Re: Up-down pitch perception (Alexandra Hettergott )


Subject: Re: Up-down pitch perception
From:    Alexandra Hettergott  <a.hettergott(at)WANADOO.FR>
Date:    Fri, 4 Jun 1999 19:29:24 +0200

Kevin Austin wrote: >Thank you for the summary of responses. Most interesting. I join the thanks, to me this was also of particular interest. >I have found that up to about 10% of students in my courses, at some tim= e >(and sometimes regularly), demonstrate up/down discrimination >difficulties. The circumstances can either be intervals played in >isolation, or within melodic passages. Since my findings are shown in th= e >form of 'writing' rather than 'asking' which is higher (and given that >the students are spending 10 or more hours per week studying music), I >have come to accept that up-down pitch perception is a serious problem, >sometimes, for some students (and is a complex matter). How "pure" are the signals you are testing ? Sine tones, too ? or mixture= s ? gotten from acoustic instruments, like the piano (real or synthetic) ? or even a= ll or nothing of this ? > >It is also my experience that many people 'from the general population' >hear sound the way color is perceived as an un-categorized continuum ...= so >which "is" higher, red or green? (except in traffic lights). Well, as to me my modest experiences I would agree: untrained listeners g= et more the "whole" of a, lets say, impressionist painting, while the trained listene= rs look also for the stroke of the brush; so people with (long-term) ear training woul= d listen for (musical) interval relations rather, I would guess, even in tasks dealing= with very complex sounds. (So this might be a little, too, in the direction of synthetic/analytic listening behavior.) Sincerely, Alexandra Hettergott. _______________________ Alexandra Hettergott 1, avenue des Gobelins /bo=EEte 23 F-75005 Paris/France T=E9l/fax: +33-(0)1-43 31 41 27 M=E9l: a.hettergott(at)wanadoo.fr http://perso.wanadoo.fr/a.hettergott/ ... la noche, peque=F1os ruidos ... sombra y espacio, tierra y tiempo, algo que corre y cae y pasa ... (Pablo Neruda) (and thanks for the "little beyond the scope of this thread" ; btw I didn= 't really convince you re the "oxymoron" recently, n'est-ce pas ? ;-).


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