Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T13:14:20.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Elaborating Analogies of Time Perception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2020

Rosemary Mountain
Rosemary Mountain*
Affiliation:
New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, Canada
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Using a mixture of physiological evidence and analogies of time, the author describes the current version of a model of how we might view our interactions with time in music and beyond. An older model designed for analysis of complex twentieth-century acoustic works is updated to incorporate varied profiles of electroacoustic music. Recent research in auditory systems corroborates that we receive different types of information simultaneously through different channels, each taking more or less periodic sampling from different bands of frequencies – from timbre to phrase length and beyond. In order to acknowledge both the primitive structures of our complex hearing mechanisms and the different profiles of listeners, it is suggested that this multiple-sampling strategy may operate in a parallel way at a much larger scale, thereby allowing us to integrate the listener’s preference for pacing, contrast and densities of activity into the sensory processing of a musical work. The article is enriched by insights from soundscape pioneer Hildegard Westerkamp relating to various aspects of the discussion, from sensory overload to ecological concerns to the natural rallentando of a soundwalk. Finally, a whimsical elaboration based on the analogy of time as a river is presented in order to incorporate a more organic set of characteristics into our appreciation of music and time.

Type
Articles
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 25 , Issue 2: Time in Electroacoustic Music , August 2020 , pp. 259 - 268
Check for updates
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press, 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bielawski, L. 1981. The Zones of Time in Music and Human Activity. In Fraser, J. T. and Lawrence, N. (eds.) The Study of Time IV. New York: Springer Verlag, 173–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Briley, P., Goman, A. and Summerfield, A. Q. 2016. Physiological Evidence for a Midline Spatial Channel in Human Auditory Cortex. Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology 17: 331–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dowling, W. J., Lung, K. M.-T, and Herrbold, S. 1987. Aiming Attention in Pitch and Time in the Perception of Interleaved Melodies. Perception and Psychophysics 21(6): 642–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drever, J. 2019. ‘Primacy of the Ear’ – But Whose Ear?: The Case for Auraldiversity in Sonic Arts Practice and Discourse. Organised Sound 24(1): 85–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Favory, J., Formosa, M., Frémiot, M., Gobin, P., Malbosc, P., Mandelbrojt, J. and Prod’homme, L. 2002. Les Unités sémiotiques temporelles. Nouvelles clés pour l’écoute. Marseille: Laboratoire Musique et Informatique de Marseille. CD-Rom.Google Scholar
Fraser, J. T. 1982. The Genesis and Evolution of Time: A Critique of Interpretations in Physics. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.Google Scholar
Godøy, R. (2006). Gestural-Sonorous Objects: Embodied extensions of Schaeffer’s conceptual apparatus. Organised Sound 11(2): 149–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godøy, R. I. and Leman, M. (eds.) 2010. Musical Gestures: Sound, Movement, and Meaning. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, N., Allen, T. Nguyen, N. and Fortin, N. 2013. Critical Role of the Hippocampus in Memory for Elapsed Time. The Journal of Neuroscience 33(34): 13888–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Johnson, M. 1999. Something in the Way She Moves: Musical Motion and Musical Space. Keynote presentation at the Conference on Musical Imagery, Oslo, June.Google Scholar
Kaminska, Z. and Mayer, P. 1993. Metamorphosis, Migration and Materialization: Shades of Illusion in the Perception of Music. Contemporary Music Review 9(1–2): 151–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landy, L. 1994. The “Something to Hold on to Factor” in Timbral Composition. Contemporary Music Review 10(2): 49–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
London, J. 2004. Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAdams, S. 1987. Music: A Science of the Mind? Contemporary Music Review 2: 1–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGuiness, A. and Overy, K. 2011. Music, Consciousness, and the Brain: Music as Shared Experience of an Embodied Present. In Clarke, D. and Clarke, E. (eds.) Music and Consciousness: Philosophical,Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Monahan, C. B. and Hirsh, I. J. 1990. Studies in Auditory Timing: 2. Rhythm Pattterns. Perception and Psychophysics 47(3): 227–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mountain, R. 1989. Factors that Influence our Perception of Time in Music. Proceedings of the CEC conference >convergence<, Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada.convergence<,+Banff+Centre+for+the+Arts,+Canada.>Google Scholar
Mountain, R. 1993. An Investigation of Periodicity in Music, with Reference to Three 20th-century Compositions: Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Lutoslawski’s Concerto for Orchestra, and Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto. PhD dissertation, University of Victoria, Canada.Google Scholar
Mountain, R. 1999. Composition: My Laboratory for Auditory Perception Research. In Musical Behaviour and Cognition, General Psychology, 3/4. Rome: Edizioni Scientifiche.Google Scholar
Mountain, R. 2001. The Training of Time-Smiths. Proceedings of the VII International Symposium on Systematic and Comparative Musicology / III International Conference on Cognitive Musicology, Jyväskyla, Finland.Google Scholar
Mountain, R. 2003. The Breathing of Time in(to) Music. Proceedings of the V Triennial ESCOM Conference (European Society for Cognitive Studies in Music), Hannover, Germany.Google Scholar
Mountain, R. 2004. Marketing Strategies for Electroacoustics and Computer Music. Organised Sound 9(3): 305–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Phillips, D. 2002. Central Auditory System and Central Auditory Processing Disorders: Some Conceptual Issues. Seminars in Hearing 23(4): 251–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reinberg, A. and Ashkenazi, I. 2003. Concepts in Human Biological Rhythms. Dialogues of Clinical Neuroscience 5: 327–42.Google ScholarPubMed
Roads, Curtis. 2002. Microsound. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stockhausen, K. 1957. …How Time Passes…, trans. Cornelius Cardew. Die Riehe 3: 10–40.Google Scholar
Tenney, J. 1988. Meta+Hodos and META Meta+Hodos: A Phenomenology of 20th Century Musical Materials and an Approach to the Study of Form, 2nd rev. edn. Lebanon, NH:Frog Peak Music.Google Scholar
Ungan, P. and Yagcioglu, S. 2014. Significant Variations in Weber Fraction for Changes Inter-onset Interval of a Click Train over the Range of Intervals between 5 and 300 ms. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, art. 1453: 1–4.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Westerkamp, H. 2019. Skype conversations with the author. 13 and 17 July.Google Scholar