Music Mapping Speech

The notion that the minor third often suggests sadness in music has been around for a long time. What's new in this article is the connection made to that interval being present in sad speech as well.

The tangible relationship between music and emotion is no surprise to anyone, but a study in the June issue of Emotion suggests the minor third isn't a facet of musical communication alone—it's how we convey sadness in speech, too. When it comes to sorrow, music and human speech might speak the same language. . . 

 . . .Since the minor third is defined as a specific measurable distance between pitches (a ratio of frequencies), Curtis was able to identify when the actors' speech relied on the minor third. What she found is that the actors consistently used the minor third to express sadness. . . 

V.S. Odds and Ends

I've gotten a minute's worth of music that, as of last night, seems to work. This post just to mention a few ancillary things.

Finale - I love it because it allows for my various non-standard ways of doing music notation, but that very complexity can be a problem when I can't remember how to do something, either because the latest update changes something, or because I simply forgot due to not doing that task for a year or so. Case in point is the time signature. When I was going back over Timepiece to make parts for a local quintet to read through (they liked it), noticed that I'd figured out how to have something like 3+3+2+2 all over a single 8 below back in 1996 and just had to look to see how I'd done it.

Resolution - Visually it's how many pixels per square inch. In audio it's something about how many bits per something. On tv when they pixel-ate something to obscure it, we notice the boundary of the high and low resolution. In writing music I try not to have any boundaries like that in the rhythm (no bursts of 32nd notes in a stately half note/ quarter note melody) or harmony (no sudden shifts out of key/mode. I think it also applies to other ways I judge the music I write that are tougher to write about, like gesture.

Writing for particular players/instruments - Listening to the local group read through Timepiece reminded me that I'm always thinking of what the individual players are doing, and whether or not it's interesting. Dr. Andy told me once that in the Bach B Minor Mass, in one section the cellos have the same repeated quarter note for measures on end. When I'm writing for ensembles, in my mind it's however many soloists coming together for the piece, and everyone gets some time high in the mix. In this piece it's trying to keep the harpist interested and to see just how many ways the harp (for which I've never written before) can make music.

Computer Playback - Besides not being able to write music without a keyboard, having the computer play back what I've done is essential. I don't have theory mind and simply cannot manifest the music in my head by reading a score. I've always thought the computer playback is sort of like an X-ray that clearly shows the interior structure of the piece, but that the true nature of the piece is revealed only by performance. That's part of the reason my hearing first performances of things I've written is such an amazing experience.

Attention - One of my complaints about the concert band repertoire is that most of it seems an early incarnation of the MTV gimmick of constantly shifting the image to hold the attention of an audience. I keep thinking the arrangers decide on what transitions of speed and tonality and articulation they what to teach the kids and then forage about for bits of music to put between them ;-) But I've come to realize I do the same thing, just without the shifts of speed/meter and tonality. Once I write something that seems to work for a few bars I'll often try to extend it for longer than it wants, not catching at first that it's becoming boring. Many of my deletions of the last several measures and starting over are due to this. The other deletions are, of course, trying where to go instead. It really is like some sort of glass bead game, and when it works there's a wonderful feeling being connected to something outside myself.

Gesualdo

Some time ago Alex Ross seemed to abandon his The Rest Is Noise blog for a newer one and just today I discovered he'd gone back to it. Going through all the old posts this video turned up. I'm not sure there's any music I love more than Italian madrigals. Watching the singers let the music inhabit them as they inhabit the music is a treat. The main thing, though, is hearing all those wonderful untempered harmonies delivered by that most human of all the instruments, the voice.

YouTube has changed the embed code procedure and for whatever reason the right side of the video is not showing up when I publish the post (there are five singers). Follow this link to see it on YouTube

Tunings

This book review by Jan Swafford is a nice overview of the temperament question. Thanks to A. C. Douglas for pointing it out.

Here's the main problem:

As Pythagoras also realized in mathematical terms, if you start with a C at the bottom of a piano keyboard and tune a series of 12 perfect 3:2 fifths up to the top, you discover that where you expect to have returned to a perfect high C, that C is overshot, intolerably out of tune. In other words, nature's math doesn't add up. A series of perfect intervals doesn't end at a perfect interval from where you started. If you tune three perfect 5:4 major thirds, it should logically add up to an octave, but it doesn't; the result is egregiously flat.

Timbre

Timbre and tone are closely related, but not usually thought of as the same thing. When using the word "tone", we're usually referring to a specific instrument and/or player. "Timbre" (which is italicized because it's taken from the French) usually refers to the characteristic sound of a family of instruments, and then further to individual members of a particular family. 

There are the strings, which can be bowed orchestral instruments or guitar, banjos, and mandolins and such which are plucked or strummed. There are the brass instruments, some of which have conical tubing and others with cylindrical tubing. There are the single reeds - the clarinets and the saxophones - and the double reeds - the oboe and bassoon. The percussion family has a wide range of individual members with unique sounds.

One way we identify an instrument's timbre is by what audio people call the envelope of the sound (how the sound starts, sustains and then ends). Strings, brass, reeds and percussion have characteristic ways of creating their sounds that our brains process quickly and easily.

Another way we identify an instrument's timbre is by the nature of the vibration creating the sound. In this animation I linked down in the post on tone, you can add or subtract individual parts of the vibration and thereby change the overall vibration.

We use this way of changing the components of a vibration to alter its sound all the time when we speak. If you sing a long held note on a particular pitch and go through all the vowel sounds while doing so, it's your making subtle changes to the various components of the overall vibration creating the sound that makes "a's" sound like "a's" and "u's" sound like "u's". 

The specifics of what's going on with the components of the overall vibration are explained by something called the harmonic series, which gets pretty mathematical pretty quickly. At some point in the materials, the harmonic series needs to be explained for those interested. My hope is, though, to help people understand the broad outlines of all this well enough to inform their music making, without inducing math phobia.

Harmony and the Brain

Here's a story on a new study on music and the brain.

>>  In a study on monkeys, she and her team identified a group of neurons that fire in response to harmony. . . The finding might also explain why perfectly blended harmonies can stir up deep feelings of melancholy or joy. The neurons are located in a region of the auditory cortex that is directly linked up with areas of the brain believed to be responsible for generating emotions.

. . . The latest study reveals that certain neurons also respond to notes that harmonise with their tuned frequency. These neurons fired when notes an octave, a fifth and a third higher than the ideal frequency were played, corresponding to the combination of notes in the most basic chord. 

. . . the evolutionary basis for the neurons may lie in animal communication calls, which often contain components of a fundamental frequency and higher harmonics. <<

This pretty much confirms my long held belief that 12 tone stuff is just for a very small demographic of highly trained "theory mind" types and that trying to get the public at large to go for it just wasn't going to work.

Ratios

Being a mathphobe, ratios have always been off-putting, but they're integral to music and music making, so they've got to be talked about somehow in the materials. The 2:3 ratio is both the hemiola in rhythm, the two against three, while in harmonic frequencies it's the Perfect Fifth, the same thing, just a lot faster. If one string is vibrating 200 times a second and another at 300, then we hear a fifth.

Henry Purcell

I just got a book of Purcell's keyboard music and am having a great time working through it. His music is closer to Renaissance dances than that of Handel by at least a generation, and it shows. There's a clarity of movement that's more suggestive of the physical dances than you find in Handel. After Handel the dances are pretty much abandoned.

This music also seems a touch more modal than well tempered, which makes it all the more appealing to me. And the lack of complexity means its a treasure trove of materials to break out into three and four voice pieces for small ensembles.

The book is the Schirmer Oesterle edition, and as I worked though some of the pieces, they sounded very familiar. Turns out I'd gotten the Dover edition years ago, looked through it a bit, filed it away and forgot I had it. The thing is, the Oesterle edition has ornaments I'm fairly sure are inauthentic, but they sound great, and I prefer them to the authentic ones listed at the beginning of the Dover edition. Made me wonder if the piano (or in my case, electric keyboard) wants different ornaments than those that work well on the harpsichord or virginal.

Proof of Concept

The Kenwood Players did five old time hymns over at Oak Chapel on Sunday, mostly as simple instrumentals, and it went well. Both members of the congregation and of the players had good things to say about the experience. For me it demonstrated that just having some real orchestral instruments playing very simply arranged music in a small setting can elicit a good response from people.

The idea for part books of hymns for various instruments is a good one, though there's probably not going to be a generic version that will work in all cases, unless the harmonies are reduced to mostly I, IV and V chords with very simple accompanying riffs behind the melody. 

Another issue is that so far as I can see, no matter how old the hymn, collectors always use the exact same version in the same key in all the different hymn books. On the plus side, that means people are going to remember and associate that key with the hymn. Levitin says when folks are asked to sing well known songs, they very often match the pitches of the original.

The down side of the fixed key is that it's bound to not work well for some people's vocal range. Seems the answer might be to have a sort of appendix with small print versions of the song in several different keys.

Modulations

I've never been a big fan of modulations. Rather than seeming to grow from the music itself, they more often feel like cheap tricks by the composer to maintain the listener's attention. This is especially true (to my ear) of the repertoire for concert band. I'd rather the music stay in the same key and use rhythmic and melodic variation, along with same key harmonic variation. I usually like music to create and nurture a mood, or an alpha wave type trance, and modulation tends to alter the mood.

Working with the trumpet on the Christmas carols made me aware of a good reason for modulation. The trumpet has a very limited useable range, restricting the available keys for various tunes, depending on where the notes fall on the scale. If you were to arrange a piece for various instruments, when you come to a trumpet solo you might want to modulate to a key suitable for that melody in that key.