Music pitch (high/low); the metaphor is so embedded in me from pre-memory days that I struggled to accept that it’s just a convention. Many other binaries (such as long/short) would work just as well.
I’ve seen some studies where people tend to guess higher frequency pitches come from sources located physically higher than lower frequency ones. The evidence seemed middling enough that a better replication may fail, though. Supposedly most languages (?? numbers ??) use the high-low metaphor (do they agree on the direction?). My first question is whether someone from a language that reverses the order or uses a different metaphor/none at all would have the same results.
Isn’t it the case that when you sing a high note, you feel something higher in your mouth/larynx/whatever , and when you sing a low note, you feel something lower? Seems difficult to tell whether I actually do need to do that or I’ve just conditioned myself to, because of the metaphor.
This is at least in part conditioning: singing teachers always teach you to think “down” as you sing higher, because the thing you instinctively do when you think “higher” is wrong.
Also, (or so I’ve heard) the ancient Greeks used “high” and “low” backwards (at least when writing their music down) because they thought of it in terms of taller and shorter strings on a harp, where the taller strings are lower notes.
Music pitch (high/low); the metaphor is so embedded in me from pre-memory days that I struggled to accept that it’s just a convention. Many other binaries (such as long/short) would work just as well.
I’ve seen some studies where people tend to guess higher frequency pitches come from sources located physically higher than lower frequency ones. The evidence seemed middling enough that a better replication may fail, though. Supposedly most languages (?? numbers ??) use the high-low metaphor (do they agree on the direction?). My first question is whether someone from a language that reverses the order or uses a different metaphor/none at all would have the same results.
Isn’t it the case that when you sing a high note, you feel something higher in your mouth/larynx/whatever , and when you sing a low note, you feel something lower? Seems difficult to tell whether I actually do need to do that or I’ve just conditioned myself to, because of the metaphor.
This is at least in part conditioning: singing teachers always teach you to think “down” as you sing higher, because the thing you instinctively do when you think “higher” is wrong.
Also, (or so I’ve heard) the ancient Greeks used “high” and “low” backwards (at least when writing their music down) because they thought of it in terms of taller and shorter strings on a harp, where the taller strings are lower notes.