Re: Linearity as pitch perception: was Perception as memory

[Eliot Handelman <eliot@xxxxxxxxx>]

Kevin Austin wrote:
> While I do not wish to speak for Eliot Handelman, a number of years 
> ago (perhaps 5 or more) in a discussion with him the topic turned to a 
> series of melodic dictations, sight-singing and theory exercises I had 
> prepared. He asked me something like "What is this thing with melodic 
> contour?", and went on to, as I understood it, indicate that he did 
> not think that 'contour analysis' was necessarily valid. He will 
> clarify what he said and what he meant. 

"Contour" means the way music goes up & down, surely a notable feature 
of music. Contour analysis is about the up and down,
abstracted from all the other details. The question is what to do with 
this information. My complaint was that the conventional
approach to contour analysis doesn't in the end reveal anything  about 
how a piece of music  seems to work and I don't see any reason 
why it should be taught. It's there to pad the curriculum.

Of course I have my own ideas about what contour is and how it works, 
and moreover I've implemented this computationally in a system that
makes very interesting analyses of thousands of folksongs, & can 
simplify the contour of a piece in a way that preserves
what it theorizes as indispensable structural features. This system is 
part of Jill, the listening module of my Jack & Jill composing 
architecture.

There was thus no implication that I'm unable to hear contour. I meant 
that I was tired of hearing about contour when I  know that
there's something much better around. 

-- eliot