Subject: Re: AUDITORY Digest - 4 Jun 2000 to 5 Jun 2000 (#2000-73) From: "Watson, Charles S" <watson(at)INDIANA.EDU> Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2000 13:06:08 -0500Regarding Cooper's question about the criteria for being a musician: We struggled with that issue a while back and, of course, concluded that it is a continuum ranging from a music lesson or two to being a card-carrying professional. We reported some pitch and pattern discrimination data for college students, as a function of their musical background, that of their families, etc., and found that their musical training/experience did not seem to predict performance on psychoacoustic tasks. Then we tried some pretty credible professionals (members of the St. Louis Symphony) and they did a bit better...but not lots. The general conclusions were that a) listeners generally do well on whatever they have been intensely trained to listen to (ie Toscannini really could hear out one bad string in a hundred and our laboratory listeners were better than musicians in discriminating between half-sec ten-tone patterns), and b) musicians did not seem to have super pitch discrimination abilities, compared to those that could not be found among lots of nonmusicians, BUT no one with really bad pitch discrimination seemed to have become a musician. The paper in question was: Spiegel, M.F., and Watson, C.S. (1984). Performance on frequency-discrimination tasks by musicians and nonmusicians. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 76, 1690-1695. Hope that is of some help... Chuck Watson -----Original Message----- From: Automatic digest processor [mailto:LISTSERV(at)LISTS.MCGILL.CA] Sent: Monday, June 05, 2000 11:00 PM To: Recipients of AUDITORY digests Subject: AUDITORY Digest - 4 Jun 2000 to 5 Jun 2000 (#2000-73) There are 4 messages totalling 303 lines in this issue. Topics of the day: 1. Operational Definition of Musician (4) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 00:30:59 -0500 From: William Cooper <wcooper(at)UTDALLAS.EDU> Subject: Operational Definition of Musician This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_001E_01BFCE85.52823360 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Dear Group, Though I follow the discussion of this list regularly, I have yet to = make a contribution and was not terrible sure how one does. Thus, I send my apologies in advance if I have failed to submit this question correctly: Does anyone know of an established criteria by which a researcher can separate a collection of subjects into groups of musicians and non-musicians? Sincerely, William Cooper University of Texas at Dallas email: wcooper(at)utdallas.edu ------=_NextPart_000_001E_01BFCE85.52823360 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META content=3D"text/html; charset=3Diso-8859-1" = http-equiv=3DContent-Type> <META content=3D"MSHTML 5.00.2314.1000" name=3DGENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=3D#ffffff> <DIV><FONT size=3D2>Dear Group,<BR><BR>Though I follow the discussion of = this list=20 regularly, I have yet to make a<BR>contribution and was not terrible = sure how=20 one does.<BR>Thus, I send my apologies in advance if I have failed to = submit=20 this<BR>question correctly:<BR><BR>Does anyone know of an established = criteria=20 by which a researcher can<BR>separate a collection of subjects into = groups of=20 musicians and<BR>non-musicians?<BR><BR><BR>Sincerely,<BR><BR>William=20 Cooper<BR>University of Texas at Dallas<BR><BR>email: <A=20 href=3D"mailto:wcooper(at)utdallas.edu">wcooper(at)utdallas.edu</A><BR></FONT><= /DIV></BODY></HTML> ------=_NextPart_000_001E_01BFCE85.52823360-- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 16:34:19 +0800 From: Eric Delory <eric(at)ARL.NUS.EDU.SG> Subject: Re: Operational Definition of Musician --=====================_262391904==_.ALT Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed William, I don't know of any objective established criterion but maybe this simplistic approach can help. In the context where auditory research and music are to interfere, some boundaries will unfortunately necessarily need to be set using precise criteria that everybody understands and finds appropriate for the objectivity and future use of your results by others. To me lots of musicians think they are musicians because they have played an instrument for a certain number of years, can read a score, know a little bit of theory about composition, harmonic structure etc..., what timber is etc... This is far too restrictive and sometimes wrong, everybody will agree. As music can be defined as the art of sounds (and I find this definition appropriate, because it is not restrictive and leaves a lot of nice ambiguity and freedom for creativity), a musician is someone who can either create or participate to the creation of music, as a composer or an interpreter. There are, I find, a few universal components that any composer or interpreter can recognise. 1) Tempo is the canvas of music but doesn't make a very discriminant criterion; a better one related to tempo is rhythm: a change from a binary to tertiary rhythm would make a nice test. 2) Not far is tonality, as whether it is changing rapidly or not, a musician will respect it as a reference quite naturally and will detect a change when it happens. 3) Timbre, as a primary colour of music. Changing one instrument in a piece of music played by a group of interpreters for another one close in timber (trumpet played at lows to tuba, or oboe played at lows to bassoon, jumbey to congas) is something a musician ear would easily detect. Rhythm, tonality and timber experiments are not very difficult to set up if you have a group of musician friends ready to play the game. And most important, these criteria are universal and intemporal. The problem may then be that you'll find a lot of your subjects are musicians or potential musicians, and indeed lots of human beings are potential musicians! Funny but interesting question you had there, I hope you'll find your way out. Eric. At 12:30 AM 6/5/00 -0500, you wrote: >Dear Group, > >Though I follow the discussion of this list regularly, I have yet to make a >contribution and was not terrible sure how one does. >Thus, I send my apologies in advance if I have failed to submit this >question correctly: > >Does anyone know of an established criteria by which a researcher can >separate a collection of subjects into groups of musicians and >non-musicians? > > >Sincerely, > >William Cooper >University of Texas at Dallas > >email: <mailto:wcooper(at)utdallas.edu>wcooper(at)utdallas.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eric Delory Acoustic Research Laboratory Dept of Electrical Engineering National University of Singapore Block WS2, Level5, Room 05#30 1, Engineering Drive 3 Singapore 117576 Email: eric(at)arl.nus.edu.sg Tel: 65- 874 8326 Fax: 65- 874 8325 --=====================_262391904==_.ALT Content-Type: text/html; charset="us-ascii" <html> <br> William,<br> <br> I don't know of any objective established criterion but maybe this simplistic approach can help. <br> In the context where auditory research and music are to interfere, some boundaries will unfortunately necessarily need to be set using precise criteria that everybody understands and finds appropriate for the objectivity and future use of your results by others.<br> To me lots of musicians think they are musicians because they have played an instrument for a certain number of years, can read a score, know a little bit of theory about composition, harmonic structure etc..., what timber is etc... This is far too restrictive and sometimes wrong, everybody will agree.<br> As music can be defined as the art of sounds (and I find this definition appropriate, because it is not restrictive and leaves a lot of nice ambiguity and freedom for creativity), a musician is someone who can either create or participate to the creation of music, as a composer or an interpreter. There are, I find, a few universal components that any composer or interpreter can recognise. <br> <br> 1) Tempo is the canvas of music but doesn't make a very discriminant criterion; a better one related to tempo is rhythm: a change from a binary to tertiary rhythm would make a nice test. <br> 2) Not far is tonality, as whether it is changing rapidly or not, a musician will respect it as a reference quite naturally and will detect a change when it happens. <br> 3) Timbre, as a primary colour of music. Changing one instrument in a piece of music played by a group of interpreters for another one close in timber (trumpet played at lows to tuba, or oboe played at lows to bassoon, jumbey to congas) is something a musician ear would easily detect.<br> <br> Rhythm, tonality and timber experiments are not very difficult to set up if you have a group of musician friends ready to play the game. And most important, these criteria are universal and intemporal. The problem may then be that you'll find a lot of your subjects are musicians or potential musicians, and indeed lots of human beings are potential musicians! Funny but interesting question you had there, I hope you'll find your way out.<br> <br> Eric.<br> At 12:30 AM 6/5/00 -0500, you wrote:<br> <blockquote type=cite cite><font size=2>Dear Group,<br> <br> Though I follow the discussion of this list regularly, I have yet to make a<br> contribution and was not terrible sure how one does.<br> Thus, I send my apologies in advance if I have failed to submit this<br> question correctly:<br> <br> Does anyone know of an established criteria by which a researcher can<br> separate a collection of subjects into groups of musicians and<br> non-musicians?<br> <br> <br> Sincerely,<br> <br> William Cooper<br> University of Texas at Dallas<br> <br> email: <a href="mailto:wcooper(at)utdallas.edu">wcooper(at)utdallas.edu</a></font></blockquo te><br> <div>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div> <div>Eric Delory</div> <br> <div>Acoustic Research Laboratory</div> <div>Dept of Electrical Engineering</div> <div>National University of Singapore</div> <div>Block WS2, Level5, Room 05#30</div> <div>1, Engineering Drive 3</div> <div>Singapore 117576</div> <br> <div>Email: eric(at)arl.nus.edu.sg</div> <div>Tel: 65- 874 8326</div> Fax: 65- 874 8325 </html> --=====================_262391904==_.ALT-- ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 11:12:36 -0500 From: Brian Gygi <bgygi(at)INDIANA.EDU> Subject: Re: Operational Definition of Musician On Mon, 5 Jun 2000, William Cooper wrote: > Does anyone know of an established criteria by which a researcher can > separate a collection of subjects into groups of musicians and > non-musicians? Sure - if they broke up with their girlfriend, and now they're homeless, they're musicians. (An old joke I know, but still a goodie) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 5 Jun 2000 17:06:35 -0400 From: Bret Aarden <aarden.1(at)OSU.EDU> Subject: Re: Operational Definition of Musician William, It probably depends on what sort of musical skill you're interested in. One telling piece of research presented last year by van Egmond & Boswijk showed that ability to identify the tonic of a brief harmonic or melodic excerpt was independent of years of musical training. This question probably has a lot of depth left to explore. -Bret Aarden. van Egmond, R., & M. Boswijk. 1999. Tonality perception in musical excerpts and chords. Conference paper, _Society for Music Perception and Cognition_: Chicago, IL. >Dear Group, > >Though I follow the discussion of this list regularly, I have yet to make a >contribution and was not terrible sure how one does. >Thus, I send my apologies in advance if I have failed to submit this >question correctly: > >Does anyone know of an established criteria by which a researcher can >separate a collection of subjects into groups of musicians and >non-musicians? > > >Sincerely, > >William Cooper >University of Texas at Dallas > >email: <mailto:wcooper(at)utdallas.edu>wcooper(at)utdallas.edu __________________________________________________________________________ Bret Aarden 2590 Neil Ave #C, Columbus, OH 43202 Home: 614/270-2502 Graduate Student, School of Music, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH Cognitive and Systematic Musicology Laboratory Lab: 614/292-7321 __________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ End of AUDITORY Digest - 4 Jun 2000 to 5 Jun 2000 (#2000-73) ************************************************************