The point of the above example is that the sound phenomenon which is external to our body-the fluctuation of air pressure-is considered an objective informational message, and everything that happens once it is converted by our "transducer" is subjective, based on our brain's understanding of the transducer's output, our own life experience, and our own favored ways of deriving knowledge. Then it is more than a cue, and we are listening in another mode, music mode, regardless of the source of the sound.
When we hear a strange sound-thinking "What was that?".we try to identify it.Occasionally we pay attention to the sound itself. A person who had never learned to associate that sound with any particular source-e.g., a person who had never heard a similar sound before-might attempt to compare it with other known sounds, or might even remain unconcerned as to what produced the sound. I must run away from the sound source immediately as fast and as far as I can." A person in another time or place might look around calmly for the electronic recording device that produced the simulation of a lion's roar. A person in one time or place might interpret the sound to mean "My life is in danger. Our brain then derives further information about the actual source of the sound and its meaning. Our brain, by means largely unknown to us (past experience, instinct, deduction, instruction in roar analysis?) evaluates those time-varying frequencies and amplitudes as a lion's roar. The cochlea, so we are taught, responds to the frequencies and amplitudes of those changes and conveys those responses to the brain. Dobrian, Chris, " Music and Artificial Intelligence", regarding models of music cognition.) Regardless of the mechanism by which our brain accomplishes it, it is clear that we generate (interpret, deduce, recall, or create) information ourselves, stimulated by external information.įor example, when we hear a lion's roar, our ear drum simply receives continuous changes in air pressure. Scientists and philosophers have advanced many conceptual models of what the brain does with these nerve impulses to derive knowledge and meaning. Our physical sensory receptors-our ears, eyes, etc.-can well be thought of as information "transducers" which convert external stimuli-changes in air pressure, light, etc.-into nerve impulses recognized by the brain. Aspects of the Music-Language RelationshipĮvery input to our senses is a stimulus, available for us to interpret as information, and from which we can derive further information.
Music and Language Music and Language (1992) by Chris Dobrian