By a ‘semiotic first’ do you mean Peirce’s notion of Firstness?This message is intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential and/or legally privileged information. Any use, disclosure or reproduction without the sender’s explicit consent is unauthorised and may be unlawful. If you have received this message in error, please notify Northumbria University immediately and permanently delete it. Any views or opinions expressed in this message are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the University. Northumbria University email is provided by Microsoft Office365 and is hosted within the EEA, although some information may be replicated globally for backup purposes. The University cannot guarantee that this message or any attachment is virus free or has not been intercepted and/or amended.
paul
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Professor Paul Vickers BSc PhD FHEA
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On 14 Apr 2025, at 10:51, Jan Schnupp <000000e042a1ec30-dmarc-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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Hi Doug,I think what Dick was getting at is periodicity tends to be a pretty good predictor of the perceived pitch, while individual Fourier components are much less useful. People like Cariani and Delgutte for example had argued this quite convincingly, and de Cheveigne and others have also done interesting work in that direction. I also think that Dick is 100% correct to point out that the word "frequency" can mean very different things in different contexts, and this often confuses lay people who are unfamiliar with the not exactly intuitive maths behind Fourier analysis. According to Fourier theory, a white noise burst is an infinite sum of infinitely many "frequencies", but instead of having infinitely many pitches it has, arguably, no distinguishable pitch.I say "arguably" because there is not only ambiguity in the word frequency is, there is also a lot of uncertainty in the definition of pitch. Much ink has been spilled about the rather useless ANSI definition of pitch "that attribute of auditory sensation in terms of which sounds may be ordered on a scale extending from low to high" which completely ignores the possibility that there are numerous directions that could be considered "up" and that this definition leaves it completely unclear who should do the ordering and according to which criteria. I can therefore set up a 2-afc experiment which would demonstrate with pretty high certainty that a white noise has a higher pitch than a pink noise or a brown noise. But comparing the white noise against a few piano notes would likely not result in a reliable ordering. Then there are experiments that can show that pitch direction can be ambiguus (eg Pressnitzer's Shepard tone experiments https://auditoryneuroscience.com/index.php/pitch/ShepardHysteresis) or that pitch differences can be helpful in scene analysis even if we can not easily attribute pitch values to different sources in a scene (https://auditoryneuroscience.com/scene-analysis/double-vowels).
In my view, our field is not helped by the fact that some of our key terminology is not really fit for purpose, and the ambiguities around "frequency"are only one of several examples. Not sure what to do about that though.
None of this contradicts your view of pitch as a semiotic first though, or your assertion that it can be helpful to draw analogies between pitch and color. The perception of pitch and color "feels" immediate and in some way fundamental, but that sense of immediacy belies the complexity of the sensory processing that constructs these perceived qualities.
Best,
Jan
---------------------------------------Prof Jan SchnuppGerald Choa Neuroscience InstituteThe Chinese University of Hong KongSha TinHong Kong
On Sun, 13 Apr 2025 at 06:28, Douglas Scott <jdmusictuition@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hi Dick
I would have thought the opposite: Pitch isn't usually perceived as a frequency in the sense of a rate of repetition, but rather as a semiotic First (i.e. a direct perception). This would be analogous to the way colour is perceived versus the frequency of the light that produces the sensation, which is even more imperceptible directly. This is how one can "spoof" perceptual organs with false colour and reconstruct missing fundamentals.
The Fourier transform, meanwhile, is explicitly about repetition of the circular motion of various types of circles. It is thus inherently a semiotic Second, while assigning a pitch name or class would be a Third.
Of course, these concepts are fluid, so constructing an interpretation in your terms is also entirely possible, but I don't think it's the default way of seeing it. Perhaps I'm biased.
Doug
On Sat, 12 Apr 2025 at 01:31, Richard F. Lyon <0000030301ff4bce-dmarc-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Adam,
Thanks for bringing us back to topics more germane to the list. (While I agree there's a lot that needs to be discussed about the current state of craziness in the U.S., I also agree that this list is probably not so great a place to take that on. I realize I'm speaking from a position of almost-retired and already signed up for Social Security, so not as much affected as many. When I was out on the "Hands Off" protest march, Auditory was not on my mind.)
I took a glance at your paper, and it looks to me like you didn't do a clear enough job of distinguishing different notions of frequency (maybe I need to read more). Pitch, though a perceptual concept, is very closely related to the concept of frequency as repetition rate. In physics and math, however, frequency is often thought of as a parameter of a Fourier transform, more related to sinusoids, or circular motion, than to repetition. Your paper barely mentions pitch, but I think it's a concept that might help make some of your points better. I look forward to reading more of it.
Dick
On Fri, Apr 11, 2025 at 9:31 PM Adam Weisser <adam_weisser@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Dear all,
I would like to share with you my latest piece on the topic of frequency. While it is not strictly within auditory science, this work would have never materialized if it weren't for the deeply-ingrained approach to acoustic signals that has time and frequency as more or less independent dimensions - two attributes of sound that are interrelated, but which we generally perceive as essentially different. Contrasting this understanding with the fundamental definition of frequency in physics - the reciprocal of the period - leaves much to be elucidated and is duly riddled with paradoxes.
In this manuscript, I review the different instantiations of the concept of frequency in physics, engineering, mathematics, and perception, partially tracing their historical evolution, in attempt to answer the question of whether frequency can be counted as a separate dimension of reality, in addition to space and time. The resolution ties together time, frequency, and determinism in a highly counterintuitive manner:
While I have no illusions regarding how this text (and its author) may come across given the extraordinary claims put forth, I have tried to go about it in the most rigorous way I could, while methodically scrutinizing some long-held dogmas in the sciences, in hope of sparking further discussion, somewhere down the road.
For what it's worth, I'm indebted to what I have learned (or maybe, mislearned) by virtue of being part of the auditory community. Yet, these days appear to be challenging to many members of the Auditory List. I once had a good colleague (PKR) who lamented how we were never trained in "political acoustics" in engineering school, that would have endowed us with the necessary skill set to be able to juggle between the various demands of our whimsical bosses. Even today, still nobody teaches this subject, and people are expected to figure out this vital skill as they go along, while trying to survive and stay true to what they were originally hired to do. It's perhaps ironic, because in every other respect, hearing science must be one of the most unifying and all-encompassing of all human endeavors, being positioned in the nexus between physics, biology, psychology, neuroscience, perception, communication, language, music, engineering, medicine, environment, architecture, computer science, mathematics, and many other disciplines. All this is in opposition to politics, which usually excels in sowing division, whether we are ready to get directly involved with it or not.
I hope that we can transcend these unpleasant times both as individuals and as a community and eventually get back to what we do best, which is study hearing and sound.
With wishes for better times to come,And thank you for your attention and time,Adam.