Subject: Re: musical training and pitch resolution From: Linda Seltzer <lseltzer@xxxxxxxx> Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 17:57:23 -0400When I was younger I got very involved in the issues of pitch analysis, and the more I learned about both ethnic music and signal processing, the more I realized that it becomes a question of what one is trying to find out and why. I doubt that divisions smaller than a semitone in any particular culture or even among the performances of any one family or performer in that culture are part of a repeatable system, and rather they represent an expressivity that has to do with fine tuning of pitch and timbre. The ustads of the music of India can sing different forms of a note, and I have heard an ustad (Viliyat Khan) demonstrate singing different forms of Sa, the base note that is never supposed to vary, in one raga, because it suddenly struck him that it was what he wanted to improvise musically at that point, and he had the musical vocabulary to do it within the context of the raga. However, I doubt that these different forms are invariant from one raga to another, and a performer could purposely vary these very small nuances of pitch even within one performance. The listener may not be consciously be perceiving how low a flattening actually is or how sharp a sharpening actually is. However, the listener will hear it as a change of mood or shading of expression in the music, and we can definitely hear the difference between these singers and singer who does not know these skills. Arabic maqam singers and Eastern European folk violinists also use very fine gradations of pitch as an expressive tool. I strongly doubt that any type of system can be made out of any this.