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Roederer is a diehard periodicity fan, but in this updated edition he gives some room to spatio-temporal (also known as "pattern matching") models of pitch perception. This is a welcome change from the 1973 2nd edition, which suffered from an overwhelming concentration solely on neural (also known as temporal or periodicity) theories of pitch perception, to the virtually complete exclusion of all other theories.
Recent additions such as "specialization of speech and pitch processing" at the end of Chapter 5 tend to confirm some of Johnny Reinhard's shrewd guesses about cognitive processing of pitch. They also make fascinating reading. Roederer has not only included updated models of pitch perception and some of the latest research on hemispheric dominance in musicians vs. non-musicians, he also includes much more information on physical sound production by instruments than in the 2nd ed. While it can't compare with Benade's or Halls' or especially Fletcher and Rossing's unparalleled "The Physics of Musical Instruments," this section of how real-world instruments generate sound is a welcome addition.
Roederer is hard-core JI fan. Disappointingly, even the third edition contains nary a jot nor a tittle to suggest that most of the world's cultures do not in fact use just intonation, do not in fact use intervals which can be described by small-number ratios, and do not in any way view the universe as a manifestation of number. Typically, expert tuners in India or Java or Bali or Africa explain their tunings in terms of "a battle between the gods," or "at the beginning of the world a mythic bird sang these notes," etc. Rational fractions don't occur when one talks to a musician about his tuning in other cultures--most of the world's people simply do not think of music this way. Moreover, even supposedly basic acoustical standards like 2:1 octaves are completely absent in other cultures. Frederic Voisin, in the Leonardo Music Journal article "Musical Scales in Central Africa and Java: Modeling by Synthesis," points out that the Banda Linda and Banda Ndokpa xylophones, as well as those used by the Gbaya and Manza, are tuned with deliberately rough "octaves." As Voisin says, "Our experimentation verified that `perfect' consonances are not a constitutent of Central African systems or the experimental results, but rather in a Western definition of consonance. (..) These musicians do not judge a strict octave (1200 cents) to be better than a large major sevenths (1150 cents) or a small minor ninth (1250 cents). On the contrary, the Banda Linda musicians prefer the small `octave' (1150 cents) in any register, probably because of the roughness it creates on the octaves that are always played simultaneously with double sticks in each hand." [Voisin, F., "Musical Scales in Central Africa and Java: Modeling by Synthesis," Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 4, pg. 89, 1994] The same is true in Java, Bali, the flutes of the Nasca, the instruments of the 'Are-'Are, the Wolof xalam tradition of the Senegambia, the Kacapi in Tembang Sunda in West Java, various Thai xylophones, various Araucanian Indian instruments, Kwaiker Indian xylophones, the shamisens and shinobues and shakuhachis used in Japanese kayokyoku music, and so-called "pre-instrumental" music such as that sung by Central Australian aborigines, among many other examples. Modern ethnomusicology has made it unmistakably clear that so-called "perfect consonances" and small integer ratio descriptions of musical scales are solely a western european concoction, found only in those cultures strongly influenced by Ionian/Pythagorean/classic Hellenic rationalism: namely, Europe, North America and the Middle East. In any case, Roederer's text is a superb book, highly recommended.
Another 1995 edition, "Hearing," edited by Brian C. J. Moore, is a disappointment. The book begins as always with simple harmonic motion (which turns out not to be so simple, as the chaos theorists have shown us. One of my physics professors said "There's no such thing as SIMPLE harmonic motion," and time has proven him correct) and the usual Fourier Series equations. There is no suggestion of any alternative methods of signal analysis--for instance, Gabor's acoustic quantum, or Moragos' more radical non-linear slope transform. (Sigh.)
The chapter on Cochlear structure & function is reasonably good, but nowhere near as detailed and impressive as either Pickles' 1988 "An Introduction to the Physiology of Hearing" (2nd ed.), Gulick, Geschneider and Frisina's very biased but physiologically superbly accurate "Hearing" physiological acoustics, neural coding, and psychoacoustics" (they're highly biased toward the periodicity theory and go out of their way to ignore evidence for other models of pitch perception), much less the exceptional "Audition" of 1994 by Pierre Buser & Michel Imbert (if memory serves). Frequency Analysis and masking, and so on and so on...for the most part, most of the other chapters are lackluster, covering ground better covered in earlier texts.
However, Houtsma's "Pitch Perception" (Chapter 8) is outstanding. Houtsma is a groundbreaking researcher and his discussion of the historical background of psychoacoustics is excellent.
Green's and Eddins' chapter "Temporal Integraiton and Temporal Resolution" is also excellent, pointing out many shortcomings and lacunae in theory about the time- intensity tradeoff since the seminal papers of the 1940s and 1950s. In particular, both authors cover in detail the much- ignored subject of temporal acuity (or: How fast does the ear/brain system react?). This has remarkably important implications for the perception of timbre, tunings, musical notes and gestalt artifacts such as key center. Recent research indicates that the pitch of fast-onset tones is more accurately perceived more quickly than the pitch of slow-onset tones: if so, this would go a long ways toward explaining why Partch chose to use percussive instruments with inharmonic spectra. Partch may well have known intuitively that it was more important that his listeners perceive that those tiny intervals in his scale were different than that they perceive all the reinforcing harmonics which would have been produced by slow-onset tones like those from the chromelodeon, whose pitches tend to blur into one another in rapid passages.
The other chapters are unimpressive. Steven Handel's chapter "Timbre" is a particular disappointment: Risset, Wessel, Pierre Schaefer aren't even mentioned. Yet they did extremely important research in the area as well as marvellous compositions.
Overall, "Hearing" is worthwhile for Green & Eddins' chapter 6 and Houtsma's chapter 8 only.
This post is already too long, so the next & final book will be covered next time.
--mclaren
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