Circle of Sound

[Richard Brekne]

Hi Sarah.  I always enjoy reading your perspectives, and this is no 
exception.  Comments as usual interspersed below.

Sarah Fox wrote:

> Hi Ric,
>
> I hope the comments of a scientist, turned artist, are welcome here.  
> Now on a daily basis, I deal with issues of trying to quantify factors 
> that relate to aesthetics.  Whether it's photographic art or piano 
> building, that's the same issue, is it not?  When I like a photograph, 
> I always ask myself *why* I like it.  Often it's because of the 
> subject matter, but often it's because certain technicals in the 
> photo, and I always find it important to decide what those technicals 
> are -- and to quantify them, if possible.  Why get all analytical?  
> Simple.  If I can figure out what makes an image tick, I can refine it 
> to make it better, and I can repeat it.  But often I'm left hanging.  
> I like a photograph for reasons I don't understand.  I like it cropped 
> this way or that -- or the tones clipped this way or that -- or 
> whatever -- for reasons that don't make sense to me.  I feel 
> frustrated when this happens, wanting for some justifying rationale -- 
> some uniting "theory" of the image.    Sometimes I have to accept what 
> I can't explain, but I still keep asking the questions.  I've found 
> complete answers to a few of my questions, partial answers to many 
> more, and am still drawing blanks on many more than that.

An extremely agreeable paragraph Sarah.  But please excuse... how does 
this relate to my call for renewed endeavour in keeping the subjective 
and objective as clearly seperate as we can ?  I am sure you yourself 
are quite ready to justly qualify any statment made that is in the end 
truly subjective in nature. 

>
> Is that not like piano building?  Here we have an acoustically complex 
> device that generates sounds that we (hopefully) find pleasing.  Why 
> are these sounds pleasing?  We know much of what makes music pleasing 
> to us, but I don't think we have any good sense of *why* those 
> properties are pleasing. I would say it would have to relate 
> ultimately to some aspect of evolution, being an evolution-centered 
> auditory neurophysiologist, but I really couldn't get any more 
> specific than that.  None of us can.  Perhaps someday my 
> neurophysiologist colleagues will uncover something about the response 
> properties of auditory systems that will shed light on this issue.  (I 
> have a few general suspicions that would be hard to test.)

But in this case what has been done is attempt to justify a value 
judgement, (pleasing sounds) by invoking some factual physical condition 
(heavy plates), without explaining what "pleasing sounds" really were to 
begin with, which makes it impossible to confirm or not  either the 
factual realites relative to "what happens when a heavy plate is used" 
or the value judjement itself.  I'm not asking for any answer to some  
holy grail of the universal "Why" here... just wanting to get at a more 
down to earth "what".

>
> Until we have the reductionist footing to understand why the auditory 
> system prefers some sounds over others (and equally important, why the 
> pianist's somatosensory system prefers certain action sensations to 
> others -- and why his/her associative areas prefer certain touch/sound 
> relationships), we are left at Ron Overs' level of analysis, which is 
> I believe is an appropriate one.  We look at different pianos, 
> including those we "like" and those we do not "like."  We ask 
> ourselves what makes them different.  We quantify these differences 
> wherever we can.

Yes... all very well and fine,,, no dissagreement.. actually...  it was 
precisely the seperation of these two is what I responded too. One can 
actually put a descriptive word or two on what constitutes "negative 
tonal characteristics" so as to be able better understand just what 
those quantified differences are,,, or are not.  And I think we can 
easily do this without needing to resort a fully developed reductionist 
footing persuant to the auditory system and its intereactive processes 
with the neurophysiology that constitutes a significant part of our 
existance form.  While that might make for a very facinating afternoon 
along with a few cups of a certain brand of mushroom tea... its really 
not where I was going with all this.


Cheers
RicB