Pickups- physics or cooking?

[Steve Conner]

Well, feel free to start a new thread on math and computers in the Fun With Computers, Lobby or Parking Lot forums.

Right now the link between this and pickup making is getting really strained, maybe the quality of randomness has some relevance to hand vs. machine winding?

[jmaf]

Well, feel free to start a new thread on math and computers in the Lobby or Parking Lot forums.

No thanks. Math and computers are WORK for me, not fun like tube amps and hopefully in the future pickup winding.

[Steve Conner]

Yes, and me and probably half of the other contributors to this thread.

Whether building tube amps and pickups would still be fun if that was what you did for a living, is another interesting debate.

[Mike Sulzer]

That'd mean infinite information as well.

A noise-like signal produced by a physical event carries some information about the event, but this information is derived from the statistical properties of the random process of which it is a sample, not on the actual signal. This is a tiny amount of information compared to the information that could be stored in such a signal. I suppose if you wish, you could consider such a signal to be the communication of some all powerful all knowing civilization. Only they could decode the signal so that its capacity to carry information would translate to actual information with meaning to its individuals.

Here is an example of the meaning of the first sentence above. Suppose one transmits a radar pulse at a very high frequency into the ionosphere. A very weak noise-like signal is scattered back and can be received on the ground. The total power and spectral content of this signal is a function of height, time of day, time of year, phase in the solar cycle, etc. The spectral shape and total power can be translated by a modeling process into measurements of geophysical parameters such as the number density of electrons, the type and number densities of the ions, temperatures of electrons and ions, and information concerning their bulk motion.

However, this information does not come from the return from a single radar pulse no matter how powerful, even with infinite signal to noise ratio. This is because it is a noise-like signal and the information is carried in the properties of the random process. So one must average the radar signals from thousands of pulses to get spectral measurements, or equivalently, correlation functions, which then contain the actual information.

[jmaf]

Yes, and me and probably half of the other contributors to this thread.

I guess we all sit in front of a computer a large percentage of our days.

Whether building tube amps and pickups would still be fun if that was what you did for a living, is another interesting debate.

I keep in touch with the friends who remain in the business, they're happy.

[fieldwrangler]

Coltrane was often heard to say that he practiced from a book called "Thesaurus of Scale and Melodic Pattern" by Nicholas Slonimsky. In fact, the 3 tonal centers produced by division of the octave into 3 equal parts that is realized in "Giant Steps" is directly traceable to this book.

However, years after 'Trane's death I heard Slonimsky announce on the Johnny Carson show (?!!??!) that the book was written as a joke; a sarcastic reaction to the dogma that was prevalent among 20th century composers that music could be produced from simple algorithms.

The point for me is that 'Trane was a genius (not to mention a practice addict) and if he heard a car door slam and some change fall out of his pocket he could probably get a tune out of it. My experience with the Slonimsky book is that although the sequences of notes aren't generated from principles that necessarily lead to conventional tonality musicians tends to leap forward to try to hear them as representative of diatonic & key-centered structures.

So, here we have an example of a "creative leap" that starts with something seemingly systematic and ends with a fully formed musical realization.

I know this isn't exactly what we're supposed to be talking about here, but what else is new??

Bob Palmieri

[Mike Sulzer]

....Nicholas Slonimsky.....

Ah, yes, one of Appaz's friends:

One late Saturday evening in the spring of 1981, I received a telephone call. "Nicolas Slonimsky?" (correctly pronounced) the caller inquired. "This is Frank Zappa. I never realized you were in Los Angeles, and I want so much to get in touch with you about your book of scales." I was startled. Frank Zappa was the last person who, to my mind, could be interested in my theoretico-musical inventions. His name was familiar to me from a promotional record jacket showing him seated on the john with his denuded left thigh in view, and a legend in large letters: PHI KRAPPA ZAPPA.
....

Slonimsky about Zappa | www.zappa.hu

Interesting description of playing at a Zappa concert.

[Mike Sulzer]

Coltrane was often heard to say that he practiced from a book called "Thesaurus of Scale and Melodic Pattern" by Nicholas Slonimsky. In fact, the 3 tonal centers produced by division of the octave into 3 equal parts that is realized in "Giant Steps" is in fact directly traceable to this book.

The question that raises in my mind is this: would this have ever made sense to an audience that was not accustomed to an equal tempered scale?

[fieldwrangler]

The question that raises in my mind is this: would this have ever made sense to an audience that was not accustomed to an equal tempered scale?

Dunno! Wonder if there's a way to find out...

What's interesting to me is that the octave is indeed recognized universally by non-tone-deaf people of all cultures, in the sense that if you play them a pitch and then another one at twice the frequency they feel that there's something similar about them. And they certainly feel that they're a lot more similar than two notes a major 7th apart, even though their frequencies are closer. And there's nothing inherent in a simple doubling of frequency that necessarily implies that this should be so; it's a function of our perceptual mechanism. In fact, the same is true of the idea that repetitive cycles of compressed & rarified air happening within a certain spread of frequencies should produce a sensation of "pitch." There's just nothing inherent in the phenomenon that necessitates this. Similarly, there's nothing inherent in electromagnetic waves with a length of 700 nm that contains any "redness," it's just a function of how the input produces a perceptual response.

Bob Palmieri

[salvarsan]

There are apparently some universal congruences between the physics and some hardwired perceptual mechanisms, although I'm too beat to enumerate them.

Instead, watch Bobby McFerrin demonstrate the pentatonic scale at the 2009 World Science Festival. Much fun with pitch and few words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk

[Mike Sulzer]

Dunno! Wonder if there's a way to find out...

What's interesting to me is that the octave is indeed recognized universally by non-tone-deaf people of all cultures, in the sense that if you play them a pitch and then another one at twice the frequency they feel that there's something similar about them. And they certainly feel that they're a lot more similar than two notes a major 7th apart, even though their frequencies are closer. And there's nothing inherent in a simple doubling of frequency that necessarily implies that this should be so; it's a function of our perceptual mechanism.

I think it makes a lot of sense. First consider these two things.
1. When you play two notes together, an octave separation is very special because it is the smallest frequency separation with the special property regarding beat frequencies, as discussed above and in other places.
2. The brain is capable of storing data about a tone just played for comparison with a current one.

Suppose that this stored information is just a replica of the information used about a tone to compare it to another tone that occurs at the same time. Then the comparison of the new tone with the old one is essentially the same process and would also be sensitive to special beat pattern properties, etc. So I do not think that is too much of a stretch for octaves to be special for notes played one after the other.

[fieldwrangler]

Truly "not a stretch" (no pun necessary.)

However, you're indeed describing attributes of the perceptual system.

[Mike Sulzer]

Truly "not a stretch" (no pun necessary.)

However, you're indeed describing attributes of the perceptual system.

Yes, that is as it must be, but what I am describing is attributes of the perceptual system that are present because of the physics of the signal, rather than attributes that are primarily a result of just how the internal workings of the system happen to function.

That is, the fact that two notes an octave apart sound simple and related as opposed to a seventh, which has a more complicated effect, results from the higher level processing following the results of the low level processing, which responds directly to the physics of the signal.

[fieldwrangler]

Definitely. In fact, there are some who feel that the easier it is to process the signal the more folks like the sound. Steven Wolfram claims that all you hafta do is look at the resultant waveform of combinations of pitches and think about what the eardrum would need to do to follow that.

Some others have taken readings of the electrical outputs of auditory nerves comparing the results of tritones (flatted fifths) and perfect fifths and found that the signals are much more regularly rhythmic in the latter case.

So, without even going into the level of brain processing there's already some interesting stuff going on.

[Steve Conner]

Well, if Wolfram were right, an album of "easy listening" music would consist of a sine wave.

I guess this is partly true in that it's unlikely to contain instruments with harsh timbres, tritones or Giant Steps-esque leaps into the unknown. And Wolfram is probably the kind of guy who listens to a sine wave to chill out anyway.

There is an interesting resonance between this viewpoint and that of audiophiles who think a sine wave is too easy a test for a power amp, and real music is somehow more challenging. (This argument is from my audio bullshit busting hero, Douglas Self.) The amp obviously doesn't know or care about the difference, but we do.

So, prodding the hornets' nest with my troll stick again: How can I state so confidently that a hi-fi amp doesn't interact with what it amplifies on any deep level? Am I justified in following Self's lead and laughing at claims that an amp can alter the rhythm of music?

And, coming back to pickups, I've heard claims that the construction of the pickup can alter the attack and dynamics of the guitar. What could be the physics behind this?