Music Listening, Music Therapy, Phenomenology and Neuroscience

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The Musical Timespace

Fig. 1.4. The proposed basic listening dimensions in music

1 – The Basic Listening Dimensions

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The temporal continuum

In the graphic model, pitch is placed opposite pulse, reflecting

the fact that pitch and pulse are related to the fast and the slow

ends of the physical frequency continuum. This continuum is divided into

two parts by the processes of auditory perception. Below approximately 16

Hz (16 impulses per second), frequency is heard as pulse or separate beats.

Above approximately 16 Hz, it is heard as continuous sound, varying in

height with varying frequency. When a regularity in a sound spectrum

is prominent, its frequency is heard as a pitch height.

In a similar way, movement and timbre are placed opposite each other as

the slow and the fast end of a motion continuum. In this continuum, move-

ment is a perceptual phenomenon arising from the processing of compara-

tively slow changes of sound in working memory, while timbre is the

quality rapidly evoked by the fast motion of sound. Toru Takemitsu

provides a precise characterization;

The sensing of timbre is none other than the perception of the succes-

sion of movement within sound. As well as being spatial in nature,

this perception is of course also temporal in nature. To put it another

way, timbre arises during the time in which one is listening to the

shifting of sound. It is, as symbolized by the word sawari (which also

has the meaning of touching some object lightly) something indica-

tive of a dynamic state. (Takemitsu, 1987)

There is no distinct border between the microtemporal experience of a

characteristic timbre and the macrotemporal experience of sound move-

ment. When a large metal instrument such as a Chinese tam-tam is struck,

the instant identification of metallic timbre is immediately followed by

the experience of movement, growth and dynamic change of timbral color.