Richard Jernigan -> RE: Flamenco virgin ... what to learn first? (Sep. 9 2017 20:56:51)
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I would like to emphasize the word "subconscious" in the above quote. According to the book I cited, the brain adapts to its musical environment, beginning in early childhood. Much of our perception of music is mediated by processes that we are ordinarily unaware of, or even by processes inherently inaccessible to consciousness. One process that has been studied a fair amount is the assignment of pitch. A reference tone is played, then a subsequent one at a different frequency. The experimental subject is asked whether the pitches are the same or different. There is a band of frequencies around the reference tone which are assigned the "same" perceived pitch. Near the edges of the band the perception becomes uncertain. Far enough beyond the band edges the perception stabilizes on "different." Trained musicians are generally capable of perceiving smaller frequency differences. People with perfect pitch can be quite accurate in perceiving frequency differences. In high school there wasn't a room big enough to hold the whole concert band to tune up before going on stage. The band director would take half the band into one room with a tuner, the other half would go into a different room with a friend of his, a perfect pitch pro violinist. There was never a discrepancy between the two halves of the band. The Navy Band School nearby had one of the old style Peterson strobe tuners. It had a rotating wheel for each note of the equally tempered scale. Each wheel was illuminated by a stroboscopic light of the appropriate frequency. If you nailed the pitch the wheel appeared to stand still. If you were off, the wheel would appear to rotate, its speed and direction depending on how far off you were, and whether you were sharp or flat. My trumpet teacher was Principal in the National Symphony. He arranged for us to use the strobe tuner to learn to play accurately in equal temperament. Then we played ensemble pieces to learn how to make the chords "ring" in just temperament. One day I ran into the perfect pitch violinist at the School, and persuaded him to sing to the tuner, with his back to it. He was very close, but sometimes just a little sharp, sometimes a tiny bit flat, never absolutely, perfectly on the note. When he could look, he could make the wheels stand still. With stimuli sufficiently different from the ones we become wired for, the brain's subconscious processes don't work. We can't understand the talking drums of West Africa if we don't understand the spoken language they are emulating. While stationed in Japan my father was assigned a translator. The translator used to joke, "I have a deglee in Engrish from U.C.R.A." He really did have an English degree from UCLA, but having grown up in Japan he had great difficulty in distinguishing "R" from "L." Sometimes the subconscious processes notify the conscious mind, "This is not music. It's just noise" Other times they might say, "This is hurting our ears. Let's get the hell out of here." RNJ
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