Subject: Re: selection pressure underlying scaled/measured music From: Philip Dorrell <aud(at)1729.COM> Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2005 14:52:35 +1200susan allen wrote: > How, then, do 7 and 5 beat cycles operate in Indian music? Or isn't > that music? > > Susan Allen A general answer that I would give to this type of question (without being very familiar with Indian music) is that according to my theory each specific aspect of music corresponds to constant activity patterns in a particular cortical map or in one region within a particular cortical map (and the distinction obviously depends on what we consider to be "one" cortical map, which may be somewhat arbitrary in many cases). These aspects often correspond to particular rules, such as "regular beat periods in musical time form a sequence where each period is a small multiple of the next period in the sequence". If we have determined a correspondence between such a rule and a location in a cortical map, and then we encounter a type of music that satisfies a slightly different rule, we can conclude that that type of music will not cause constant activity patterns in that particular location. But if the rule is similar, then the music may perhaps cause constant activity patterns in some second location close to the first one, where the representation of meaning in the second location is moderately different from that in the first location in a way that corresponds to the difference in the rule being satisfied. The aspects of regular hierarchical rhythm and scales are just two of the possible aspects of music that I presume correspond to the occurrence of constant activity patterns in locations in cortical maps responding to music. Other aspects include harmony (especially chords), "home" chords, various types of repetition, and even aspects of dance (which we normally think of as being distinct from music, but which can be incorporated into the theory as a super-stimulus for visual aspects of speech perception). My own analysis is restricted mainly to aspects of musical genres and musical cultures that I am familiar with, but I see no reason why the same principle of analysis cannot be extended to all aspects of all types of music, so that we can thereby gain a fuller picture of how speech "rhythm" and speech "melody" are processed in the brain. susan allen wrote: > How, then, do 7 and 5 beat cycles operate in Indian music? Or isn't > that music? > > Susan Allen > > >