wsh@hou5g.UUCP (Willie Heck) (06/20/84)
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Perhaps we can find another subject besides serialism/atonality.
I once asked one of my music professors to explain the subjective
feeling we all have that tones in the treble clef are "high," while
those in the bass clef are "low." His answer consisted of a quizzical
look and mumblings to the effect that "It's obvious!" I suspect this
not to be the case, although I've never been able to satisfactorily
explain this phenomenon to myself. Is there anybody who can enlighten
me?
Willie Heck
AT&T Information Systems
Holmdel, New Jersey
hou5g!wshmwg@mouton.UUCP (06/21/84)
++ I think the association of 'high' with pitches of faster oscillation is similar to why we connect 'high' (as in height) with large numbers (cost, loudness, percentage etc). They are all continua which are bounded on the 'low' side (usually by zero (ie the 'ground')), and unbounded on the 'high' side (the sky's the limit). However, this still leaves unanswered the question of how our intuition knows that zero is the lowest frequency, if we can only hear to 20 Hz, and that pitches extend infinitely beyond our 20 kHz limit, in theory. (In practice you probably get stopped by quantum thermodynamics or something.
mckendry@exodus.DEC (NER Network Coordinator) (06/28/84)
I seem to recall reading once that the ancient Greek music theorists called the bass notes "higher" than the treble notes. The rationale was that the bass notes were further from the ground on the lyre or lute, and that fact made it "natural" to call them the "high" notes. Does this ring a familiar bell with anyone? My reference is probably Grout's "History of Music", but it's tucked 'way back in a closet...
liberte@uiucdcs.UUCP (06/29/84)
#R:hou5g:-42200:uiucdcs:45900003:000:389
uiucdcs!liberte Jun 29 01:17:00 1984
I always thought that the high notes tended to be not high enough
and the low notes not low enough. But then, my violin teacher tended
to play high notes too sharp to compensate. Does anyone understand
this psychoacoustic phenomenon?
Daniel LaLiberte (ihnp4!uiucdcs!liberte)
U of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Computer Science
{moderation in all things - including moderation}