Re: They sometimes behave so strangely (Pierre Divenyi )


Subject: Re: They sometimes behave so strangely
From:    Pierre Divenyi  <pdivenyi@xxxxxxxx>
Date:    Tue, 9 Jan 2007 11:54:29 -0800
List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>

In the same vein, just imagine your boss who calls you in his office one morning and sings, beautifully and with great musical expression, "you are fired". Pierre On 1/9/07 9:35 AM, "Brian Gygi" <bgygi@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > Peter Lennox wrote: >> As you've implied, the mystery is not so much that repetitions evince the >> perception of musicality, but rather that 'normally', we don't hear music. >> I've often wondered on this in respect of environmental sounds - why do we >> not hear a "musical world"? > That is what numerous composers have tried to do for the past almost one > hundred years, to get us to hear the world in more musical terms. I > think the reason we do not do this on an everyday basis is because it > is contrary to the demands of our normal everyday functioning in a > complex acoustic environment. If you get so caught up in the musicality > of a soundscape, you will fail to notice important things, like all the > people honking at you who are about to hit you (a particular danger in > countries such as Morocco). For everday listening, what is important is > the nature of a sound source and its location. Those are different from > the goals of musical or linguistic listening. If you are presented with > a soundscape that is sufficiently different from what you are accustomed > to, you may indeed notice the musicality of it, just as you can hear the > musicality of an exotic language. But if you lived there everyday and > had to hear and respond to the sounds in an appropriate manner, I > suspect the musicality would soon go away. Which is necessarily not > bad thing. > > Brian Gygi > East Bay Institute for Research and Education > >


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