Music 29

Time Domain: Grid Time: Beat

A basic Pulse that typically falls in the range between 60 to 120 events per minute. The rate at which a listener will spontaneously tap while listening to music.

Perception and Cognition: Predictability

A feature of most musical surfaces is the ability to predict behaviours based on current behaviors. David Huron sites 4 modes of prediction in music 1. Schematic predictability: the music is constructed so that it conforms to what ever existing schemas listeners are likely to bring to the listening experience. 2) Dynamic predictability: the music is constructed so that the work itself will evoke accurate work-specific expectations. 3)Veridical familiarity; the music becomes predictable because you listen to it over and over again.(veridical -- corresponding to the truth -- what actually is) 4) Conscious predictability: music is organized so that observant or knowledgeable listeners will be able to infer future musical events through conscious thought as the music progresses.

Frequency Band

A frequency band would be a range of frequencies, say all frequencies between 500-2000 Hertz. The larger the frequency band the closer the ear gets to perceiving a noise signal -- if the band is not too wide then the noise is colored in sound depending on the relative range of frequency. -- acoustic engineers speak of white noise (full band noise), pink noise etc..

Time Domain: Open-Time: Grain

A grain is a small fragment of sound (an event in the event domain) born of some larger whole. Grains have duration and noticing the distribution of grains in a musical texture can be very informative. The meaning of the term grain changes depending on the source. But when we speak of duration we most often speak of successive onsets of grains or events. Grains can be non-overlapping, overlapping, fused Grains can be periodic or aperiodic

Perception & Cognition: Basilar Membrane

A long, thin tissue in the cochlea that contains the sensory neurons responsible for hearing. Through a complicated bio-mechanical arrangement, the basilar membrane achieves a form of spectral analysis where high and low frequencies cause maximum activation toward opposite ends of the membrane.

Global Morphology: Density

A measure of the relative thickness or fullness of a musical texture. In instrumental music, this can be judged by the number of instruments playing each part. Example: large symphony = very dense; one voice = low density

Morphology of Sound: Texture: Monophony

A monophonic sound example features a single strand or stream of musical activity. This texture is fairly easy to recognize -- there is only one continuous line One singer

Tuning and Pitch Spaces:Musical Scale

A musical scale is formed by arranging tones closely together in an ascending or descending order.

Morphology of Sound: Texture: Heterophony

A musical texture that features one predominant melody stream with all other streams ornamenting and roughly following along with the primary line. This texture is more common in non-western musics, particularly Persian, Turkish and middle-eastern musics. Has a distinct melody (everyone knows the tune) but are doing different things

Sound Source

A sound source is the physical object or objects that account for a single stream in an auditory scene. (e.g. a violin in a string quartet, a single loudspeaker in a stereo pair, the single human voice in a choir, a frog in a pond etc.). To answer the question, what is the sound source, identify the physics of the objects that cause the vibration and produce the vibration. Objects produce signature sounds can be classed into a small number of categories: Wood, Metal, Stretched Skin or Fabric, Rubber, Breaking Glass, Air, Water, Electronic, etc..

Event Morphology: Amplitude

A technical measure of relative loudness of a sound

Morphology of Sound: Texture: Homophony

A very common music texture that features one central melodic stream of musical activity with all other musical activity as harmonic and percussive accompaniment. Most commercial pop and rock music is homophonic in texture as it features a solo singer with all the other instruments in the background. The homophonic texture is fairly easy to hear. Multiple sine waves with the same peaks and troughs choir music

Event Morphology: Amplitude Envelope

Amplitude envelope is a diagram showing the birth, life, and death of a sonic event in terms of changes in amplitude alone.

Perception and Cognition:Awe

An emotion in which wonder and fear are combined. Often associated with gasping or breath-holding and general motor immobility ("freeze").

Physical World: Sonic Event

An isolated event that belongs to a larger auditory scene. In a piece of music, sonic events stand out as a single feature(high degree of auditory salience) usually lasting only an instant or extending to many seconds. Sonic events can be made from one or more sound source(s).

Event Morphology: Onset

Any beginning to an event or sound is an onset

Perception & Cognition: Auditory Scene

Auditory scene is constructed from the total composite sound that meets our ears at any given moment.

Mode of Excitation

Categorize physical acts that result in energy being transferred into another object to produce vibration and sound. Various Modes of Excitation are: strike, pluck, bow, blown, shaken and rubbed

Event Morphology: Sustain

Continual energy must be put into the object for continual sound (ie a bow sits on a string)

Perception and Cognition:Emergence

Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions

Perception and Cognition: Entrainment

Entrainment thus forms the dynamic multimodal framework from which musical magic, a peak experience of a group of people, may emerge. Examples: applause or the waving of hands in crowds

Time Domain:Event Density

Event density describes the number of sonic events happening over a period of time. It is not the same term as density.

Perception and Cognition:Schematic Expectation

Expectations that arise from general knowledge of how events typically unfold -- such as familiarity with the "language" of jazz. Expectations linked to long-term memory.

Perception and Cognition:Surprise

Four ways that can be surpising 1) Schematic surprise: music is constructed so that it violates some existing schema that listeners have brought to the listening experience. 2) Dynamic surprise: music is constructed so that the work itself will set up some work-spectifc expectation that is then violated. 3) Veridical surpirse: evoked by violating a listener's existing knowledge of a given musical work.

Frequency Domain:Frequency

Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time (i.e. the speed of recurrence of some identified pattern).

Global Morphology(texture)

Global Morphology tracks the large-scale temporal unfolding of all the events that constitute a whole piece of music - the gestalt.

Event Morphology: Graduated Continuant

Graduated Continuant. The onset is graduated, settling into a continuant phase which eventually closes in a graduated termination. No stop & decay. Energy must be continually put in. Example: Brass instruments, singing

Time Domain: Open Time: Grid-time continuum

Grid time is linear measured time with the added features of temporal flexibility and malleability. Grid-time falls somewhere in the middle of the global time continuum. tatum<->beat sub-division<->beat<->meter/measure<->phrase<->section<-entire piece>

Frequency Domain:Harmonic

Harmonic-any singing(screaming is inharmonic) is normally harmonic. blown tube/pipes, and plucked strings are almost always harmonic A harmonic partial is one that is (roughly) a whole number multiple of a common fundamental frequency. We speak of the 1st partial as the fundamental. The 2nd partial then is two times the fundamental and this forms the ratio of 2 to 1.

Perception and Cognition:Hearing

Hearing is a way of touching at a distance and the intimacy of the first sense is fused with sociability whenever people gather together to hear something.

Frequency Domain: Spectrum

Human hearing can be modeled in a frequency space that extends from 0 hertz (vibrations per second) to roughly 20,000 Hertz. Spectral analysis results in a data set that shows the amount of energy (amplitude or loudness) present at each frequency level in the human hearing range.

Frequency Domain: Timbre

In music, timbre ( like tahmber, or spelling pronunciation ; ) is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices or musical instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that mediate the perception of timbre include spectrum and envelope. Timbre is also known in psychoacoustics as tone quality or tone color. Timbre has been called a "wastebasket" attribute or category, or "the psychoacoustician's multidimensional wastebasket category for everything that can't be qualified as pitch or loudness." i.e, the 'shape' of the sound. Consider these terms used to describe timbre Brightness, harmonic, inharmonic. Reedy. Brassy, warm, harsh, muddy, clear Transition from high to low energy. The timbre of a sound can change over time. From bright to low space (like a bell). What makes the difference between the sound of a clarinet and the flute? -higher partials = brighter -different timbres (differences in frequency domains, dynamics are not just about differences in energy but also in brightness)

Frequency Domain: Inharmonic

Inharmonic sounds are normally based in bells, gongs and cymbals. Such sounds are highly individualistic and have unstable or beating patterns An inharmonic partial is one that is not a whole number multiple of a common fundamental frequency. Bells and Gongs typically have inharmonic partials. For example, in a bell sound we might discover a partial that is in the ratio 4.32453 to 1 (clearly a more complex relationship to the fundamental frequency)

Time Domain: Grid-time: Meter (downbeat)

Meter arises when beat(s) in a clock-time/grid-time structure are grouped into larger cyclic patterns called measures. Measures typically contain 2,3,4, 6, or 8 beats, but can also be irregular in number. A measure presents combinations of strong and weak beat(s) that create patterns of duple or triple meter. Most measures in western music use simple duple or triple meters or a combination of both called compound meter.

Event Morphology: Attack Impulse

Modeled on the single detached note which is immediately terminated (No decay)

Physical World: Morphology of Sound

Morphology of sound tracks in a very careful way how a piece of music or soundscape evolves through time. Creating a morphology of sound implies a disection of sound into related parts that can be compared to similar parts in other sounds even when the other sounds are seemingly very different in nature and origin. can be separated into global morphology and event morphology

What are the four categories?

Morphology of sound. Perception and cognition. Time Domain. Frequency Domain.

Frequency Domain:Noise

Noise is signal/waveform entering the ear and having roughly equal energy present at audible frequencies. This includes wind, rain, breath, waterfall and analog hiss. often include extremely short impulses because there is not enough duration to establish a fundamental frequency A signal/waveform entering the ear and having roughly equal energy present at all audible frequencies is called noise. Examples include: electroacoustic hiss, flowing water, sand pouring into a bucket.

Room Effects

Once sound is released into a room or open space, the acoustic characteristics of that space will operate on the sound and alter our perception of that sound. Consider three elements: The position of the listener, the location of the source, the size and acoustic characteristics of the room.

Frequency Domain: Overtone

Overtones are components of a complex waveform existing above a fundamental frequency Vibrating strings and most resonating systems (bells, winds) all produce overtones

Frequency Domain: Pitch, Note and Tone

Pitch, note, and tone are closely linked and mostly synonymous. Notes, pitches and tones are labeled by their fundamental frequency. Nevertheless, there are some distinctions: Tone is generally more technical in nature and is often used to describe an electronically produced sound that has a clearly audible fundamental frequency. Note generally refers to a symbol representing a pitch which belongs to some larger system of organization (see pitch space). Pitch is focused on the fundamental frequency and is not seriously concerned with the timbre aspect of the sound. The flute, oboe, or violin, can all play the same pitch, even though each instrument sounds very different in timbre.

Perception & Cognition: Auditory Scene Analysis

Process by which distance, direction, loudness, and frequency of many individual sounds are perceived simultaneously

Time Domain: Open-Time: rate of change

Rate of Change gauges the relative speed of significant change in musical texture, density, timbre from one instant to the next. Most music changes its texture or timbre at a fairly slow pace over time. Musics that features extremely fast rates of change are rare.

Tuning and Pitch Spaces:Notation

Simultaneous but complementary streams of musical activity working independently but functioning as a unified whole. Western classical music was obsessed with tonal pitch space polyphony for hundreds of years.

Morphology of Sound: Texture: Polyphony

Simultaneous but complimentary streams of musical activity working independently but functioning as a unified whole. Western classical music was obsessed with tonal pitch space polyphony for hundreds of years. polyphony-several different lines with different peaks melodies that dont follow each other

Frequency Domain: Partial

Sound waves enter the ear and are built by the eardrum into an analog single complex waveform. All complex waveforms can be broken down into a discrete number of amplitude varying fixed frequencies (sine waves). The individual components are called partials (i.e. small bits of the overall sound).

Frequency Domain:Partial

Sound waves enter the ear and are built by the eardrum into an analog single complex waveform. All complex waveforms can be broken down into a discrete number of amplitude varying fixed frequencies (sine waves). The individual components are called partials (i.e. small bits of the overall sound).

Time Domain: Grid-time: Tempo

Tempo is defined as the number of beat(s) per minute. In most music the tempo varies from 60-120 beats per minute roughly mirroring the range of the human pulse rate. Tempos can change in the middle of a piece. Tempi can slow down gradualy or accelerate, vascilate, or break down completely into open-time

Time Domain:Duration

The actual duration of the event, which is measured from the Onset of the event to offset of the same event.

Spatial Audio

The displacement of a musical instrument in space can completely alter the way the music is perceived.

Perception and Cognition:Acoustics

The qualities or characteristics of a room, auditorium, stadium, etc., that determine the audibility or fidelity of sounds in it.

Perception and Cognition:Common Fate

The sharing of physical history (I dont know what that means...) summation of partials = (example of hitting a metal pole with a felt block (why would you do that in real life?) : attack + resonance = common fate

Time Domain: Grid-Time: Tatum

The smallest common duration in a clock-time space

Event Morphology: Spectral Envelope

Tracks the birth, life and death of a sound plotting frequency components over time

Physical World: Note to Noise Continuum

Transition from one single sine tone(no overtones or partials) to highly saturated noise. water, sand being poured out of a bucket

Tuning and Pitch Spaces:Interval (octave, fifth)

Tuning and Pitch Spaces:Interval (octave, fifth) intervals are names given to the common low-order whole number ratios between two frequencies: The most common interval names are: the octave with a ration of 2/1 (see Octave equivalence and the fifth with a ration of 3/2 (see drone)

Tuning and Pitch Spaces:

Tuning is the process of adjusting the pitch of one or many tones from musical instruments to establish intervals between these tones. Tuning is usually based on a fixed reference, such as A = 440 Hz. Out of tune refers to a pitch/tone that is either too high (sharp) or too low (flat) in relation to a given reference pitch. While an instrument might be in tune relative to its own range of notes, it may not be considered 'in tune' if it does not match A = 440 Hz (or whatever reference pitch one might be using).

Resonance

Vibrating objects can produce resonance and rooms can produce resonance (see room effects).

Perception and Cognition:Anticipation

When a listener is certain of some future event, we may say that the listener is experiencing a strong feeling of anticipation.

Rupture

a clear and abrupt break in a musical continuity. Something must be established before it can be ruptured.

Loudness/Dynamics

almost inaudible <-> quite<->normal listening level<-> loud<-> extremely loud Loudness is synonymous with the term musical dynamics. Simply put, it is how loud something appears to be at any given moment. A few keys to understanding loudness: 1) It takes exponentially varying degrees of energy to make any event appear louder to our ears. 2) There is a direct link between loudness perception and timbre. ** All musical instruments change their timbre profiles as they change dynamic levels.

Microtiming

time-grid deformations that create special feel without destroying the impression of the beat/meter/tempo relationships.