leftybassman392

There was a very interesting programme on BBC4 on Sunday evening about the place of music by black musicians in western musical culture. Hosted by Lenny Henry (but don't be put off by that). It contains some eye-opening revelations, not least of which is the rise, around the turn of the 20 century, of music focussing more on the rhythms of the music as oppossed to the melody. I could wax on about it, but if you have access to iPlayer you can watch it here This is a great example of the kind of thing being discussed (from the - classically trained - Scott Joplin): If this doesn't get your feet tapping then you've no right to be calling yourself a musician IMHO

@Woodinblack Watched the video. Very interesting and in broad terms I agree with quite a lot of it (especially the statistical analysis aspect). Some years ago I read about some robot scientists at - I think - the University of Warwick, who were researching how babies learn to walk. It's too long ago for me to remember the finer points, but in essence they concluded that in their first few months the babies' movements are essentially random. Over time they learn to focus on the movements that let them achieve what they're tryting to achieve and progressively phase out the ones that don't. This sounds to me very similar to the statistical analysis the video host talks about. That said, calling it statistical analysis when talking about the actions of a small baby somehow doesn't quite sound right to me as it seems to suggest some conscious analysis going on in the baby's brain. I think it's a lot more random than that. Or rather, he doesn't explain either how the analysis works or where it starts from. Perhaps he does in another video... That said, something about the limitless capacity for learning section that doesn't quite feel right to me. He seems to be suggesting that in learning to talk, the child's capacity to learn is somehow compromised. Whilst I think I understand what he's saying, I'm finding it hard to understand how learning to walk and talk constitute compromises. If the child is exposed to extensive musical stimulus then this same capacity for learning would apply in much the same way as learning a language. In truth I'm not so sure it's saying much that intelligent, observant and engaged parents couldn't work out for themselves. And while I'm here, saying that a baby has the capacity to learn anything doesn't really address the question the OP is asking. Having the capacity to learn is not the same as having an innate instinct or knowledge. Language has to be learnt, whether it's the everyday language of speech or the more specialised language of music: and if perfect pitch is an innate skill, it would seem that it's an innate skill most of us don't have. Still not convinced. Sorry.

@solo4652 I do - sort of - remember Chomsky from my undergrad days, but that was a long time ago as well! Blink reflex I wouldn't have a problem with. In truth I don't know enough about the subject to confirm or deny any of the rest. I do note that you haven't included an innate predisposition to recognise octaves though. I do have a serious question though: as I said in my post on the ancient Greeks, the octave wasn't a big deal in their musical firmament (although, interestingly, they did have an interval that we don't: the enharmonic, roughly equivalent to what we would think of as a quarter tone). In the music of the period this interval was part of a half-octave scale called a tetracord, considered through most of the ancient Greek period (ca. 1300 - 300 BCE), as the purest and most natural of all the available variations. We hear it as horribly dissonant. Also, the scales of the time had many slight variations (not unlike the equal temperament/Just Scale/Cycle-of-fifths discrepancies, but considerably more complex and varied). My question is this: Is it possible that such differences can exist in different cultures over such long periods of time, and still be considered innate? My instinct is to doubt it as you already know, but I'd be fascinated to hear a counter argument.

This topic could, I suggest, benefit from being studied from a psychoacoustic perspective. For those who don't know, psychoacoustics is the study of how the brain processes the information contained in the pressure wave arriving at the ears. The brain is an immensely complex organ that we still don't understand all that well. In particular, it is able to extract a huge amount of information from a single, continuously varying pressure wave. Looked at in that way, sounds have to be learned. In particular, perception of pitch has to be acquired. If we can accept that, then surely the perception of a doubling of pitch (and hence the notion of an octave) has to be acquired as well. In truth, I'm not a great believer in innate abilities generally. I can accept the idea of certain people having differing propensities for certain types of knowledge, skills and understanding, but I remain to be convinced that there is much at all (beyond the most fundamental elements such as breathing) that could be truly said to be innate (unless of course one defines innateness in terms of such propensities). In particular, I don't believe anybody is born with the abilty to recognise an octave. I'm certainly not seeking to present this as a fait accompli though, and am happy to be convinced otherwise. If anybody can point me to studies that lend support to the concept of innateness, then I'm all ears.

Indeed. A point I made at the end of my first paragraph as I recall.

At the risk of seeming picky, we use a precisely equally tempered scale: each note in the scale is 21/12 times the frequency of the one below it. Strictly speaking it's a compromise (all the notes in an octave, apart from the root note and the octave itself, are slightly adrift from the harmonic purity that characterises scales based more closely on the harmonic series. We use it because it sidesteps the numerous issues commonly associated with those earlier scale types such as the Pythagorean series (which most will know as the cycle of fifths) and the Just scale). In practice there are indeed particular issues with implementing the scale on different types of instruments, but the equal temperament scale is the standard temperament for most of the music we hear. To address the OP's question more directly, the notes in the equal temperament scale are learned, to the point where we rarely even notice the harmonic anomalies inherent in its structure. It is worth pointing out that very early western music didn't have the octave as a fundamental element of the scale structure the way we do today. Ancient Greek music (thought of as the birthplace of the western musical tradition) had scales organised differently to the way we do it. The Greeks knew and used the octave in their music, but because of the way the musical structures were organised it didn't have the importance we attach to it. TL:DR hearing the octave is an acquired skill. For the type of music we play it lies at the very heart of the way we work, which means that being able to recognise it is essential to our approach. In a situation where it isn't essential or isn't used (as is the case for most of the scales used in the ancient Greek approach), it may not be necessary to know about it. There is an interesting little sideline to this: The Pythagorean scale, based as it is on successive applications of the ratios 3/2 and 2/3, and hence considered the purest scale in terms of adherence to the natural harmonic series and the standard scale type in early western music for hundreds of years, can't be used to generate an exact octave. There is no power of 3 that is exactly twice any power of 2, and vice versa. As a result, being able to complete the scale requires a well-developed notion of the octave as an interval. In truth I'm not entirely sure how this feeds into the current discussion, but it's interesting nonetheless. EDIT TO ADD: Here's a couple references on the subject of temperaments: Wikipedia Early Music Sources (YouTube)

Presets can be very handy as jumping off points for your own mappings. I certainly wouldn’t avoid gear that has presets simply because it has presets. In fact I have a couple of TC electronic pedals that can access the tone print app, and although I haven’t done much with them yet I do plan to explore in more depth at some point. I don’t play live any more so there’s no imperative to get ‘that’ sound, so if it’s free and lets you tinker, then what’s the big deal? I still tweak the knobs on my amps and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

Well it's not as if it hasn't been done before...

Someone seems to have too much time on their hands. Or maybe it's art: a meditation upon the angst left handed players have to go through when buying a new instrument perhaps...?

Mrs. LBM used to work for a library authority that gave a lot of work to PWC. To this day she can't figure out what they ever achieved on behalf of the authority to justify the vast amounts of money that was spent on them.

I was in my local Porsche dealership the other day getting the MOT done that should have happened at the end of March. Got chatting to the rep who sold me the CTMNBN, and he was telling me much the same kind of thing. For a maker whose price list picks up where most others leave off, I found this extremely surprising to say the least. Something else he said that surprised me was that as against the general picture of shortage and hardship, some people had done 'very well' (his words) out of the pandemic. He cited DeLoitte as an example. Then again, given what they do for a living I guess we shouldn't be surprised at a hike in the number of companies seeking their services.

There is something about parlour guitars isn't there? I bought a Faith Mercury a year or two ago and it is a lovely little thing. It cost a bit more than yours to be fair, but it is probably my current favourite guitar, with a fullness of sound scarcely believable for such a small instrument.

Much though I'd like to engage, I fear the correspondence to the Queen's English is altogether too tenuous for me to sustain the illusion with any conviction for any length of time. Oi 'ope ya dow' moind.

'ow do Skank. 'ow's yer belly fer spots?

My music lessons at school were pretty crappy too, but I wonder if it might be time to put a bit of perspective into the discussion. Like quite a few people around here I think, I was at school during the late '50s and '60s. Many teachers teaching music - or indeed any other subject - at that time had little proper training in the teaching of their chosen subject. After WWII, work had to be found for the thousands of soldiers being demobbed. Additionally, the school leaving age was in the process of being raised from 14 to 15 at about the same time so there was a pressing need to get people into the profession. (Teaching had been a profession that encouraged - though it didn't actually require - specialised training since the early years of the 20th century, but emergency powers to fast-track people into teaching were setup in 1943 and continued until the early '50s). Kids going to school during the '50s, '60s and '70s would most certainly have encountered these 'certificated' teachers, and even in the early '80s when I joined the profession, a number of my senior colleagues were certificated. Under these circumstances it shouldn't really be surprising that the teaching of music was patchy at best. LEAs acknowledged the importance of music education to the child's development, but had no real clue as to how to implement it. In practice, schools were essentially left to their own devices. The rise of popular music culture at about the same time was very much at odds with the classical training and/or interests and/or attitudes of the teachers standing in front of it, so it should come as no surprise that the two ideologies didn't see eye-to-eye. I'm not taking sides by the way, just trying to give a bit of perspective as to why so many baby-boomers are reporting such poor experiences. Even today (and without wishing to hijack the thread), music continues to be one of those 'difficult' subjects to really get right in education, especially with so many politicians and employers forever chirping on about the need to focus on teaching kids subjects that will be 'of use to them' in the world of work. I still hear people chuntering on about the three R's (actually I've never really understood that one: Writing starts with a W and Arithmetic starts with an A. What kind of educational example is that setting FFS! ). In a school where its importance is understood, and which can afford to devote resources to it, and be in the fortunate position of having teachers who can deliver it effectively to today's kids, and where there's a local music service staffed by properly qualified and experienced musicians to provide instrumental training, music flourishes (as do the students lucky enough to benefit from it). Probably also worth adding that for most musical instruments, a classical training is still the norm; and while I'm here, classical training is also still the norm for primary age guitarists (and bass is not taught at all at primary level to the best of my knowledge). It does no harm to remember that not every 12-year old budding musician wants to play guitar or bass.

Another point that might be worth making is that is that broadly speaking thirds, fifths and sevenths retain their identities over multiple octaves, whereas you need to add 7 for each extra octave for the other intervals. So... An octave plus a second is a ninth; an octave plus a third is a third (not a tenth); an octave plus a fourth is an eleventh; an octave plus a fifth is a fifth; an octave plus a sixth is a thirteenth, and an octave plus a seventh is a seventh. You see lots of chords featuring 9ths, 11ths and 13ths in jazz. What you don't see in such chords are 10ths, 12ths and 14ths.

Well, there's our ability to locate multiple sound sources in 3d space with our eyes closed ( a phenomenon that is exploited by a recording technique called binaural recording)...

Some would say that there is no spoon speaker.

The plots I printed earlier are sustained note segments. Transients (which I agree is an important topic in it's own right) is not covered in the posts I, er, posted. Giving away my age a bit here, but I'm old enough to have worked with the first generation of synthesisers such as the VCS 3 in the late '60s. IME a pure sine wave is actually a very boring, characterless sound. In order to give it enough character to make it interesting to listen to it was necessary to process it in a number of ways. Sawtooth waves were much more interesting to work with. I can't recall ever hearing this tested, but I rather suspect that a sine wave generator playing the same sequence of notes as a flute would be markedly less engaging to listen to. Granted there would be clues in the sequence other than the character of the sound that a musician would pick up on, but even so... As a footnote, it may also be worth reinforcing the point about the brain's remarkable ability to extract information from the audio content coming in through the ears, and in particular the ability of an experienced musician to spot absolutely tiny nuances in the timbre of different musical instruments of the same type. Hands up everybody who reckons they could spot the difference between a Jazz bass and a P bass playing the same sequence of notes in the hands of the same player...

Indeed it is common practice these days to intervene actively (as explained in the linked article), but compact speaker systems have been around a long time, and it is also known that the brain has the ability to fill in the blanks irrespective of any technologies that may be used to reinforce the effect. While I'd agree that modern speaker systems are smaller because the need for size to reproduce deep bass is not there to the same degree, that hasn't always been the case.

Righto! There is an acoustic phenomenon arising out of the overtone series that will be of particular interest to bass players: the missing fundamental In simple terms, it's the ability of the brain to 'hear' sounds that aren't actually there. Compact audio speaker systems are for the most part physically unable to reproduce the lowest frequencies in the audio spectrum. However, the brain is able to use the overtone series to 'fill in' the missing fundamental. This is how well-designed small speaker systems are able to give the impression of extended bass that isn't really there. As an added bonus, because the extended bass output is a psychoacoustic phenomenon that isn't being physically reproduced by the audio system, you're less likely to get complaints from your neighbours about thumping bass rattling their ornaments when you crank up the volume on your hifi. 👍

TBH I'm not so sure we are subverting the thread. The OP was asking a question about loudspeakers producing different notes simultaneously. This part of the discussion is directly related to that, surely? Seriously, I wouldn't worry about it. Whatever, I always find this type of discussion fascinating. I've studied psychoacoustics on and off for many years, and no matter how many times I return to it I never cease to be astonished at the quantity of information the human brain is able to extract from a single pressure wave.

In what way is it telling? You seem to be ignoring all the other data for the sake of being (sort of) right for the notes at the very top of the instrument's range - a region where a real-world flautist would spend very little of his/her time. You've said nothing, for example, about the numerous harmonics picked up by the Fourier plot. And while I'm here, I posted the link knowing that remark was there. If you're looking to be that picky about it, and given the wording you have chosen to highlight, it's also true to say that for most of it's range it's not almost a sine wave. Fundamental plus second harmonic doth not a sine wave make.

The harmonic series for the flute is new to me as an area of study, so bear with me. From my research there are some points that might be worth making: 1. There are many types of flute, all of which have slightly different harmonic spectra. The fact that an experienced ear can tell them apart means they can't be pure sine waves. 2. Like you, I've always thought of the flute as a very pure-sounding instrument, but analysis indicates that the actual sound spectrum you get from the instrument depends on a number of factors (note pitch and note intensity being two examples) 3. The dB scale used in the charts is marked at 5dB intervals. Examination of the plot for the flute indicates that the first harmonic is some 14 dB down on the fundamental, the second harmonic is around 5dB down, and subsequent harmonics drop away markedly thereafter. A drop of 3dB indicates a halving of sound intensity. From these numbers, the first harmonic has approx. 1/40th of the intensity of the fundamental, second harmonic a little over a quarter of the intensity, with subsequent harmonics contributing vanishingly small components to the sound. Bear in mind that this is a single Fourier plot at a single frequency and intensity from a single flute. One would expect the spectrum to be different under diferent conditions. This link provides some examples of flute waveforms. The accompanying notes flesh out the details.

Following up Stub's piece, perhaps you may care to see a couple of plots of real instruments. Ignore the text at the bottom: It got caught in the screen grab and I couldn't be bothered to take it out. Notice how much more quickly the overtones die away for the flute. The very different plots for the same note are the reason the two instruments sound so different. As has been said by another poster, the really clever stuff goes on in your brain. As long as you've heard them before, it can identify which instrument is which. Not only that, but if you closed your eyes with two musicians in front of you playing these instruments at the same time, it can not only separate out the two sounds from the enormously complex waveform that's hitting your ear drums, but also allow you to locate each instrument in 3D space (not to mention a whole bunch of other stuff as well). All this from what arrives at your ears as a single pressure wave.