Sound experience...

[Boerseun]

Why is it, that in all cultures, it seems as if humans experience sound the same?

For instance, a kid in Borneo, who's never seen a sheet of music notation, if asked to run up and down the scales he would hum or whistle a perfect C,D,E,F etc.?

Tribal songs also don't often use majors and minors, they tend to stick to the notes.

So here's the question: When Europeans decided to pen down notes, why did they decide to stick a name to a certain frequency and call it C, and then a specific other frequency and called it D? Why did the frequency at C justify it's own name? Is there a specific 'ring' to these notes that sounds 'right', something that resonates with us at the physical level? Because if it does, it seems to be universal - even the Australian Aborigines (apparently the furthest removed from the rest of the human species in terms of when they split away from the common ancestor) seem to use clean, clear notes as described on sheet music.
Is there a specific step between frequencies? In other words, is every successive note the same amount of oscillations away from the next one? I.e. (for instance) C=400Hz, D=450Hz, E=500Hz, F=550Hz, etc.
If that's the case, doesn't these notes just demarcate those frequencies where harmonic resonance takes place somewhere inside the human ear? Which means that human music might sound awful and false to an animal with a differently designed ear, where the resonation will take place at different frequencies. This might also explain why some people are 'tone-deaf' - they might have a slightly different ear design, and resonation might be happening at different frequencies for them.

Any ideas?

[GAHD]

I think you've got it about right with the ear resonation idea. Some of the best musicians I know tune by ear; they're generally off just a little bit from whatd the digital turner says on some notes, but they're consitently off. IE their C will always be just a little low, the F just a little high.

The best musician I know tunes his guitar by feel: he'll be litening to some song cranked-up reallly loud on his headphones while at the same time plucking each string and tuning by what his fingers tell him.

[otcartsid]

very interesting post, Boerseun. Ive never thought about why different species experience sound differently before I read it!
Your idea about tone deafness stemming from a difference in ear design makes sense.

[Tormod]

The rationale behind the musical notation is quite simple. "A4", also known as the chamber note, resonates at 440. All other notes in a scale resonate at a ratio to the root note. An octave is simply a note resonating at twice the frequency of the root note.

I found a nice list at
http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/notefreqs.html

Here is an extract. Note that the notes are in ascending order (lowest on top).

Note / Frequency / Wavelength in centimeters

A4 	 440.00 	78.4
A#4/Bb4 466.16 	     74.0
B4 	 493.88 	69.9
C5 	 523.25 	65.9
C#5/Db5 554.37 	     62.2
D5 	 587.33 	58.7
D#5/Eb5	622.25 	     55.4
E5 	 659.26 	52.3
F5 	 698.46 	49.4
F#5/Gb5	739.99 	     46.6
G5 	 783.99 	44.0
G#5/Ab5	830.61       41.5
A5 	 880.00 	39.2

[Turtle]

___I love it when Tormod speaks musically. All the better Tormod because you gave a list & we all know how Turtle loves a list. Something new to color by number.
___To the shape of the ear, & thank you Boerseun for a great topic. When I was doing a lot of photography, one project idea I never followed through on was a series of photos of just peoples ears. A close up of each ear (right/left) & then printed together either aligned with both facing "lobes in" or "lobes out".
___In spite of not actually shooting such a series, I have studied a lot of ears casually. Quite the variation I must say. Nevertheless, I suspect the individual interpretation of "hearing" a sound is not rooted so much in the specific structure of their ear, but the brains processing of the signals generated in the inner ear. As we have seen with some of C1ay's articles of late on the variability of "seeing" colors among individuals, it seems logical to conclude hearing is similar.

[Jay-qu]

yeah if you play a note on a good well tuned instument you not only get the root frequency but depending on the instument - closed tube, open tube, stringed(im sure there is more) you will also get higher frequencies in a ratio of 1:2:3:4... for an open tube and string and 1:3:5... for a closed tube. These higher frequencies are called harmonics or overtones and a good quality instument (timbre) will have more overtones.

[CraigD]

The main idea of an “equal tempered” musical scale is that the ratio of the frequencies between adjacent notes is the same regardless of their absolute frequencies. For the 12 note scale just about all of us use, this ratio (R) works out to:
R^12 = 2
R= 2^(1/12) = 1.059463094359293528…
You can then just multiply any note’s frequency by R to get the next notes frequency, eg:

s F=440 f I=0:1:12 w $j(F,3,2),”, “ s F=F*R
440.00, 466.16, 493.88, 523.25, 554.37, 587.33, 622.25, 659.26, 698.46, 739.99, 
783.99, 830.61, 880.00,

- the same values Tormod gave. It’s also interesting to look at this sequence relative to the starting pitch, like this:

s F=1 f I=0:1:12 w $j(F,3,2),", " s F=F*R
1.00, 1.06, 1.12, 1.19, 1.26, 1.33, 1.41, 1.50, 1.59, 1.68, 1.78, 1.89, 2.00,

What’s interesting is that equal tempering is not always the best way to tune a given musical instrument, and didn’t really begin to be widely accepted until pianos began to dominate the music scene in the 18th century. Most experts playing fretless string instruments don’t temper them equally, and most audiences don’t like the sound if they do. Modern audiences like it when you bend (stretch) the strings on a fretted instrument a bit (or a lot, depending on style). Deviations from numerically precise tuning are as much a part of music as the tunings themselves.

[coldcreation]

Originally Posted by CraigD

The main idea of an “equal tempered” musical scale is that the ratio of the frequencies between adjacent notes is the same regardless of their absolute frequencies. For the 12 note scale just about all of us use, this ratio (R) works out to:
R^12 = 2
R= 2^(1/12) = 1.059463094359293528…
You can then just multiply any note’s frequency by R to get the next notes frequency, eg:

s F=440 f I=0:1:12 w $j(F,3,2),”, “ s F=F*R
440.00, 466.16, 493.88, 523.25, 554.37, 587.33, 622.25, 659.26, 698.46, 739.99, 
783.99, 830.61, 880.00,

- the same values Tormod gave. It’s also interesting to look at this sequence relative to the starting pitch, like this:

s F=1 f I=0:1:12 w $j(F,3,2),", " s F=F*R
1.00, 1.06, 1.12, 1.19, 1.26, 1.33, 1.41, 1.50, 1.59, 1.68, 1.78, 1.89, 2.00,

What’s interesting is that equal tempering is not always the best way to tune a given musical instrument, and didn’t really begin to be widely accepted until pianos began to dominate the music scene in the 18th century. Most experts playing fretless string instruments don’t temper them equally, and most audiences don’t like the sound if they do. Modern audiences like it when you bend (stretch) the strings on a fretted instrument a bit (or a lot, depending on style). Deviations from numerically precise tuning are as much a part of music as the tunings themselves.

Sometimes I tune my guitars hyperbolically, i.e., the higher pitched cords are strung slightly tighter than would be otherwise according to the mathematically correct notes. It makes solos sound more energetic. It also makes barred cords not sound flat, but dynamic.

This is like bending the sting, as you say CraigD.

cc

[armofreek]

I think there should be a study done on chimpanzee's. Give a few of them instruments of diffrent types and see if they can make any sort of music, or even learn to use the instruments...