Re:Harmony Explained: Progress Towards a Scientific Theory o...
by unholiness on Friday June 16, 2017 @07:21PM
(#14573281)
True!
I won't risk getting out of my depth. My comment was simply saying there are unique nerve signals from unique points across the cochlea which uniquely convey the information "this frequency is currently being heard at this volume". To say that that information is what we perceive... that's not an argument I'd make. But it is a step along the process.
Everyone knows we "see" in rgb, but few people seem to know we "hear" in frequencies more than we "hear" in waveforms. That's my point.
Obvious example: you don't hear formants and spectral distributions when someone is speaking. You hear words, which are parsed into sentences, which are processed into meaning.
Along the way a lot of redundant elements - background noises, breath sounds, ums and ahs, and even distortion from electronic transmission systems - are all eliminated.
Music is similar but even more complicated, because while there are stylistic conventions, there doesn't seem to any single consistent grammar.
There's a superficial listening level which parses a mix of sounds into the sounds of different instruments, a "theory" level which listens for horizontal and vertical groupings and structures, an "emotional" level which reacts to implied emotion and mood, and sometimes a "metaphorical" level which listens poetically and associatively.
It's not a simple process.