that up-down pitch perception is a serious problem,
>sometimes, for some students (and is a complex matter).

How "pure" are the signals you are testing ? Sine tones, too ? or mixtures ? gotten
from acoustic instruments, like the piano (real or synthetic) ? or even all or
nothing of this ?
>
>It is also my experience that many people 'from the general population'
>hear sound the way color is perceived as an un-categorized continuum ... so
>which "is" higher, red or green? (except in traffic lights).

Well, as to me my modest experiences I would agree: untrained listeners get more the
"whole" of a, lets say, impressionist painting, while the trained listeners look also
for the stroke of the brush; so people with (long-term) ear training would listen for
(musical) interval relations rather, I would guess, even in tasks dealing with very
complex sounds. (So this might be a little, too, in the direction of
synthetic/analytic listening behavior.)


Sincerely,
Alexandra Hettergott.

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Alexandra Hettergott
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... la noche,
pequeños ruidos
... sombra y espacio, tierra
y tiempo,
algo que corre y cae
y pasa ...
   (Pablo Neruda)
(and thanks for the "little beyond the scope of this thread" ; btw I didn't really
convince you re the "oxymoron" recently, n'est-ce pas ?  ;-).