[lbo-talk] Chuck's Cassirer posts

[Andy F]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 5:16 PM, Charles Brown
<charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:
> To make the point on the objective nature of musical sounds, somebody
> who knows the physics might want to discuss how the vibration rates of
> the air molecules corresponding to certain sounds , and a couple of
> other aspects of the physics of sound are the same for all cultures,
> even as different cultures use different frequency segments.

That's true, but I don't think that has much bearing on how those
sounds get classified.  Keep in mind that natural "pure" sounds of one
frequency are exceedingly rare, and the possible spectra are infinite
(in principle).

The closest way I can think of is how certain sounds particular to a
particular natural environment might influence how a scale, but I'm
way over my head on that one.

I know languages often name colors differently, sometimes with a
seemingly restricted "palette".  Is that a result of the culture's
natural environment?  Maybe there's a similar effect in sound.


> Phonetics discovers objective sound ranges similarly.

True, but that doesn't mean that any one person can recognize those
objective differences.  Consider the difficulty in hearing differences
in tonal languages like Chinese, or how East Asians have problems with
r/l.

-- 
Andy