Music Rooted in Human Speech

The use of 12 tone intervals in the music of many human cultures is rooted in the physics of how our vocal anatomy produces speech, according to researchers at the Duke Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. Learn more at www.purveslab.net

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[hairhorn]

was this a comparison of English to a 12-tone scale? Because there are so many other languages and so many different kinds of scales.

[richardmullins44]

I am wondering if some very musical effects, such as vibrato , will be analysed by your system as semitone intervals. Maybe not.

[richardmullins44]

Interesting. What are the other 32% of the intervals that did not fit into the chromatic scale. Do you have a theory for what they are?

e.g. are musical effects such as vibrato, detectable as semitone intervals - maybe not.

[richardmullins44]

Interesting. You say 68% of the intervals foudn in speech are intervals of the semitone scale. Do you have a theory about what the other 32% are?

[purplenoise2002]

Biiiiig surprise.... The harmonics of any periodic wave are *already* most of the time musical intervals that can be found in the chromatic scale. The glotal pulse is a periodic wave. Formant filtering is just a subsetting of those harmonics. What you discovered is that if you take a set of harmonically related tones and take away most of them, then what remains is still harmonically related tones.

[sh3l1]

it is also "dum" to spell "dum" as D-U-M

[yubnubs]

sunywoo is dumb. its a good study. it didnt help anyone but at least they found out that people talk on half steps 60 whatever % of the time. youre dumb

[sunywoo]

absolutely dum... Ever play a chord on a guitar???? u should try it sometime