Re: OT: Non-Human Phonology

On Wed, 17 May 2006 09:25:42 +0100, Peter Bleackley
<Peter.Bleackley@...> wrote:

>It would appear strange to have good absolute pitch but poor relative
>pitch. Are you saying that a bird coud recognise C,G and D', but not
>recognise that the interval from C to G was the same as that from G to D'?
I got the following from this site: http://www.earthlife.net/birds/hearing.html

"Birds have good ears but they tend to hear things differently to us. Within
sounds birds recognise and remember something akin to absolute pitch whereas
humans perceive sounds via relative pitch. Very few humans can hear and
remember absolute pitch. Relative pitch however allows us to hear a tune in
one octave and still recognise the tune in a different octave. Birds cannot
do this. Birds do however recognise 'timbre' (a fundamental note combined
with harmonies). Recognising timbre and harmonic variations gives birds
great versatility in the sounds that they can respond to, and in some cases
reproduce. Birds also hear shorter notes than we can. Humans process sounds
in bytes about 1/20 of a second long whereas birds discriminate up to 1/200
of a second. This means where we hear one sound only, a bird may hear as
many as ten separate notes."

>As for a tritone, it's also called a diminished fifth, an augmented fourth,
>or  the diabolus in musica. It's the interval of 3 whole tones or 6
>semitones, corresponding to a pitch ratio of sqrt(2) in the equally
>tempered scale (64/45 or 45/32 in rational-interval scales), eg C to F#,
>and is generally considered the most discordant inteval in the entire scale.
I wonder if it's possible for there to be a creature which does not find the
tritone to be the most discordant interval...

- Rob

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