Saturday, December 13, 2008

Tones in Space

A tone exists and travels through space and the ear can listen. If the ear perceives this tone the voice can reproduce it. Tomatis and Kodaly realized this, the complete connection between the ear and the voice. Space also exists between two tones even if sounded at the same time. In music we call this an interval. 

Rhythm is a more physiological aspect to music. Similar to the mind, we can not see or touch tones in space but with practice we can use our ears to perceive them. 

3 comments:

Mike Cross said...

Hi Laurie,

It seems to me that with this you are maybe edging towards an elucidation of (1) what disharmony is, along with (2) its cause, (3) its elimination, and (4) a practical means for eliminating disharmony.

All the best,

Mike

Laurie Blundell said...

Thanks Mike, honestly that was not my intention, but i can leave some thoughts.

I would say that disharmony probably exists in all of us to varying degrees, certainly in myself and i am appreciative of the moments where i occasionally catch a glimpse or am shown that. I observe disharmony in my pupils, in some more than others. I am not clear as to the cause of our disharmony, although Alexander and Dr Tomatis have shed some light there, and i am not sure if it is possible to eliminate it.

My feeling is that a less disharmonious existince is only possible by each of us waking up to our present state of disharmony. So i think the disharmony is necessary and will always be present to some extent.

My idea for these more recent articles was to relate my musical experiences, from teaching and performing, to the physical, mental and emotional aspects of human beings. The last of which i have not commented on. So perhaps, indirectly dealing with disharmony.

Mike Cross said...

If it wasn't your intention to get to the bottom of the four noble truths, then it bloody well should have been! The old problem of lack of clarity of intention?

My experience of playing tone-matching games is that it is relatively difficult for me, as compared with somebody who has a more musical ear, to hit the target. But there does seem to be such a thing as hitting the target -- in actual practice if not in the more refined world musical theory which you seem to inhabit.

Reminds me of the joke about the engineer and the builder talking in the pub. The engineer said he had to work to a tolerance of less than a millionth of an inch. The builder replied that kind of tolerance would be no good in his line of work -- "When I build a drive, my block paving has to be spot on."

After reading your posts last night, it occured to me this morning that as a translation of samadhi, we could do worse than "harmony"....

The term harmony derives from the Greek ἁρμονία (harmonía), meaning "joint, agreement, concord" [3] and that from the verb ἁρμόζω (harmozo), "to fit together, to join." [Wikipedia]