Rép. : Re: sometimes behave so stra ngely

[Branka ZEI <Branka.Zei@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

Bruno wrote:
>The more a speech utterance resembles music on these
>dimensions (stepwise pitch changes, fairly regular rhythm), the more 
>likely it will be perceived "as music" when it is repeated.

Jeff wrote: 
>JasonMoran, a well known jazz pianist in the NYC area.  He recorded a
>Turkish woman speaking on the phone with her mother, and then put it
>to song in a jazz trio (piano, bass, drums) context.

 Jeff's posting raises a long debated question whether song  originally arouse from speech.

It may well be that  by applying stepwise pitch changes, and fairly regular rhythm, one goes from speech to a talking song and eventually a clearly perceived song. 

Now, when yue analyse  the sentence "sometims behave so strangely" you get the  the following:

1) None of  her vowels was said on a mono-tone that could be represented by a single note (unlike the notation offered at http://philomel.com/phantom_words/description.html#sometimes).  

2) Four out of 7 vowels are  diphthongs - (easy to lengthen and "sing" without distorting the vowel's identity) 
3) The tone sequences of vowels  are:
      Word                      Tone
"sometimes":  rising monophthong + falling diphthong
"behave": falling monphthong + rising diphthong
"so": rising diphthong
"strangely": a fall-rise on diphthong followed by a rise and + a  falling monophthong

No wonder that we perceive it as "song" especially when repeated sufficiently.

The site below offers  an interesting  voice anaylsis software that turns any pitch contour into a "melody" played by a musical instrument

http://www.winpitch.com/

Best to all
Branka



________________________________________
Branka Zei Pollermann PhD
Psychologue
Psychiatrie de Liaison
Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève
51 Bvd. De la Cluse, 1205 Genève
tél. : 0041 22 382 48 81
Portable : 0041 79 203 92 17



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