Re: They sometimes behave so strangely

[Brian Gygi <bgygi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Peter Lennox wrote:
> As you've implied, the mystery is not so much that repetitions evince the perception of musicality, but rather that 'normally', we don't hear music.
>  I've often wondered on this in respect of environmental sounds - why do we not hear a "musical world"? 
That is what numerous composers have tried to do for the past almost one 
hundred years, to get us to hear the world in more musical terms.  I 
think the reason we do not do this on an everyday  basis is because it 
is contrary to the demands of our normal everyday functioning in a 
complex acoustic environment.  If you get so caught up in the musicality 
of a soundscape, you will fail to notice important things, like all the 
people honking at you who are about to hit you (a particular danger in 
countries such as Morocco).  For everday listening, what is important is 
the nature of a sound source and its location.  Those are different from 
the goals of musical or linguistic listening.  If you are presented with 
a soundscape that is sufficiently different from what you are accustomed 
to, you may indeed notice the musicality of it, just as you can hear the 
musicality of an exotic language.  But if you lived there everyday and 
had to hear and respond to the sounds in an appropriate manner, I 
suspect the musicality would soon go away.  Which is necessarily not  
bad thing.

Brian Gygi
East Bay Institute for Research and Education