sometimes behave so strangely

[Diana Deutsch <ddeutsch@xxxxxxxx>]

Dear Alfred (and List),

Thanks for your thoughtful analysis. I wish I could say I’ve found  
the answer to why this particular passage works so well. As you  
indicate, several different  (and in principle independent) factors  
appear to be contributing, and perhaps to produce a strong effect  
they all need to act together. At this point, I'd be surprised if  
there were a single, and simple, solution.

All the best,

Diana


----------------------------------------------------
Dear Diana and all,

I'm glad to have been reading this discussion, which has caused me to  
revise some of my view of what happens in this phenomenon.

It seems to me that the critical distinction between "music" and  
"singing" is not well enough understood. We miss this point because  
there is so much overlap between the two concepts. But the way I  
imagine the distinction right now, today, is this: singing is  
perceived as such when particular vocal qualities are heard within a  
framework perceived as musical. Now that's very fluid: the particular  
vocal qualities, as well as the very notion of music, vary greatly  
across cultures. So I imagined that one could find people with no  
experience of Western harmony and see if the illusion worked with  
them. The problem would be they might not recognize the vocal quality  
as singing either, so it would still be hard to know why the illusion  
did or didn't work. The seemingly basic concepts of music and singing  
are actually composed of many components networked together (and  
networked with each other) in ways that are difficult to tease apart.  
Among the elements of singing are heightened awareness of sound  
features such as pitch, duration, and timbre that are important but  
usually not attended to in speech.

So let me try a speculative analysis of why the demonstration works  
for me. One component is your vocal quality in the excerpt. I can't  
accept that you "actually are singing" as Eliot Handelman put it, but  
your vocal quality is consistent with what I can recognize as singing.

The looping may weaken the perception that the passage is spoken, or  
it may draw attention to sound features.

Then there is the part that most needs to be described as "musical":  
the pitches and durations. Your rhythmic transcription is obviously  
fairly approximate in regards to the syncopation at its beginning,  
but nevertheless it reflects the way I hear the fragment. I hear it  
that way, I believe, because it conforms to a well-ingrained schema  
representing a rhythm that has been ubiquitous in American and  
European popular music (and other music) at least since the late 19th  
century. The pitches also seem to be heard according to common tonal- 
harmony schemas: your transcription outlines the tonic in the first  
measure (with a C# passing tone) and the dominant in the second. I'm  
one who hears the last note a semitone lower--as an E#, which means I  
hear the first measure as IV of F# and the second measure as V. That  
hearing was so obvious to me -- including the E#, which I would have  
spelled F-natural had I not been hearing it within a tonal schema --  
that I was certain I was right about the notes, and I still can't  
hear it any other way, so I'm interested to know that others hear it  
differently or indeterminately!

All the best,

Alfred Cramer
Music Department
Pomona College
Claremont, California

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