On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 09:44:18AM +0100, Richard Dobson wrote: > I find it useful in mnay cases to relate colour vision to auditory > "perfect pitch". People with the latter recognise the "absolute" > pitch of a note, but may suffer from octave ambiguities, such that > they are not sure whether one tone is above or below another - hence > sometimes intervals are mis-identified. Most people have only > "relative" pitch, which supports correct interval recognition, but > not the direct recognition of pitches. Put another way: most > listeners hear music as if in monochrome - good interval recognition > (just as well when music is so often transposed in performance) but > little or no certainty regarding exact pitch. Transposition is > another auditory phenomenon with no natural direct analogue in > vision. In music, transposition may go entirely unnoticed - national > anthems can and are played in any key - but no such process seems to > exist for vision.
I strongly believe that any supposed similarity between perception of colours and pitch, and any mapping of the one unto the other, is extremely suspect. The physical processes are completely different. Our colour perception is roughly equivalent to three bandpass filters covering a range of one 'octave'. And these filters are such that the upper and lower ends of the visual spectrum seem to come together, leading to the 'circle of colours' illusion. In contrast, the audio domain covers ten octaves, resolution is some orders of magnitude higher, and the extremities of the range don't map onto each other. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow) _______________________________________________ Sursound mailing list [email protected] https://mail.music.vt.edu/mailman/listinfo/sursound
