[Harp-L] What "wrong" means tonally/rhythmically

["Sam" <rockfury@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey List,
harp-L lurker here with a first post

A paragraph in mr Dave Fertig's post -

...some listeners' evaluation of a piece of music may be strongly influenced by one's "perfect pitch" or intense ability to perceive and identify specific notes/pitches, especially when one's ear is trained to empiric scales, such as the western "do re mi" scales.

reminded me of a book i read awhile back
Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks (he was the real doctor from the Robin Williams film Awakenings) that deals with the neurological/physiological side of music

In a chapter called Papa Blows His Nose in G: Absolute Pitch he discusses people with such strong pitch sensitivity that songs transposed into a different key will agitate them, like walking into a produce market and finding the apples are purple,
also they can find inconsistant tunings of musical instruments (eg. not 440 Hz)  destressing or even disabling - harmonica content - my lee oscars tuned to 441 plus for a brighter sound 

anyways i found this section agreeing with Dave's post and it may also put the recent "white boy" topic squarely in the cultural rather then racial camp where it belongs.

from the chapter Things Fall Apart: Amusia and Dysharmonia

.. "infants at six months can readily detect all rhythmic variations, but by twelve months their range has narrowed, albeit sharpened. They can now more easily detect the types of rhythms to which they have previously been exposed; they learn and internalize a set of rhythms for their culture. Adults find it harder still to perceive "foreign" rhythmic distinctions."

.. "Culture and exposure determine some of one's tonal sensitivites as well. Thus someone like myself may find the diatonic scale more "natural" and more orienting then the twenty-two-note scales of Hindu music. But there does not seem to be any innate neurological preference for particular types of music, any more than there are for particular languages."


interesting book.

Sam
- not blessed with any form of tonal awareness