Re: AUDITORY Digest - 9 May 2002 to 10 May 2002 (#2002-72)

["Andrew D. Lyons" <tstex@xxxxxxxxx>]

<SNIP from below > This is just a conjecture; there's nothing rigorous
about it.

Actually this is very good conjecture. It corresponds exactly to what is
described as "physiognomic perception" in:

--
Davies, John Booth. 1978. The Psychology of Music. Stanford University
Press.

and:

Dailey, Audrey, R. 1995. Creativity, Primary Process Thinking,
Synesthesia, and Physiognomic Perception. Unpublished doctoral
dissertation. University of Maine.
--

Relationships between vertical height for pitch, brightness for spectra,
and image shape for sonic morphology are also described here.

Cheers


> Date:    Fri, 10 May 2002 20:18:50 -0500
> From:    beauchamp james w <j-beauch@UX1.CSO.UIUC.EDU>
> Subject: Re: brightness
>
> Chen-Gia Tsai wrote:
> > I am interested in analogues between visual and auditory processing.
> >
> > We describe sounds rich in high-frequency harmonics "bright". This adjective
> > is apparently universal. Why do we use such a visual concept to describe an
> > auditory feature?
>
> (snip)
>
> Here's an idea. For whatever reasons, we seem to associate high
> frequencies with physical height, perhaps because high frequencies
> travel in straight lines and they tend to transmit at some height
> whereas low frequencies can creep and crawl over terrain. Or maybe
> because a lot of birds make high pitches but big animals that hug
> the ground make low pitches. Now, the sun is also high and very
> bright, and we look up to see the sun. So we look up to see the
> sun and we point our ears up to hear high frequencies, and thus
> we may associate height with increased brightness, and thus high
> frequencies with increased brightness. If there are a lot of
> strong high frequencies in a sound, we will hear "higher" and
> thus it will sound brighter.
>
> This is just a conjecture; there's nothing rigorous about it.
>
> Several researchers have found the spectral centroid, which
> correlates strongly with "brightness" or "sharpness" verbal
> attributes, to be an important, perhaps the most important,
> single characteristic for distinguishing amongst sound spectra.
>
> See for example,
>
> von Bismark, G. (1974). "Sharpness as an attribute of the timbre
> of steady sounds", Acustica, 30(3), pp. 159-172.
>
> Jim Beauchamp
> University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
>
> ------------------------------
>
> End of AUDITORY Digest - 9 May 2002 to 10 May 2002 (#2002-72)
> *************************************************************

--
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Andrew D Lyons | Time Space Texture | http://www.tstex.com
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