Week 5 – What is Music?
Hello everyone and welcome back! First I want to give some updates on my project and then talk more about what I’ve been learning from the book that I’m reading.
What’s new?
Last week my IRB and survey got approved so now I’m going to start sending out my survey to college students in Arizona. However, right now, I’m on a little break in this data-collecting process since after checking multiple colleges/institutions here in the valley, most of them are on spring break. It wouldn’t be wise to send out emails or ask students to complete my survey since they might be traveling or won’t be checking their emails or messages as frequently. They totally deserve the break and I wouldn’t want to disturb them on the week that they have off.
This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel J. Levitin – What is music?
Before diving into the brainy-sciency information, Dr. Levitin wanted to write about the basics of music by breaking music down into the following elements:
- Pitch: a purely psychological construct, related to the frequency of a particular tone and to its relative position in the musical scale → it answers the question of “What note is that?”
- Rhythm: duration of a series of notes and the way they group together into units
- Tempo: overall speed of the piece
- Contour: overall shape of a melody
- Timbre (which I just learned that it’s pronounced “tam-ber”): distinguishes one instrument from another (say trumpet from piano), kind of tonal color, can also describe the way a single instrument can change sound as it moves across its range
- Loudness: a purely psychological construct that relates to how much energy an instrument creates, or how much air it displaces
- Reverberation: perception of how distance the source is from us, called the “echo” by laypeople
Then, he dived into a few terms above in detail but the one I loved reading the most was on Pitch. So, let me talk to you more about that one.
First, Dr. Levitin asked, “How do we hear pitch?” Actually, pitch comes from our exposure to music and the physics of sound, related to the frequency or rate of vibration of a string, column of air, or other physical source. For example, when you hit a note on the piano, the vibration of the strings in the piano displaces air molecules, causing them to vibrate at the same rate and frequency as the string. These vibrating air molecules are what reach our eardrum and cause our eardrum to wiggle in and out at the same frequency. Then our inner ear and brain analyze the vibrations and detect the pitch. And it’s not just air molecules that vibrate. You can hear music underwater since water molecules also vibrate!
So, I guess you can say pitch is the frequency of vibration of air molecules? Not exactly. Remember how Dr. Levitin wrote in his definition of pitch that it was also “a purely psychological construct.” Well, he means that pitch is more mental than physical. He writes that pitch is “the mental representation an organism has of the fundamental frequency of a sound… it is the end product of a chain of mental events that gives rise to an entirely subjective, internal mental representation or quality.” Sound waves do not themselves have pitch; it takes a human (or animal) brain to map the wave’s oscillations to that internal quality we call pitch.
Dr. Levitin then compared it to the perception of color. Light itself is colorless and only after a series of neurochemical events with light waves will an internal mental image that we call color will come up in our brains. The point is: “What we perceive as color is not made up of color. Although an apple may appear red, its atoms are not themselves red.” Or take a bowl of pudding. When the pudding is sitting in the fridge, it doesn’t have taste or flavor, only the potential. However, once it’s in your mouth, then the pudding has a taste.
Then, he posed an interesting question that I found quite thought-provoking: “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” (question asked by Irish philosopher George Berkeley). Dr. Levitin believes that the answer is simply “no.” He states how even though a measuring device can get the frequency made from the falling tree, it is not truly a sound unless a human or animal present detects and hears the pitch. But, looking online, some other credible sources have said “yes” so I’ll leave this question for you to ponder about!
Overall, through this book, I’ve learned a lot about the physics of sound which is interesting to read. It’s opened my eyes to the fact that music isn’t just all about music, but can intersect with other fields of study like Physics. Music never fails to fascinate me and I can’t wait to read and learn more about the elements and power of music.
Next Steps
Since many Arizona college students are on spring break, in the meantime, I’ll be researching which faculty I would want to reach out to to ask them to send out my survey to their students. I’ll also begin drafting the email that I’ll use when I reach out to them. So, when everyone comes back from break, I’ll be ready to send out the emails and hopefully officially start recruiting and getting data. Also, I’ll continue to read my book!
That’s all for today. Thank you for reading and see you next week with more updates!
Comments:
All viewpoints are welcome but profane, threatening, disrespectful, or harassing comments will not be tolerated and are subject to moderation up to, and including, full deletion.