Blue notes

[Musicologo]

Blue has always existed, it's a frequency range. Whether humans have a name for it doesn't mean anything.

I will not bother anylonger. He dug a hole so deep he doesn't even see... and all the ad hominems that he is talking about himself... lol. He is surely a heck of a positivist realist and doesn't have a clue. He didn't understand that this was never about me, what I think on the subject is irrelevant. I've been posting with references and links the thoughts of dozens of scholars and scientists spanning 100 years. My opinion is absolutely irrelevant, I've been just presenting what is musicology and what is its method and purpose.

He keeps insisting in contradidcting without evidence the knowledge produced. He equates music with sound, and now he equates blue with a frequency range. He is talking about physical objects the entire time, he refuses to acknowlede the human objects or the validity or use of knowledge produced on the human objects.

these fields are all very useful as sources of data which can be used to identify targets for further research by the hard sciences which will likely be of considerable benefit. On their own however they serve no purpose whatsoever and are of no benefit to humankind.

His ideology is there for everyone to see. We all understood his point long time ago. Probably when the Himba people are unable to tell appart that blue square from the green ones he will call them "disabled" or "sick people" that need help and treatment for the benefit of humankind. We all know where this kind of thinking leads. However he fails to understand that what is interesting is explaining why the himba don't have a word for blue or why they are unable to tell it appart. Of course, that kind of question and answer is meaningless in that ideology, it's not even an object of study. He fails to understand that the core is that we're studying people not frequency ranges. It's all about people. What they call things, why they do things, how they do things, how they perceive things. That's what human sciences is about.

While he is talking about a physical world, matter, devoided of people and regardless or people, like if it was even possible to have some kind of "objective" and "neutral" viewpoint from outside, like if it was possible to measure and quantify things without human error and instruments and human concepts to talk about them. He is an abstraction in a dehumanized world. A figment of a meaningless mathematical formula. So I will finally let him rest in his meaningless matrix, all the references are out there if anyone cares to read about them and learn about human music.

whales also make music, they have songs and melodies

Whales certainly produce sound. The rest is antropomorphization. Why would someone call those sounds "songs" or "melodies"? Just because they vaguely resemble the discrete units someone in some culture calls "songs" or "melodies"? Do whales have a concept and intention for that sound? Functionally It seems more like speech than music. If someone identifies "melodies" in those sounds it's that someone who is recognizing music in those sounds, it's them calling it music. But if whales don't call it or recognize it as music, then it is not music for them [and how would you know that?]. That is why context matters. What a jazz musician call "a song" someone else could call 100 because everytime they change the melody, while a blackfoot sings 7 times what to me sounds always the same song he claims they are very distint 7 songs because what is changing is a paramter that is only relevant to him (like the green circles in which I can't tell them appart), etc... The questions, methods and answers posed by human objects are fascinating and very different from physical objects.

[fluffy_little_something]

That's also what human music is about, communication. Even what comes with it, namely dance, is about communication, dancing alone makes no sense. Just like singing makes no sense if there is nobody who listens.
It's only logical that highly intelligent and social animals with a lot of free time came up with music.

[vurt]

i only ever dance alone.
its safer for everyone that way.

[Musicologo]

It's only logical that highly intelligent and social animals with a lot of free time came up with music.

I honestly don't know the answer to this, never seen such research, do you have references? With time might look it up. But it's a good question. Most animals are unable to coordinate to a beat and the few ones that are able to do it are the ones that "speak" (dolphins, araras...) which suggests the same brain circuit might be involved [patel 2008]. Out of my mind if I was trying to answer this I'd use the same method, would do fieldwork, and in this case instead of ethnography would do ethology... and try to find out why whales produce those sounds. If they are just talking/speech, or if it serves a playful purpose, if they are able to coordinate with a beat, if they dance, if they are aroused or have fun when they do it, etc, etc.... then you might be able to at least say why they do it. But the name you call it, depends a lot more on you than them.

That's also what human music is about, communication.

That's a gross generalization. Why humans do music? In Humans, Rice and Nettl talk about at least 8 different grand purposes found for musics around the world. Communication is rarely one of them, people use speech for that, though in song it can be a ways to memorize and reinforce a semantic narrative (lyrical content) as a means of spreading a message (political activism or news/folk practices), It can be expressive [on the part of the performer] and indutive of emotions [on the part of receiver] - you can communicate lyrics but you can't really communicate music, normally you can express it and hope it induces what you want to convey given enough shared cultural background, but often many things are lost in the process; can be play/bonding ritual, can be expressive movement/coordination [many cultures don't really have a separate term for dance], can be religious ritual/transe/meditation/healing to release chemicals in your body, can be craft/art [the small subset of western notated canon for instance], can be business for profit [most recorded music was made in that context]...

[aciddose]

So tell me again how any of this off-topic nonsense you try to force us toward is related to the original topic: blue notes recognized as examples of dissonance in western music where one note of such a chord where a "blue" note is present is reduced by an octave, eliminating the problem.

Can you explain by waving your arms around some more? I didn't quite get that. Maybe bang your head on the wall a few more times. Harder.

[Musicologo]

Answered Jan 01 5.07 pm, restated on Tue Jan 09, 2018 1:15 pm, argumented why in all other pages.

[vurt]

So tell me again how any of this off-topic nonsense you try to force us toward is related to the original topic: blue notes recognized as examples of dissonance in western music where one note of such a chord where a "blue" note is present is reduced by an octave, eliminating the problem.

Can you explain by waving your arms around some more? I didn't quite get that. Maybe bang your head on the wall a few more times. Harder.

tbh, its kind of interesting.

its a different perspective is all, maybe not one youre interested in, which is fine.

[aciddose]

I entirely agree that subjective terms are subjective. What I object to is only that Musicologo here argues that the objective facts are incorrect without providing any evidence or proof. Pointing out that in theory the meaning of the subjective terms harmonic, consonance and dissonance "could be" reversed stands alone in isolation. It does not impact or disprove the fact that where the terms aren't reversed the mathematical explanation works perfectly.

Without pointing out the only evidence he provided was argued false of course where he quickly attacked the person and changed the subject; indeed if the "bell-like" dissonant ratios are sung with the intent to emulate metallic instruments like bells and gongs it rather provides evidence supporting the mathematical theory and against his own: that the term "dissonance" must imply "sounds bad" when in fact regardless of upbringing, culture, race or "ethnicity" it is indeed commonplace for dissonant ratios to be considered pleasing and to add interest both harmonically (chords and scales) and melodically.

Communication is all about using terms that allow us to share meaning and while this fellow is very welcome to use non-standard terms which carry no valid meaning or to point out that such usage does exist in the world, he is not welcome to challenge the notion that a rational argument is valid or invalid without first making a rational argument himself!

"Rationality doesn't apply!" is an illogical contradiction. "The following statement is true. The previous statement is false."

[vurt]

but it would be fair to say some music from different cultures can sound dissonant to ears from a different culture.
that in itself is worthy of discussion, perhaps not the ops question, but conversation evolves.

by all means disagree, but don't shut down! a discussion.

and no isn't doesn't disprove the math of the harmonics. im by no means saying i agree with him, just that i find it interesting. im also not disagreeing, if we take the word dissonance and use unpleasant, which is more apt for a subjective discussion.

[aciddose]

Yes I agree entirely and I was at first very interested to hear of an example of a human who found low harmonic ratios unpleasant. In that respect I was disappointed to hear that it was nothing but a misinterpretation of the intentional emulation of metallic timbres from bells or gongs and did not in fact represent an example of "low harmonic ratios = unpleasant".

We should all be familiar with the fact that ancient Greeks (~2500 years) understood the basic properties of harmonics and integer ratios as well as had limited knowledge of irrational numbers like pi which developed very slowly during that period. Likewise many other ancient cultures came to understand harmonics and integer ratios along with stringed instruments involved in their choice of scales and tuning. In fact it would appear that as immediately as mathematics and writing appeared such descriptions became present, at different times depending upon the culture and its location on the globe.

So if Musicologo could provide any example that he believes is as such (low harmonic ratios = unpleasant) that would be extremely interesting I'm sure not just to myself but anyone with any experience in any form of human music at all (any culture, any time period, any location).

[Musicologo]

Musicologo here argues that the objective facts are incorrect

This is a lie. The objective physical facts are correct. What is not proven is the universality of their interpretation by human beings.

There are indeed sounds with less complex harmonic ratios than others, this is a fact. Now, the names humans have been given to that property, or to the perceived relation between such sounds and the way they make humans feel varies. Neither their perception is universal nor innate. Culture influences such naming and the qualification of their perception. Therefore culture has to be part of the explanation in order to provide a complete and correct answer.

The same way there are indeed frequencies that accidose associate with blue. Those frequencies exist and are real. But the perceiveness of those frequencies is not universal, neither they're called blue everywhere, as demonstrated by Himba people. Therefore any explanation/answer/definition would have to take into account the cultural part.

It is analogous to a medical problem:
We know that some bacteria can be killed with penicile, this is a fact, it physically happens and we can test it. That doesn't follow that everytime someone has an infection with those bacteria peniciline will work. In fact, what we do know and expect is that it will fail sometimes. Acciddose could argue those are outliers, the reasons they fail may be totally unrelated or irrelevant and we have to live it with that. While I'd argue that we should explain the cases that fail and should seek alternative solutions because the ones that exist seem incomplete or inadequat [that's why you have a list of mandatory secondary effects on medicine and even space for unreported ones].

How does that translates into the musical world?
What is claimed (not by me, but by 100 years of musicological knowledge, based on field observations and tests all around the world, condensed in Nettl book for instance), is that there are no universals in music. As such any definition or explanation based on physical facts alone will be wrong or incomplete if it doesn't account for culture. This resumes the entire point of this discussion and ANY other discussion on a music forum, based on the scientific knowledge we possess today. The answer I provide doesn't exclude acciddose one, it includes it and enlarges it.

P.S. An octave in serial music [serial compsition - wuorinen]. That was already provided earlier.

«In music, even if the opposition often is founded on the preceding, objective distinction, it more often is subjective, conventional, cultural, and style- and/or period-dependent. Dissonance can then be defined as a combination of sounds that does not belong to the style under consideration; in recent music, what is considered stylistically dissonant may even correspond to what is said to be consonant in the context of acoustics (e.g. a major triad in 20th century atonal music). A major second (e.g. the notes C and D played simultaneously) would be considered dissonant if it occurred in a J.S. Bach prelude from the 1700s; however, the same interval may sound consonant in the context of a Claude Debussy piece from the early 1900s or an atonal contemporary piece.» - even from wikipedia.

[aciddose]

Neither their perception is universal nor innate.

All you're arguing here is that the mind-body problem as argued by Descartes is to be considered valid, which today it is not.

Just because different cultures have different ways of describing (so you claim, care to provide any evidence for this?) these properties does not mean their perception is not universal. These are physical properties of objective reality we are dealing with and your outright rejection of objective reality and rational argument is not useful here.

Culture influences such naming and the qualification of their perception. Therefore culture has to be part of the explanation in order to provide a complete and correct answer. Therefore any explanation/answer/definition would have to take into account the cultural part.

"... therefore ..." ?

According to what? Will you present a rational argument? All you're doing is repeating yourself and attempting argument from authority while you disclaim your own attempt at forming what bears a semblance to rational argumentation.

So I can sum up your words as "I believe you are wrong because someone said *who?* *apparently 100 years is an impressive length of time?* *what is supposedly a field to which credulity is owed?* I don't say blah blah blah, but that doesn't matter and it isn't my opinion, carry on."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c

[aciddose]

«In music, even if the opposition often is founded on the preceding, objective distinction, it more often is subjective, conventional, cultural, and style- and/or period-dependent. Dissonance can then be defined as a combination of sounds that does not belong to the style under consideration; in recent music, what is considered stylistically dissonant may even correspond to what is said to be consonant in the context of acoustics (e.g. a major triad in 20th century atonal music). A major second (e.g. the notes C and D played simultaneously) would be considered dissonant if it occurred in a J.S. Bach prelude from the 1700s; however, the same interval may sound consonant in the context of a Claude Debussy piece from the early 1900s or an atonal contemporary piece.» - even from wikipedia.

Now you're back on semantics. All the wikipedia article is describing is that although in the hard sciences based upon objective reality there is an objective definition for consonance or dissonance, dissonance when used to describe music is most often used in a manner which depends upon the music being discussed.

This is semantics! Of course the subjective definition depends upon the context, now go back to the first page when the question was asked where the OP explicitly gave you the context!

[Musicologo]

based upon objective reality

[where humans live and interact]

dissonance when used to describe music is

ALWAYS

used in a manner which depends upon the music being discussed

[since no human lives in a void].

Of course the subjective definition depends upon the context

Therefore, each and everytime the context changes, the concept, the answer and explanation might change, hence the answer culture instead of innate. At present, I really do believe if OP was raised in another culture or used nuryl his concept, and therefore behaviour and perception might have been totally different... What you call "semantics" is the core of the method and things. At present I believe language and concepts shape your perceptions. The example of "blue" is another. Why can't himba tell blue square appart from green one, and why can't I tell the unique green appart from the others? I don't have faulty eyes I guess... I just have different concepts.

As a positivist realist you seem to believe there is a reality outside yourelf that is "objective" and can be "described" and "measured" independent of humans and that your physical perceptions are independent of language and concepts. Since this seems false [concepts, instruments, measurements are all made by flawed, limited humans], there is no "objective reality" neither one "truth". As a pragmatist and as restated what was posted on p.4 «Truth (and meaning) are always relative to a particular practical context, to a set of practices and values. Truth is what works (in that particular practical context).»

Since you don't agree with these premises, neither I agree with yours there will never be agreement between us. Therefore this was really fun, but now I'm starting to feel tired and I feel I have nothing further to add to this discussion, since the best answers I could possibly give were already given and justified. Perhaps in a couple of years with more readings, tests, scientific evidences I might change opinion on some subjects. The only thing that is constant is change. When I was younger I was much more positivist, but then gradually started to see the flaws and became a constructivist and pragmatist. I still have hope that I can avoid becoming anti-realist or solipsist, but one never knows...

[aciddose]

Therefore, each and everytime the context changes, the concept, the answer and explanation might change,

Care to provide any evidence?

you seem to believe there is a reality outside yourelf that is "objective" and can be "described" and "measured" independent of humans and that your physical perceptions are independent of language and concepts. Since this seems false

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AEMiz6rcxc

It only "seems" false for a coward who believes so in cognitive dissonance because he is afraid of being wrong.

You are wrong, otherwise you'll need to prove it. It doesn't matter if in "your reality" proof doesn't exist because nothing is objective or real. You'll need to come back down to Earth and back to the reality the rest of us exist in and argue rationally here.

I can take your wallet and claim it isn't real. My rights to extend my fist do not end at the tip of your nose, so I can punch you in your "only in your opinion" face. When you claim I assaulted you and that it hurt I can argue;



"Well, that's just like, your opinion man because the Yanomami People say you can't even own something, so it isn't your body and it isn't your face, man."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCHTRyDs4RU