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Re: AUDITORY Digest - 4 Jun 2000 to 5 Jun 2000 (#2000-73)
Regarding Cooper's question about the criteria for being a musician: We
struggled with that issue a while back and, of course, concluded that it is
a continuum ranging from a music lesson or two to being a card-carrying
professional. We reported some pitch and pattern discrimination data for
college students, as a function of their musical background, that of their
families, etc., and found that their musical training/experience did not
seem to predict performance on psychoacoustic tasks. Then we tried some
pretty credible professionals (members of the St. Louis Symphony) and they
did a bit better...but not lots. The general conclusions were that a)
listeners generally do well on whatever they have been intensely trained to
listen to (ie Toscannini really could hear out one bad string in a hundred
and our laboratory listeners were better than musicians in discriminating
between half-sec ten-tone patterns), and b) musicians did not seem to have
super pitch discrimination abilities, compared to those that could not be
found among lots of nonmusicians, BUT no one with really bad pitch
discrimination seemed to have become a musician.
The paper in question was: Spiegel, M.F., and Watson, C.S. (1984).
Performance on frequency-discrimination tasks by musicians and nonmusicians.
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 76, 1690-1695.
Hope that is of some help...
Chuck Watson
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Subject: AUDITORY Digest - 4 Jun 2000 to 5 Jun 2000 (#2000-73)
There are 4 messages totalling 303 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Operational Definition of Musician (4)
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Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 00:30:59 -0500
From: William Cooper <wcooper@UTDALLAS.EDU>
Subject: Operational Definition of Musician
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Dear Group,
Though I follow the discussion of this list regularly, I have yet to =
make a
contribution and was not terrible sure how one does.
Thus, I send my apologies in advance if I have failed to submit this
question correctly:
Does anyone know of an established criteria by which a researcher can
separate a collection of subjects into groups of musicians and
non-musicians?
Sincerely,
William Cooper
University of Texas at Dallas
email: wcooper@utdallas.edu
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<DIV><FONT size=3D2>Dear Group,<BR><BR>Though I follow the discussion of =
this list=20
regularly, I have yet to make a<BR>contribution and was not terrible =
sure how=20
one does.<BR>Thus, I send my apologies in advance if I have failed to =
submit=20
this<BR>question correctly:<BR><BR>Does anyone know of an established =
criteria=20
by which a researcher can<BR>separate a collection of subjects into =
groups of=20
musicians and<BR>non-musicians?<BR><BR><BR>Sincerely,<BR><BR>William=20
Cooper<BR>University of Texas at Dallas<BR><BR>email: <A=20
href=3D"mailto:wcooper@utdallas.edu";>wcooper@utdallas.edu</A><BR></FONT><=
/DIV></BODY></HTML>
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Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 16:34:19 +0800
From: Eric Delory <eric@ARL.NUS.EDU.SG>
Subject: Re: Operational Definition of Musician
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William,
I don't know of any objective established criterion but maybe this
simplistic approach can help.
In the context where auditory research and music are to interfere, some
boundaries will unfortunately necessarily need to be set using precise
criteria that everybody understands and finds appropriate for the
objectivity and future use of your results by others.
To me lots of musicians think they are musicians because they have played
an instrument for a certain number of years, can read a score, know a
little bit of theory about composition, harmonic structure etc..., what
timber is etc... This is far too restrictive and sometimes wrong, everybody
will agree.
As music can be defined as the art of sounds (and I find this definition
appropriate, because it is not restrictive and leaves a lot of nice
ambiguity and freedom for creativity), a musician is someone who can either
create or participate to the creation of music, as a composer or an
interpreter. There are, I find, a few universal components that any
composer or interpreter can recognise.
1) Tempo is the canvas of music but doesn't make a very discriminant
criterion; a better one related to tempo is rhythm: a change from a binary
to tertiary rhythm would make a nice test.
2) Not far is tonality, as whether it is changing rapidly or not, a
musician will respect it as a reference quite naturally and will detect a
change when it happens.
3) Timbre, as a primary colour of music. Changing one instrument in a piece
of music played by a group of interpreters for another one close in timber
(trumpet played at lows to tuba, or oboe played at lows to bassoon, jumbey
to congas) is something a musician ear would easily detect.
Rhythm, tonality and timber experiments are not very difficult to set up if
you have a group of musician friends ready to play the game. And most
important, these criteria are universal and intemporal. The problem may
then be that you'll find a lot of your subjects are musicians or potential
musicians, and indeed lots of human beings are potential musicians! Funny
but interesting question you had there, I hope you'll find your way out.
Eric.
At 12:30 AM 6/5/00 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear Group,
>
>Though I follow the discussion of this list regularly, I have yet to make a
>contribution and was not terrible sure how one does.
>Thus, I send my apologies in advance if I have failed to submit this
>question correctly:
>
>Does anyone know of an established criteria by which a researcher can
>separate a collection of subjects into groups of musicians and
>non-musicians?
>
>
>Sincerely,
>
>William Cooper
>University of Texas at Dallas
>
>email: <mailto:wcooper@utdallas.edu>wcooper@utdallas.edu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Eric Delory
Acoustic Research Laboratory
Dept of Electrical Engineering
National University of Singapore
Block WS2, Level5, Room 05#30
1, Engineering Drive 3
Singapore 117576
Email: eric@arl.nus.edu.sg
Tel: 65- 874 8326
Fax: 65- 874 8325
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Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii"
<html>
<br>
William,<br>
<br>
I don't know of any objective established criterion but maybe this
simplistic approach can help. <br>
In the context where auditory research and music are to interfere, some
boundaries will unfortunately necessarily need to be set using precise
criteria that everybody understands and finds appropriate for the
objectivity and future use of your results by others.<br>
To me lots of musicians think they are musicians because they have played
an instrument for a certain number of years, can read a score, know a
little bit of theory about composition, harmonic structure etc..., what
timber is etc... This is far too restrictive and sometimes wrong,
everybody will agree.<br>
As music can be defined as the art of sounds (and I find this definition
appropriate, because it is not restrictive and leaves a lot of nice
ambiguity and freedom for creativity), a musician is someone who can
either create or participate to the creation of music, as a composer or
an interpreter. There are, I find, a few universal components that any
composer or interpreter can recognise. <br>
<br>
1) Tempo is the canvas of music but doesn't make a very discriminant
criterion; a better one related to tempo is rhythm: a change from a
binary to tertiary rhythm would make a nice test. <br>
2) Not far is tonality, as whether it is changing rapidly or not, a
musician will respect it as a reference quite naturally and will detect a
change when it happens. <br>
3) Timbre, as a primary colour of music. Changing one instrument in a
piece of music played by a group of interpreters for another one close in
timber (trumpet played at lows to tuba, or oboe played at lows to
bassoon, jumbey to congas) is something a musician ear would easily
detect.<br>
<br>
Rhythm, tonality and timber experiments are not very difficult to set up
if you have a group of musician friends ready to play the game. And most
important, these criteria are universal and intemporal. The problem may
then be that you'll find a lot of your subjects are musicians or
potential musicians, and indeed lots of human beings are potential
musicians! Funny but interesting question you had there, I hope you'll
find your way out.<br>
<br>
Eric.<br>
At 12:30 AM 6/5/00 -0500, you wrote:<br>
<blockquote type=cite cite><font size=2>Dear Group,<br>
<br>
Though I follow the discussion of this list regularly, I have yet to make
a<br>
contribution and was not terrible sure how one does.<br>
Thus, I send my apologies in advance if I have failed to submit
this<br>
question correctly:<br>
<br>
Does anyone know of an established criteria by which a researcher
can<br>
separate a collection of subjects into groups of musicians and<br>
non-musicians?<br>
<br>
<br>
Sincerely,<br>
<br>
William Cooper<br>
University of Texas at Dallas<br>
<br>
email:
<a
href="mailto:wcooper@utdallas.edu";>wcooper@utdallas.edu</a></font></blockquo
te><br>
<div>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div>
<div>Eric Delory</div>
<br>
<div>Acoustic Research Laboratory</div>
<div>Dept of Electrical Engineering</div>
<div>National University of Singapore</div>
<div>Block WS2, Level5, Room 05#30</div>
<div>1, Engineering Drive 3</div>
<div>Singapore 117576</div>
<br>
<div>Email: eric@arl.nus.edu.sg</div>
<div>Tel: 65- 874 8326</div>
Fax: 65- 874 8325
</html>
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------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 11:12:36 -0500
From: Brian Gygi <bgygi@INDIANA.EDU>
Subject: Re: Operational Definition of Musician
On Mon, 5 Jun 2000, William Cooper wrote:
> Does anyone know of an established criteria by which a researcher can
> separate a collection of subjects into groups of musicians and
> non-musicians?
Sure - if they broke up with their girlfriend, and now they're homeless,
they're musicians.
(An old joke I know, but still a goodie)
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 17:06:35 -0400
From: Bret Aarden <aarden.1@OSU.EDU>
Subject: Re: Operational Definition of Musician
William,
It probably depends on what sort of musical skill you're interested
in. One telling piece of research presented last year by van Egmond &
Boswijk showed that ability to identify the tonic of a brief harmonic
or melodic excerpt was independent of years of musical training. This
question probably has a lot of depth left to explore.
-Bret Aarden.
van Egmond, R., & M. Boswijk. 1999. Tonality perception in musical
excerpts and chords. Conference paper, _Society for Music Perception
and Cognition_: Chicago, IL.
>Dear Group,
>
>Though I follow the discussion of this list regularly, I have yet to make a
>contribution and was not terrible sure how one does.
>Thus, I send my apologies in advance if I have failed to submit this
>question correctly:
>
>Does anyone know of an established criteria by which a researcher can
>separate a collection of subjects into groups of musicians and
>non-musicians?
>
>
>Sincerely,
>
>William Cooper
>University of Texas at Dallas
>
>email: <mailto:wcooper@utdallas.edu>wcooper@utdallas.edu
__________________________________________________________________________
Bret Aarden 2590 Neil Ave #C, Columbus, OH 43202 Home: 614/270-2502
Graduate Student, School of Music, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory Lab: 614/292-7321
__________________________________________________________________________
------------------------------
End of AUDITORY Digest - 4 Jun 2000 to 5 Jun 2000 (#2000-73)
************************************************************