Re: Why the music is music and the noise is noise?

[Tom Brennan <g_brennantg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Being an audiologist has given me some theoretical grasp of this but being a
piano tuner has given me more of a practical grasp.  When a piano is tuned and
is just a bit out of equal temper either because the tuner specifically tuned it
that way or because he was not very good at tuning, the person playing it
afterword as well as the listeners are likely to report that it "feels" wrong
and it "doesn't sound like its supposed to".  Indeed, a poorly tempered piano
does produce physical feelings if the temprament is far enough out and those
feelings are not pleasant.

On another note, several years ago someone did a set of cd recordings called
Symphony Of The Planets in which they took recordings made from one of the
spacecraft which flew near jupiter and altered those recordings to an audible
frequency and slightly modified the sounds produced.  While I would not call the
result music as I usually think of it, there is something soothing about it.  Of
course, tinnitus sufferers commonly use white noise to mask that symptom and
often refer to this as "music to their ears".

Tom


Tom Brennan, CCC-A/SLP, RHD
web page http://titan.sfasu.edu/~g_brennantg/sonicpage.html
web master http://titan.sfasu.edu/~f_freemanfj/speechscience.html
web master http://titan.sfasu.edu/~f_freemanfj/fluency.html