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Re: Can Musicians practice with hearing protectors? (latency) - bali

Now Balinese gong kebyar gamelan playing raises some thoughts...

1. These instruments are really loud! Are all balinese people a little
deaf as a result?

2. Gong Kebyar is traditionally played outside. Could a musical style
that involves very loud instruments with sharp transient attacks and
long sustained decays have developed in a 'concert hall' oriented music
culture?

3. Most rhythmically precise and complex drum or gong traditions i can
think of seem to have emerged in climates where playing outdoors is
preferable. Maybe this is because indoor performers would have been
turned off by the volume and reverberation-induced latencies?

4. Has anyone written much about how the acoustics of a place affect the
emusical styles evolving there?

rodney

Dan Freed wrote:


I think that some musical instruments require more precise control of timing
than others.  Instruments with clearly defined attacks are less forgiving of
imprecise timing than instruments with softer attacks.  The same point can
be made for musical styles.  For example, Balinese gamelan music employs a
technique called kotekan, where a very fast 16th-note melody is divided into
two syncopated interlocking parts, played by two groups of musicians.  Very
precise timing is required to ensure that the two parts join seamlessly to
create the fast melody.  Trying to play this music in the presence of
reverberation or strong echoes is a real nightmare, even for well-trained
musicians.

Dan Freed

-----Original Message-----
From: AUDITORY Research in Auditory Perception
[mailto:AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA]On Behalf Of Andy Vermiglio
Sent: Friday, September 13, 2002 10:50 AM
To: AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA
Subject: Re: Can Musicians practice with hearing protectors?


No disservice to classical organists was intended.  Perhaps it would have
been more precise to say that organists are trained to deal with this
latency problem as opposed to other musicians who typically (and thankfully)
do not routinely struggle with this issue.

Best,

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From:   AUDITORY  Research in Auditory Perception
[mailto:AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA] On Behalf Of Harvey Holmes
Sent:   Friday, September 13, 2002 7:25 AM
To:     AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA
Subject:        Re: Can Musicians practice with hearing protectors?

Dear list,

I think this latest comment does a disservice to classical organists, who
often have to synchronize with major professional orchestras, choirs and
soloists in very demanding classical sacred music, organ symphonies etc.,
such as mass settings by composers such as Mozart, Haydn, Verdi and
Bruckner.  The demands of this music on precision are at least comparable
to those of jazz, but are routinely satisfied by organists who are trained
to handle this latency problem.

         Harvey Holmes

At 23:57 13/09/2002, you wrote:



It is true that church organ musicians routinely work with long latencies.
However, few church organists work in jazz fusion bands where precise


timing


is much more crucial.  The several hundred millisecond delays, while
tolerable for the church organist and an individual singing the national
anthem at stadium events, would have disastrous musical consequences in
contemporary jazz settings.

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From:   AUDITORY  Research in Auditory Perception
[mailto:AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA] On Behalf Of Mikael Fernström
Sent:   Friday, September 13, 2002 6:06 AM
To:     AUDITORY@LISTS.MCGILL.CA
Subject:        Re: Can Musicians practice with hearing protectors?

About the issue of MIDI versus "real" instruments and latency:
I think that musicians are extremely flexible people ;-) For example, a
piano player that learns to play church organ. Suddenly you can have
latencies up to several hundred milliseconds, primarily due to the
mechanism, secondarily due to the speed of sound if the pipes are far away

from the console. And still, excellent music can be made.



/Mikael