Re: Why the music is music and the noise is noise? (Eckard Blumschein )

Subject: Re: Why the music is music and the noise is noise?
From:    Eckard Blumschein  <Eckard.Blumschein(at)E-TECHNIK.UNI-MAGDEBURG.DE>
Date:    Wed, 25 Apr 2001 08:17:33 +0200

Isn't cacophony quite different from noise? When Bialek and Wit 1984
proved that acoustic emissions from the human ear are true tones,
they argued that the pertaining amplitude histogram is characteristic
of a sinusoid but not of random noise. In terms of frequency analysis,
typical musics coincides with frequencies that allow for harmonicity.
As far as I understood, any color of noise (white, brown, orange, green,
black, pink, whatever) is termed rather independent of these limits.
Steady noise might simply be a too poor carrier of information as to
fulfil the role of a signal.
In order to switch noise into music, you can modulate it.

Eckard Blumschein
http://iesk.et.uni-magdeburg.de/~blumsche/AuditoryFunction.html


At 13:52 24.04.2001 -0700, John Hershey wrote:
>according to this study music is language, although the converse is not
>clear.
>so perhaps you can make noise into music by whispering, but you might have
>to whisper a tune.
>http://www.nature.com/nsu/010426/010426-4.html  (stimulus sound file and MEG
>picture here)