Subject: Re: (Why is high high) From: B Suresh Krishna <suresh(at)cns.nyu.edu> Date: Sat, 5 Sep 1998 05:04:00 -0400I posted the essentials of the pitch-frequency question on a newsgroup, and got this interesting response. Another poster said that colloquially, sing higher meant sing at a higher pitch in atleast one Indian language (Hindi), but didnt supply any specific terms - Suresh From: digitala(at)aol.com (Digitala) Newsgroups: rec.music.indian.classical Interesting question. Could also be articulatory--the larynx (Adam's apple or cricoid cartilage) moves "up" to stretch the vocal folds to produce "high" notes. Also, the tongue moves up toward the roof of the mouth for the high-pitched vowels (try whistling from low to high and watch what your tongue does). This is a bit off topic, but as a tabla player I was often confused when my teacher or the artist I was accompanying pointed up or down as I was tuning my tabla. I didn't know if I was supposed to make the tabla lower in pitch or to hammer the gajra down to make a higher pitch. It usually seemed to be the latter. I guess if it had been the former, it would have supported the claim for the universality of the positive relationship between pitch and elevation terms ------------------------------------------------------------------------- B. Suresh Krishna, Graduate Fellow, Center for Neural Science, NYU. Office --> Home --> Room 809, 4 Washington Place, 247 Montgomery Street, # 4, New York, NY 10003-6621. Jersey City, NJ 07302 Ph: 212-998-3900 Ph: 201-333-7041 Fax: 212-995-4011 Email: suresh(at)cns.nyu.edu **URL: http://www.cns.nyu.edu/home/suresh ------------------------------------------------------------------------- McGill is running a new version of LISTSERV (1.8c on Windows NT). Information is available on the WEB at http://www.mcgill.ca/cc/listserv