Pickups- physics or cooking?

[Folkcafe]

Boy did this thread take a left turn but it certainly was an enjoyable Sunday morning read.
In some ways, I am reminded of the saying, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem needs to look like a nail. Boy, some of you guys have really big hammers. :>)
As with cooking, I like to experiment. I use science these days only in so far as it doesn't get in the way. I mean pickups are a pretty established art form. Few are re-inventing the wheel with their designs. Like cooking, it is a matter of taste and can be so subjective.

[fieldwrangler]

Of course this glib Pythagorean explanation only works for vertical harmony, how on earth does it work when the two tones sound one after the other? Mike's theory of tone prints in the brain is interesting, suggesting that melody and harmony are the same thing. But the flavour of, say, a semitone jump in a melody, isn't as sour as two notes a semitone apart sounding simultaneously.

I'm not addressing the horizontal implications here. In fact, my experience with the perceived groupings of pitches in melodic applications sez that it's pretty complex.

However, one thing I've learned from studying classic jazz 8th not lines is that it can be very revealing to look at all of the pitches on the downbeats as having more direct harmonic significance (to the chordal context at that instant) than those on upbeats.

[fieldwrangler]

Mike Sulzer wrote:

For C to D we move two fifths. This is 3/2 squared.
C to D: (3/2)^2 = 9/4; This is the second harmonic (9/4/2 = 9/8) of D. That is, 9/8 is the ratio of D to C in the just scale. That looks great! But I cannot get any of the others to work out exactly.

Mike -

In fact, I wonder if these deviations from simpler arithmetic ratios are a component of the hierarchical increase of intensity that I've laid out here...

I just think that the whole business of teaching music students to visualize scales as a sequence of whole & half steps really obscures much more basic truths about the nature of these collections of pitches. Plus, it's not the way we really hear them. I think that when someone sings "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So" they're really hearing it as a sequence of "Root, whole step, major 3rd, fourth, fifth" and not "Note, whole step, whole step, half step, whole step." If that were the case then folks would find it really easy to sing a whole tone (or chromatic) scale in tune, and they don't.

[David Schwab]

I think that when someone sings "Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So" they're really hearing it as a sequence of "Root, whole step, major 3rd, fourth, fifth" and not "Note, whole step, whole step, half step, whole step." If that were the case then folks would find it really easy to sing a whole tone (or chromatic) scale in tune, and they don't.

You can if you practice it. I hear whole and half steps when I listen to music, and that's how I know what notes to play back. All I need to do is find the key it's in. That's the reason for equal temperament anyway; so you can transpose. There are a lot of different temperaments and scales in other forms of music. But often you can't transpose while retaining the same intervals.

[fieldwrangler]

You can if you practice it. I hear whole and half steps when I listen to music, and that's how I know what notes to play back.

In fact, I have a quite unsubstantiated sense that bass players do have a somewhat different orientation when it come to this and other ear oriented tasks.

However, my point is that if most folks really just heard sequences of stepwise intervals no practice would be necessary. If they successfully sang a whole step between the first two notes in the series, they should be able to repeat this accomplishment between all the successive steps (up to the point where they're straining their vocal range) and they can't. Same with half steps.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

In fact, I have a quite unsubstantiated sense that bass players do have a somewhat different orientation when it come to this and other ear oriented tasks.

However, my point is that if most folks really just heard sequences of stepwise intervals no practice would be necessary. If they successfully sang a whole step between the first two notes in the series, they should be able to repeat this accomplishment between all the successive steps (up to the point where they're straining their vocal range) and they can't. Same with half steps.

I had a theory teacher who said much the same thing. Lower registers can deal with intervals more dramatically than higher instruments. My own hack bass playing confirms this - I hear the qualities of intervals more clearly with bass than with guitar.

On your second point... do you think if Bobby McFerrin tried to do whole tone scales or diminished scales the audience would have responded equally well? Those patterns make a bit more sense in that the space between notes repeats in an easier way, but harmonically are much trickier. I'm not asking to be coy, I'm just curious.

[fieldwrangler]

...do you think if Bobby McFerrin tried to do whole tone scales or diminished scales the audience would have responded equally well? Those patterns make a bit more sense in that the space between notes repeats in an easier way, but harmonically are much trickier. I'm not asking to be coy, I'm just curious.

Absolutely not, as I tried to state in post #109.

This is kindof the core of what I've been trying to get at here; the intrinsically-5th-based-but-reinverted-into-an-octave pentatonic is easier to hear despite the irregular sequence of intervals than either a whole tone or chromatic scale, each of which just repeats the same interval between all of the seemingly sequential pitches.

Regarding the diminished stuff, I'm just about finished writing a book (that's currently 40 pages long) trying to disentangle that most disorienting pitchspace.

On a completely unrelated note, the seemingly distant paths that this thread has taken from the original query have been really instructional to me. The reports from folks who actually deal with high end amp designs who seem to have both a very firm theoretical grounding yet are using their ears in a responsible way really have my attention.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

Ah sorry, I started losing track of who said what in this thread... heh.

[mkat]

When I did fundamentals of music theory years ago, the work on intervals was excellent. This was great learning 'cause all you need is one note, from there you can determine any interval regardless of the key.

[kg]

using their ears in a responsible way really have my attention.

i thumb my nose at the establishment and use my ears irresponsibly and however i damned well please.

[Steve Conner]

However, my point is that if most folks really just heard sequences of stepwise intervals no practice would be necessary. If they successfully sang a whole step between the first two notes in the series, they should be able to repeat this accomplishment between all the successive steps (up to the point where they're straining their vocal range) and they can't. Same with half steps.

Yes, so it seems more probable that what people actually hear is the "harmonic congruences", for want of a better word, that we've been debating. My own feeling is that the intervals are easy to sing properly in about the order of their harmonic congruence. Unison, octave, perfect fifth, major third, and so on, and the tritone and semitone are probably competing for last place.

Anyway, the overall conclusion of this thread seems to be that to a true master, physics and cooking are the same thing. Or, ought to be. In Michael Polanyi's book "Personal Knowledge", there is a quote to the effect that, when cotton production was industrialised, the industrial scientists spent the first 10 years just trying to understand what the cotton spinners were actually doing when they produced the stuff by hand, and put it on a scientific basis. The spinners themselves had no scientific training, so while they could do what they did very well, they couldn't explain it to a scientist.

I can't help seeing a certain analogy to pickup making.

[jmaf]

Ah sorry, I started losing track of who said what in this thread... heh.

I keep coming into this thread to read the updates because I'm subscribed to it and I gotta say I have not the slightest clue what is being discussed here.

[fieldwrangler]

i thumb my nose at the establishment and use my ears irresponsibly and however i damned well please.

Even more welcome.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

I keep coming into this thread to read the updates because I'm subscribed to it and I gotta say I have not the slightest clue what is being discussed here.

Go over to the thread with the magnetic fat kid... WAY more interesting.

[jmaf]

Go over to the thread with the magnetic fat kid... WAY more interesting.

Where is that? I haven't seen it. Is this it? Magnetic Fat Kid Video