Western musical intervals are derived from speech tendencies, according to Duke scientists. Specifically, "most of the 12 chromatic scale intervals correspond to peaks of relative power in the normalized spectrum of human vocalizations." A somewhat more layperson-friendly summary of the study is here. [more inside]
posted by univac on Mar 15, 2009 - 42 comments

Tourists black out reflective retinas in snapshots before printing them, and millions of people refer to strangers they’ve never spoken to as friends, because they’ve connected through a social-networking platform. [...] It should come as no surprise, then, that singers sometimes choose to correct recorded flaws in pitch with modern software, like Antares’s Auto-Tune.

Sasha Frere-Jones on auto-tuning, in The New Yorker. [more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Jun 10, 2008 - 98 comments

It’s not what you say, it's the way you say it--Part 2. This observation was cleverly illustrated by Prof. Howard L. Chace in Anguish Languish, an exercise to demonstrate to his French Language students that intonation is key to understanding spoken language. Here is the complete text. You can read his best known Furry Tell about a Wicket Woof and a Ladle Gull or hear it read.(Warning-has sound.) I first found out about Howard Chace from an article in The Whole Earth Catalog and certain phrases have rattled around my head ever since. Here is a discussion of Anguish Languish if you want to write your own. Like this version of Gender Cyst from the Homely Babble.
posted by lobakgo on Sep 22, 2003 - 5 comments