Post by Perplexed on Dec 7, 2003 0:53:33 GMT
Well, sound issues. Recognizing sounds. Cataloguing sounds in your mind's memory. We all do it. We all have different needs or applications with this amazing, human capacity. Yes, dogs can hear many cycles higher than us. But I am not sure if they could learn to recognise the difference between, say, an oboe and an english horn. The oboe is very very similar, and pitched a little higher than the English horn. Some people cultivate the difference. Some don't bother. (We don't bother learning every little thing as humans, nor can we.)
My friend was buying a flute years ago. I had become partial to listening to a certain brand of flute. (I do not play flute.) I went with him to the store.
He selected:
(a) a Haines
(b) a Powell
(c) a Muramatsu
(d) a Yamaha
(e) an Artley (eee--wwwwww!)
(f) a Gemeinhart
(g) and a Selmer
He, myself, and another friend into classical music spent a couple of hours in a second story office oin a marge Wheaton, Maryland music store sampling these flutes. (The owners wanted a sale, I guess.)WE listened to him playing to help decide which flute to buy.
After a while, I said play the flute solo from the top of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (Debussey) on each one. So I listened. Each flute was identified only by number by my flute playing friend. Somewhere along the way, with my eyes shut, I said, that is the best low register flute.Was that the Haines you just played, he said yes it was. I could just tell. (In the end, he bought the Powell because it was the best balanced--decent low ,middle and high end.)
But you can train your ear to hear the differences.
You sample; you like; a bell goes off in the head.
You don't have to compute overtone logorhythms; you don't have to do a computer spectographic analysis; you don't need to take it to bell labs to see if it is a Haynes flute. Your own mind can be trained to tell the difference. A brain is a wonderful thing.
My friend was buying a flute years ago. I had become partial to listening to a certain brand of flute. (I do not play flute.) I went with him to the store.
He selected:
(a) a Haines
(b) a Powell
(c) a Muramatsu
(d) a Yamaha
(e) an Artley (eee--wwwwww!)
(f) a Gemeinhart
(g) and a Selmer
He, myself, and another friend into classical music spent a couple of hours in a second story office oin a marge Wheaton, Maryland music store sampling these flutes. (The owners wanted a sale, I guess.)WE listened to him playing to help decide which flute to buy.
After a while, I said play the flute solo from the top of Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (Debussey) on each one. So I listened. Each flute was identified only by number by my flute playing friend. Somewhere along the way, with my eyes shut, I said, that is the best low register flute.Was that the Haines you just played, he said yes it was. I could just tell. (In the end, he bought the Powell because it was the best balanced--decent low ,middle and high end.)
But you can train your ear to hear the differences.
You sample; you like; a bell goes off in the head.
You don't have to compute overtone logorhythms; you don't have to do a computer spectographic analysis; you don't need to take it to bell labs to see if it is a Haynes flute. Your own mind can be trained to tell the difference. A brain is a wonderful thing.
