source file: mills2.txt Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 11:49:18 -0700 Subject: Post from McLaren From: John Chalmers From: mclaren Boomsliter and Creel are well known for their provocative papers "The Long Pattern Hypothesis in Harmony and Hearing" and "Extended Reference." However B&C wrote three other readily available papers which might also prove of interest. "Hearing With Ears Instead of Instruments" dates from 1970 and was published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society in August 1970, Vol. 18, No. 4, pps. 407-412. This articles offers little new information, but it does give important background on B&C's ideas and motivations behind their "extended reference" work. Of particular import: B&C's emphasis on the ear as a non-linear receiver. "The Seashore team [8] at Iowa found that intonation is not a simple matter. Singers and violinists who are free to choose their tuning do not use any one scale. They make systematic departures in tuning, and these vary from melody to melody." [pg. 408] In any case this article will doubtless prove of interest to those fascinated by the thought processes that gave rise to Boomsliter & Creel's "extended reference" hypothesis. "Time Requirements For the Tonal Function" is a letter to the Journal of the Acoustic Society of America which emphasizes the experimental data in favor of the periodicity hypothesis of hearing. This article is of slightly less interest. We now know that no one model of human hearing is supported by all the evidence, and some evidence contradicts all 3 major competing hypotheses about human hearing. The third and last article, "Research Potentials In Auditory Characteristics of Violin Tone," by Paul C. Boomsliter & Warren Creel, was published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 51, 1969, Number 6 (part 2), 1972, pp. 1984- 1993. B&C point out that violin intonation is not easy to quanitfy since "the doctrine that frequency governs pitch, virtually alone, and that partial-tone structure governs quality, virtually alone, does apply to notes studied in solation, but in melody every note of the melody participates..." [pg. 1992] B&C cite experimental data from the brains of anaesthetized cats (!) showing that "an incoming signal evokes generation of temporally patterned recurrences (..) The normal human nervous system, with many neurons responding only to a change, is not a steady-state apparatus, yet it uses temporal recurrence with an appetite for regularity. Human preference for regularity and change can be observed when a master plays a violin which is thus physiologically controlled." [pg. 1984] This view of memory is likely over-influenced by the view of the brain as an electrical circuit (popular during hte 60s and 70s), whereas it is now known that many different varieties of neuotransmitter molecules also play a role in the operation of the brain, and that some neurotransmitters act to prevent other neurotransmitters from having an effect at receptor sites in the brain. Regardless, the article may prove of interest as a discussion of the potential real-world applications of B&C's "extended reference" hypothesis (viz., performance of a solo melody on a violin). --mclaren Received: from eartha.mills.edu [144.91.3.20] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Thu, 13 Jun 1996 21:23 +0100 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id MAA22553; Thu, 13 Jun 1996 12:23:21 -0700 Date: Thu, 13 Jun 1996 12:23:21 -0700 Message-Id: <11960613191911/0005695065PK5EM@MCIMAIL.COM> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu