Re: OT: Eskimo words for snow (Re: what's a "froplet"?)
Re: OT: Eskimo words for snow (Re: what's a "froplet"?)
- Subject: Re: OT: Eskimo words for snow (Re: what's a "froplet"?)
- From: mike helbert <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 10:58:33 -0700 (PDT)
>
>> Re: Steven Pinker's "The Language Instinct"
>
> I had to wonder at their literacy level with
regards to music.
>
> It just seemed to me that they're describing
concepts much
>
> better voiced through music, music notation, and
music
>
> theories. In that light, their explanations and
>
> conceptualizing seemed rather juvenile.
>
for example? (the musicologists on the list will be
interested)
For example their theory that memes (hope that's the
correct
spelling) are evolving, superseding their ancestor
memes and
attaining a new broader meaning, that current
generations have
so much more to absorb, and express things which have
a deeper
import than previous ones. All of this at an
increasing rate so
that everyone in a major urban center talks faster
than the
proverbial DJ from Buffalo.
That kind of notion doesn't strike me as anything
different than
the natural evolution of languages in the proceedings
of many
cultures. For thousands of years, the NeXT (sic)
generation has
been reactionary to those which have preceded them and
proposed
and acted upon the "new" thing. Compare icons on your
desktop to
Egyptian hieroglyphs. How different are the notions in
terms of
communication? A nutshell summary of a concept in a
graphic that
in all likelyhood will be misunderstood by someone
looking at
them four thousand years later. Anything new there?
What seemed to me to be missing from their theories
were
ingredients common to musical thought but not unknown
in other
areas of human endeavor. I'll try for an analogy with
the
concept of a fundamental and resultant harmonics as
applied to
thought processes.
If one sings a tone for any length of time, such that
resonances
manifest themselves, a portion of the natural overtone
series
can be realized. Once that happens, it's only a matter
of
practice and development to extend the range and
number of nodes
able to be sung. Maybe in yoga terminology called
opening up a
few chakhras. In the process, some laws of music start
to make
themselves apparent. The Law of Octaves for instance
or the fact
that the twelfth seems highly related to the
fundamental. By
using only those two items, scales can be derived.
When that
occurs, so also occurs the audible fact that a natural
twelfth
throws a spanner into the works by being a tad off for
equal
temperment. Hence we learn to inflect the nodes so
that it
becomes possible to think in terms of keys, key
modulation and
beyond into atonalism.
The important word in the above paragraph is
"inflect". In order
to consciously deal with the above with respect to
equal
temperment, it's implicit that a musician be able to
encounter
at least 12 "viewpoints" of the same idea in
relationship to
some fundamental. When this is achieved, the kinds of
analytical
methods I heard on that broadcast appear trapped in
linearity
with little or no component/complement of circular
logic. In
addition to which, I gotta say that none of them had
any
resonance in their voices to speak of and for folks
who seem to
be dealing a lot with what the spoken word conveys,
didn't have
a heck of a lot of nuance in the pitch variance of
their voices.
OK....but what's a "froplet"?
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