Subject: Re: They sometimes behave so strangely From: Peter Lennox <P.Lennox@xxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2007 22:52:06 +0000 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>what you and Brian are implying here is that 'musical listening' is substantively different from the kind of listening that has evolved in the face of normal environmental conditions where survival issues naturally take precedence. This places musical listening in a context of "exaptation" where 'normal' mechanisms have been 'hijacked' for some other use, outside of the usual evolutionery pressures - this is Stephen Pinker's position, i think. However, I feel it can't be so black-and-white - environments aren't always so urgent (and in any case, being a stranger in morocco should awaken one's survival instincts sufficiently to suppress any luxurious non-survival-oriented perceptual styles. I would accept that musical listening might be somewhat analogous to using vision to appreciate a 'nice view' where imme3diate threat is clearly absent - but the analogy can't be pushed too far; our recreational use of vision seems somehow less abstract - it's more usually of 'things' (even if colour is exaggerated) whereas music is the 'thing' in itself - with exceptions in both cases, of course. regards ppl Dr. Peter Lennox S.P.A.R.G. Signal Processing Applications Research Group University of Derby http://sparg.derby.ac.uk Int. tel: 1775 >>> Pierre Divenyi <pdivenyi@xxxxxxxx> 01/09/07 19:54 PM >>> In the same vein, just imagine your boss who calls you in his office one morning and sings, beautifully and with great musical expression, "you are fired". Pierre On 1/9/07 9:35 AM, "Brian Gygi" <bgygi@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > Peter Lennox wrote: >> As you've implied, the mystery is not so much that repetitions evince the >> perception of musicality, but rather that 'normally', we don't hear music. >> I've often wondered on this in respect of environmental sounds - why do we >> not hear a "musical world"? > That is what numerous composers have tried to do for the past almost one > hundred years, to get us to hear the world in more musical terms. I > think the reason we do not do this on an everyday basis is because it > is contrary to the demands of our normal everyday functioning in a > complex acoustic environment. If you get so caught up in the musicality > of a soundscape, you will fail to notice important things, like all the > people honking at you who are about to hit you (a particular danger in > countries such as Morocco). For everday listening, what is important is > the nature of a sound source and its location. Those are different from > the goals of musical or linguistic listening. If you are presented with > a soundscape that is sufficiently different from what you are accustomed > to, you may indeed notice the musicality of it, just as you can hear the > musicality of an exotic language. But if you lived there everyday and > had to hear and respond to the sounds in an appropriate manner, I > suspect the musicality would soon go away. Which is necessarily not > bad thing. > > Brian Gygi > East Bay Institute for Research and Education > > ______________________________________________________________________ This email has been scanned by the MessageLabs Email Security System. For more information please visit http://www.messagelabs.com/email ______________________________________________________________________