CGSC170 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Sound, Grammar, Thalamus

• School: University of Delaware
• Department: Cognitive Science
• Course: CGSC170
• Professor: Rhodes Ryan

Document Summary

Music has a structure: analogous to language structure, hierarchy of elements/domains. Language: phonemes, smallest unit, combine to form, words, smallest meaningful units, are arranged according to constraints of, syntax, rules about the arrangement of words. Music: scale degrees/notes, smallest units, combine to form, chords, unit of meaning?, arranged according to constraints of, key structure. Sound waves in continuous waves: not discrete! Frequency: frequency = number of peaks/valleys in wave per second, high frequency = higher pitch, lower frequency = lower pitch. Cog(cid:374)iti(cid:448)e (cid:272)halle(cid:374)ge: seg(cid:373)e(cid:374)t a (cid:272)o(cid:374)ti(cid:374)uous sou(cid:374)d (cid:449)a(cid:448)e i(cid:374)to dis(cid:272)rete (cid:862)(cid:374)otes(cid:863: we divide the entire spectrum of sound into units called octaves, each octave contains 8 steps (a-g) What is an octave: a doubling in frequency. Adding more waves/second increases pitch: doubling the number of waves/sec creates a note one octave higher. Entire pitch spectrum divided into octaves: steps within octaves labeled a-g, 8 steps per octave, 5 half-steps. Three levels of structure: notes, chords, key.